ills, too. FEMA has turned out to be a deadbeat, and an ungrateful one at that, stiffing the Oregon National Guard.

Fifteen months ago, Oregon was promised reimbursement when it rushed 1,112 Guard members to the Gulf Coast to help out after Hurricane Katrina. Covering the salary and expenses of all those men and women cost the Guard $2.7 million, and repayment is so egregiously overdue that it has put the Oregon agency in a bind.

The pinch being felt here, however, is only a minor chapter of a far more serious and shameful national story. Well beyond the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, much of the Gulf Coast and the historic city of New Orleans remain in ruins. Tens of thousands of residents who lost their homes are still waiting endlessly for checks, too, in the form of federal grants to help them rebuild.

Half the population of New Orleans still hasn't returned.

Forty percent of the city's businesses remain closed.

The region's levees are still flawed, its flood defenses still frail.

Reports of massive waste and fraud continue to mount.

Congress dawdled for months before appropriating money for a housing grant program, and now Louisiana officials are taking forever to disburse it. Incredibly, only 28 families have actually received payment, while more than 77,000 still wait.

It's widely understood that government at every level failed during the initial response to the monster storm of August 2005. But what unfolded as a national disgrace 15 months ago has grown into a new debacle today as federal and state bureaucracies continue to bungle the recovery.

The Oregon National Guard is just one more victim of this disorganization and ineptitude. Compared with the devastation experienced by Gulf Coast states, Oregon's financial dilemma is minuscule, but it's nevertheless real and tremendously frustrating.

Over and over, FEMA has assured the state that reimbursement is imminent, but not a dime has ever arrived. Meanwhile, the Oregon Guard needs repayment so it can keep operating and maintaining 41 armories around the state, as well as an airbase in Portland, home to the 142nd Fighter Wing, and an F-15 training base in Klamath Falls.

FEMA officials have given the Oregon Guard an erratic barrage of excuses for nonpayment, most of them pinning the blame on Louisiana. State officials there may indeed be running an inept recovery program, but they're not the ones who initiated the Oregon Guard mobilization, and they're not the ones who owe the state $2.7 million.

Brig. Gen. Mike Caldwell of the Oregon Guard said in an interview Tuesday that if the money doesn't show up by February, "We could be turning off lights and laying off people." The federal foot-dragging, he said, has become "ridiculous."

That's also a pretty good word to describe the pace of this country's Gulf Coast recovery.