This morning I called Ken Feinberg, head of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility. We had not been able to meet on Monday when he was in Pensacola so we exchanged cell phone numbers. We talked about Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli’s letter requesting that he speed up the payment process and about U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier ordering that he must disclose that he and the GCCF aren’t independent.
Feinberg said that he has always welcomed constructive suggestions from DOJ. Once he has completed the public input process (which ends next week) on his drafted modifications to the claims process, then the public should see improvements. On Judge Barbier, Feinberg said that they posted the disclosure at all the GCCF offices.
I asked Feinberg what has surprised him about the BP claims. “The sheer volume, ” Feinberg said without hesitation. “BP handled 86,000 claims. I estimated that we would see about a 10 percent increase, so about 100,000 claims. We are handling 500,000 claims, an unprecedented volume.”