CNN Reports:
CNN:
"Prisons in Mississippi got coffee makers, pillowcases and dinnerware -- all intended for victims of Hurricane Katrina.The state's Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks took more coffee makers, cleaning supplies and other items.
Plastic containers ended up with the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration.
Colleges, volunteer fire departments and other agencies received even more.
But the Mississippi hurricane victims who originally were intended to receive the supplies got nothing, a CNN investigation has found. (...)
Jim Marler, director of Mississippi's surplus agency, failed to return repeated phone calls over several months to explain what happened.
Agency spokeswoman Kym Wiggins said, "There may be a need, but we were not notified that there was a great need for this particular property."
That doesn't sit well with most aid groups in Mississippi. "You would have to be living under a rock not to know there is still a need," said Cass Woods, the project coordinator of Coastal Women for Change.
Wiggins said that nonprofit organizations must meet federal guidelines and register with the state and that no such groups helping the needy or homeless were registered with Mississippi's surplus agency. (...)
CNN interviewed the leaders of eight nonprofits helping Katrina victims at a Biloxi, Mississippi, church used as a staging area for community groups. All said they had no idea these items were available, and most had no idea the surplus agency existed.
"We work so hard to help people in our community when the government is holding back stuff that we can use to give people," said Glenda Perryman, director of United Hearts Community Action Agency."
Thank you, Haley Barbour, for keeping the victims of Katrina in your thoughts in their hour of need.
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