State will not have to repay interest earned on Katrina fund

JACKSON — Attorney General Jim Hood says Mississippi won’t have to repay about $987,000 in interest the state purportedly earned on Hurricane Katrina public assistance fund.

Hood said yesterday in a news release that the Federal Emergency Management Agency ruled favorably on Mississippi’s appeal of an audit by the Inspector General.

Hood said that on appeal, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency argued that the agreements between the state and the U.S. Treasury governed the transactions and that those rules had not been fully considered in the previous report. Hood said FEMA determined that it would not try to recover the money.

Hood’s news release said other findings of the February 2010 report were settled during the appeal “in a cooperative effort between MEMA and FEMA.”