This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published in ProPublicaIt is a Politzer Prize for investigation room.
The unrest in the best disaster agencies in the country raises concern among local and local emergency managers – and leaves major questions about the federal dollars in place he pays to them.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency still has not opened requests to obtain a huge set of grants, including those on which many states depend to pay the costs of basic emergency management operations. Some countries move many of these funds to the most low -income rural provinces to ensure that they get the emergency manager on salary statements.
FEMA was bombed during the legal deadline in mid -May to start grants. The application processAccording to the National Emergency Management Association, with no word about a reason or what this might refer to. The delay appears to have a few precedents.
Michael A. Queen Junior, who served as the Chief of Staff Fema during the era of former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden: “There is no transparency about the reason for not occurring.”
Fema grant system is complex and multi -faceted and helps societies prepare and respond to everything from terrorist attacks to natural disasters.
In April, the agency Suddenly A different grant program that the boycott and local governments expected them to reduce the risk of natural risks to move forward. Including money money Hundreds of millions have already pledged. Fema also quietly withdrew a notice of the states to apply for $ 600 million to grant flood mitigation.
Moreover, on June 11, US Internal Security Minister Christie sleep began to review all $ 100,000 FEMA grants. The current and former FEMA employees said this may slow the vast billions of grants to crawl.
Fema did not answer the ProPublica questions about the deadline for the lost application or the impact of financing and delay discounts, instead, she responded with a statement by the Minister of Minister of National Security Tricia McLAGHLIN that Noem focuses on unifying accountability on Fema spending by “disposal of waste, fraud, and working to ensure only singing operations that help Americans already in Time of need. “
The memo, which announces the change on the day when President Donald Trump said he wanted to start dismantling Fema at the end of the hurricane season this fall.
All this left the states – some of which depend on the federal government of the vast majority of emergency management financing – in a difficult situation. While Trump sharply criticized the performance of FEMA that provides aid after a disaster strike, he has almost said about the future of grant programs.
“It is a great concern,” said Lin Bod, head of the National Emergency Administration and Director of the Homeland Security Office, which includes the Emergency Administration. The government agency gets more than 90 % of its operating budget from federal funds, especially the FEMA grant. She said, “Unspectionment makes it very difficult.”
In North Carolina, a country with a modern natural disaster, federal scholarships constitute 82 % of the Budget of the Emergency Management Agency. A spokesman for the agency said that the emergency department leaders in North Carolina are pressuring the state legislators to provide it with “funding that will maintain the agency and its basic functions” and reduced its dependence on federal grant financing.
Forced weaning of the Federal dollar can have a major impact in North Carolina and other states that transmit a lot of grants to the province and local agencies. Many rural provinces have modest tax bases and are already thin.
In May, PROPUBLICA was published Horror details story The influence of Hilin on one of those provinces, Yansi. House for 19,000 people, he suffered from the largest loss of the individual in life and damage to property in the storm. Jeff Hug, the emergency director, was working with a part -time employee only and said that for years he was asking the boycott committee more help. It was not even after the storm, the boycott commissioner agreed to need.
“They have realized how important the job is,” said Huil, who has been retiring since then.
But even large urban provinces depend on grants. This corresponds to the opening of the grant requests, Robert Wake Graham, Deputy Director of the Emergency Department at Charlotte-McClampurg, which serves an area of 1.2 million people and is home to the nuclear power plant. Granting and preparing FEMA helps to pay the agency’s costs to keep society safe in the face of a nuclear catastrophe.
However, Graham said that he resorted to roaming social media functions and news reports on parts of the clues about grants – and the future Fema itself.
Graham said: “We all must be like, hey, what did you hear? What do you know? What is happening? No one knows.”
Trump is on his second official official in Fema within five months, and the director who coordinates the response of national disasters turned into a message of resignation June 11. I left or separatedAlong with an unknown block of its full -time workers.
“Every emergency manager I know screams,” You are putting the regime. “Graham said:” We were all calling for reform. “But it is very much, very fast.
Vulnerable to political transformations
Soon after President Jimmy Carta was established in 1979 to focus on federal disaster management, the agency began to get rid of grants to help societies struggle with widespread destruction. Over the years, its granting swollen, especially after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, when new huge programs helped to harden security against this worrying new threat.
