LONG BEACH, Miss. – More than two months after the Federal Emergency Management Agency botched its initial response to Hurricane Katrina, devastated towns along the Gulf Coast say the agency is still slow in responding to recovery needs.

Chief among complaints is bureaucratic foot-dragging that's keeping cities and towns from being reimbursed for the cost of emergency services. Some are worried they'll start bouncing paychecks to police, firefighters and other crucial municipal employees.

In Long Beach – a city of 18,000 west of Gulfport – Mayor Billy Skellie has complained to Gov. Haley Barbour that his city is about to run out of money.

During a recent meeting with Robert Latham, head of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, Mr. Skellie jokingly held up his keys to various city offices.

"I said, 'Who wants the keys?' " he recalled.

In Gautier, 25 miles east of Long Beach, many businesses are back in operation, but City Manager Christy Wheeler said "we're all going to be in dire straits" if FEMA doesn't pick up the pace.

Ms. Wheeler complained that reimbursement requests are stalled while FEMA officials focus on details such as odometer readings from city cars whose electrical systems – and electronic odometer readouts – were destroyed in Katrina's floods.

FEMA says it's working as fast as it can under its method of reimbursing costs.

Eugene Brezany, a FEMA spokesman in Jackson, said it's crucial to correctly determine what is eligible for reimbursement so the agency doesn't have to recoup money later.

Once a reimbursement request is properly filed, he said, it takes FEMA three to five days to authorize funding and the state an additional five to 10 days to pay a local government.

"Our public assistance program is really a team effort between city, state and local government," Mr. Brezany said. "The faster FEMA gets information from local government, the faster we can get assistance."

Some local officials have praised FEMA.

"They're doing a fantastic job," said Ray Calcagno, public works administrator in Waveland, one of the hardest-hit towns on the Mississippi coast. "Things take time to develop. There's a lot of paperwork, a lot of issues to be resolved."

Long Beach, though, has hardly any tax revenue coming in because all but a handful of its businesses are shut indefinitely and the municipal court is closed, Mr. Skellie said. The city has about 110 employees and an annual budget of $9 million.

Long Beach has exhausted more than $400,000 it set aside for emergency operations before the storm, as well as a $1 million loan it took out afterward.