In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey. The storm would bring severe flooding to the East Coast—particularly New Jersey and New York City—and go down as the fifth-most-expensive tropical cyclone in U.S. history ($88.5 billion in damages), per a 2024 estimate by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But the costs of the storm are still being realized, and more than 13 years later, taxpayers are still footing the bill for the federal government's mismanagement, according to a recent report from the Transportation Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG).
In January 2013, Congress approved over $50 billion in aid for Sandy relief. The bill, which included bailouts for wealthy Connecticut residents, appropriated $10.9 billion to the Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) Public Transportation Emergency Relief Program, $10 billion of which the FTA gave to states for hurricane recovery and resilience projects.
