By Jonathan D. Salant | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will negotiate directly with Hurricane Sandy homeowners to settle their insurance claims out of court, moving closer to resolving disputes over how much they will receive in compensation.

FEMA announced that it has developed a written agreement that sets parameters for settling the 2,200 lawsuits. The agreement will guide negotiations between FEMA and its policyholders, and enable the agency to tell the private insurance companies that handle the flood insurance program to make payments based on those talks.

"This is an important development in our work to make sure every policyholder gets every dollar they are owed under their flood insurance policies," FEMA spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said.

New Jersey lawmakers applauded the announcement, which followed a meeting on Wednesday between agency officials and the state's congressional delegation.

"The settlement of litigation will allow FEMA to move to the next step and reopen and reexamine all policyholder claims made after Sandy through a new and necessary retrospective claims process," said Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th Dist.).

FEMA separately has agreed to reopen the claims of any of the other 141,800 policyholders who ask the agency to act.

"While long overdue, I'm pleased that FEMA has taken another step to right their wrongs and provide Sandy victims the money they've been entitled to," said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).

This story was originally published on March 20 , 2015 at:
 http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/03/fema_moves_closer_to_settlements_with_sandy_homeow.html