DISASTER RESPONSEStates Fear Critical Funding from FEMA May Be Drying Up
Many states rely on the federal government for the vast majority of their emergency management funding. Now, local leaders are looking for clues about the money —and the future of FEMA itself.
Upheaval at the nation’s top disaster agency is raising anxiety among state and local emergency managers — and leaving major questions about the whereabouts of billions of federal dollars it pays out to them.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency still has not opened applications for an enormous suite of grants, including ones that many states rely on to pay for basic emergency management operations. Some states pass on much of that money to their most rural, low-income counties to ensure they have an emergency manager on the payroll.
FEMA has blown through the mid-May statutory deadline to start the grants’ application process, according to the National Emergency Management Association, with no word about why or what that might indicate. The delay appears to have little precedent.
“There’s no transparency on why it’s not happening,” said Michael A. Coen Jr., who served as FEMA’s chief of staff under former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
FEMA’s system of grants is complex and multifaceted and helps communities prepare for and respond to everything from terrorist attacks to natural disasters.
In April, the agency abruptly rescinded a different grant program that county and local governments were expecting to help them reduce natural hazard risks moving forward. The clawback of money included hundreds of millions already pledged. FEMA also quietly withdrew a notice for states to apply for $600 million in flood mitigation grants.
On top of that, on June 11, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem began requiring that she review all FEMA grants above $100,000. That could slow its vast multibillion grants apparatus to a crawl, current and former FEMA employees said.
FEMA did not answer ProPublica’s questions about the missed application deadline or the impact of funding cuts and delays, instead responding with a statement from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin that Noem is focused on bringing accountability to FEMA’s spending by “rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and working to ensure only grants that really help Americans in time of need are approved.”
The memo announcing the change arrived the day after President Donald Trump said he wants to begin dismantling FEMA at the close of hurricane season this fall.