Today, the Fema works almost dozens Preparing programs. Among other things, the money works as a financial island to ensure that the countries and provinces suffering from taxes and positions that suffer from taxes work to read and respond to terrorist communities and natural disasters.
Former FEMA leaders said the countries were very satisfied with sitting and allowing federal studies to pay. As a result, they said that the grants created a system of dependency that leaves emergency managers vulnerable to constantly changing national priorities, and at the present time, a president began to dismantle the agency.
Throughout the country, the proportion of government emergency management budgets paid by federal financing ranges from zero to 99.4 %, 2024 Report of the National Emergency Management Association He says. A spokesman for the provision of each case was refused separately, so ProPublica photographed a few of them.
Wyoming tops 90 %. Texas get about three quarters of its operating budget from federal financing. Virginia gets about 70 %. South Carolina comes in about 61 % federal financing for daily operations.
Bodh said that most government emergency managers agree that their countries need to rely less on the federal government on their financing, “but there must be some path or schedule where we can all work towards the goal.”
She added that some countries will need more than a decade to prepare for such a seismic transformation, especially that such a budget every year. The Legislative Council in the middle of the budget negotiations for the fiscal year 2027-28.
If the emergency managers are scrambling instead, “the effects that we will see on the line are the lack of willingness, the lack of coordination, training and partnerships that are built.” “We will not be able to respond either.”
There is a major reason that has become dependent on granting FEMA despite the danger of national political turmoil is that the legislative bodies of the state and local elected leaders have not always given priority to payment against emergency management themselves despite their decisive role. With GEMA, they did not have to do so.
W. Craig Fujet has witnessed reluctance to impose a FEMA grant from all levels of government. He held the position of Fema director during the Obama era, and before that, as head of the Emergency Management Department in Florida under the archives at the time. Jeep Bush and Charlie Christ.
“My experience tells me that the local population will not climb them unless they deal with a disaster,” said Fujet.
He said that most of the preparation of the readiness does not require any congruence from government governments or local governments, it comes out any motivation for them to do this – especially with other urgent needs that compete for those dollars.
“The real question is how much important is this and should be the responsibility for financing local governments?” Fujat said. “Local governments nor the states were very forward in financing beyond the minimum to suit federal dollars.”
A small town in North Carolina
After Hurricane Helen, the Emergency Management Agency in North Carolina Assign This clearly criticized “excessive dependence on the state on federal scholarships to finance basic processes.” Only about 16.5 % of the government agency budget comes from state allocations.
The report indicated that this accreditation has led to insufficient investment by the state in its employees in the emergency and infrastructure management. A lack of employees in the agency “led to the state’s response to Hurricane Helini.” Among other things, the lack of employees impeded the ability of the state’s emergency response team to maintain a 24 -hour process that was supposed to support local and boycott officials who were mortgaging from the huge storm.
North Carolina MP Mark Pliss, co -chair of the Republicans of the Emergency Management and Disaster Recovery Committee in the House of Representatives, said that conservative spending in the state and $ 3.6 billion in reserves “gave us the ability to finance ourselves in order to prepare” if Fema suddenly explodes.
But Democratic Representative Robert Reefis, the leader of the minority in the House of Representatives, is concerned that any financial flexibility will dry out if the potential and possible tax cuts in the coming years create a shortage of budget, such as Some have predicted.
Most of them are in Washington’s rural province, along the coast of northern Carolina, Lance Swingell is the individual emergency management office. Its boycott, its home, lacks 11,000 people, to a large tax base.
Like other emergency managers all over the state, Swingel said it supports cutting strip and waste in FEMA, but “grant financing is only major financing to maintain lights.”
One of the grants in the FEMA program, which blew up after the deadline for opening requests, pays half of his salary. This grant can fund basic local operations such as employment, training and equipment. It is important for local emergency management offices: Nearly 82 % of provinces throughout the country reports.
This scholarship in particular under the Biden administration has already been reduced by what North Carolina gets – and therefore what is being transferred in the governmental food chain to people like Swingl. North Carolina was allocated $ 8.5 million in the fiscal year 2024, a decrease of $ 10.6 million two years ago.
Looking at the future, Swingl is still awaiting the opening of requests while wondering whether the Fema will cut the grants significantly-and if so, if his boycott may find money to continue paying his full-time salary.
Molly Simon The research contributed.