Governor Bob Riley and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour say the local communities hit hardest by the oil spill in the gulf should have more authority, more input, and more resources in responding to disasters and developing standards to prevent them.  Today Governor Riley also said the reimbursement process for oil victims is taking too long.
  "We've had enough dialogue. We've had enough rhetoric over the last two or three months. Now it’s time to get these checks cut...get them into the hands of the people who need it," said Gov. Bob Riley.
    Riley says states that drill should receive more of the revenue from wells.

"We've got legislation that Senator Mary Landrew has authored that basically says we'll get 37% of the revenue of the new wells that are drilled. That would start in 2017. We're trying to say, don't wait another seven years, let's start it now," said Governor Bob Riley. "We didn't have the boom. We didn't have the skimmers. We didn't have the expertise to protect our coast and had to rely on BP and the federal government. We've done an analysis on what it would take to protect Alabama shores but without some revenue it's going to be very difficult to do."
 

  Governors who oppose the moratorium on drilling in the gulf say it's creating too much economic hardship, but the U.S. Department of the Interior contends that the pause is justified.

"We could look forward to greater economic harm in the future if indeed this kind of event recurs," said Wilma Lewis, U.S. Department of the Interior.

"We knew all along that the administration was going to defend the moratorium even though we consider it very, very bad policy not just for the South but for the country. So there's nothing they said that was surprising," said Gov. Haley Barbour.

Governors Barbour is also opposed to litigating damage claims related to the spill.

  "The only people who are going to come out better from litigation are a bunch of lawyers who are going to make huge fees whereas now BP and the Feinberg facility are paying 100% of the claims to the claimer. They don't have to pay anybody for that," said Gov. Barbour.