Climate Advocates, States Have Ideas

In his quest to make the U.S. government more efficient and agile, President Trump may eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency and channel federal disaster relief to and through individual states.

Many stakeholders agree with President Trump that disaster relief is well, a disaster.

But the chief of the National Emergency Management Association, which oversees state emergency response across the entire country, told Forbes that factoring out FEMA is not the answer.

Instead, the administration could help weave together federal emergency management efforts with those of the states, streamline federal assistance paperwork and simply ask Congress to fund FEMA with enough money each year to respond to increasing climate-related events, Lynn Budd, NEMA’s president and director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management said.

Without FEMA, “I think it’s a huge lift for most states,” to respond to disasters, she said.

FEMA sets up disaster recovery centers. “They bring all the resources, the insurance folks, the non-governmental organizations together to try to help people through the process,” Budd said.

Through congressional appropriation, FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security provide NEMA more than $2.2 million annually to run its Emergency Management Assistance Compact, a web-based clearinghouse and marketplace that organizes states’ resources during disasters. States offer assistance such as equipment or personnel and name a price.

Recently, 30 states were able to mobilize resources to help California manage the recent wildfires.

Budd wants to weave FEMA and other agencies that help communities rebuild after disasters–the Agriculture Department, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Forest Service–into the system to create transparency and efficiency.

“The ultimate goal is how do we make a better experience for the survivor. They just had their worst day ever. How can we make that easier?” she said.

“You have all sorts of federal agencies that play their part to help. But these people, while they’re trying to find a place to live and get enough clothes, they have to fill out the same information, over and over and over again,” Budd said.

“If we can get the federal agencies to work together on a universal application, that takes one burden off of them to make sure they only have to share that information with the federal government once.”

NEMA unsuccessfully lobbied Congress last year to include three bills in the December omnibus package that would clarify and simplify state and local emergency management accounting requirements, streamline and expedite assistance to survivors, and create a universal disaster application process for survivors.

“If we could reduce the complexity of the process, that would certainly help,” Budd said.

FEMA doesn’t just provide resources during disasters, she said.

Most states are “highly dependent” on FEMA’s Emergency Management Preparedness Grant, which matches 50% of a state’s investment in emergency management activities for planning and training with other state emergency teams.

“We don’t want to be exchanging business cards when we’re standing there putting out the fire,” Budd said. “We want to know each other ahead of time. We want to know how to work together. That part of the work in emergency management and in FEMA is so so important.”

The Autopsy Begins

President Trump floated the idea to eliminate FEMA on Jan. 24 during a disaster relief press conference in Asheville, N.C., a city ravaged and still reeling from Hurricane Helene, which struck last fall. At issue is how long it takes for FEMA to respond to disasters, rehabilitate victims and rebuild communities.

In his Executive Order that day, President Trump called for a full review of FEMA in hopes of improving “efficacy, priorities and competence.”

The order directed secretaries Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth of Homeland Security and Defense respectively, to develop and lead a 20-member FEMA Council that will autopsy FEMA’s disaster response over the past four years. The Council will conduct a public meeting by the end of April and report back to the President within six months of that first public meeting.

An Act of Congress

To eliminate FEMA completely, Congress would have to pass legislation. With Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, that’s possible.

Budd and others, like Jillian Blanchard, vice president of Climate Change and Environmental Justice at the California nonprofit, Lawyers for Good Government, have said Congress needs to budget better for FEMA considering increasingly devastating unexpected disasters have become expected.

“We need to fund FEMA more than we’ve ever funded them, not get rid of them,” Blanchard said.

Blanchard advises cities and public agencies on infrastructure, environmental, and energy issues and has worked closely with California Governor Newsom.

During each of the past four years under review by the FEMA Council, the agency has received $17.3 billion through regular congressional appropriations for its Disaster Relief Fund, which covers most, but not all federal disaster assistance.

In 2024, Congress had to supplement that with an additional $2 billion.

In 2023, FEMA needed and received an additional $27 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency that informs the congressional budget process.

Over the past four years, FEMA’s budget has had to be supplemented after each disaster.

Supplemental appropriations bills take time to pass as they traverse the typical legislative gauntlet, which “severely” impacts FEMA’s ability to relieve and recover communities, Budd said.

Congress could allocate more FEMA funding each year through regular appropriations, so the agency doesn’t run out of money as it has.

“When FEMA runs out of money, they begin taking care of immediate needs only,” Budd said.

Meanwhile, payment to other disasters stops, she said. “All of that activity stops. All of the mitigation funding that is there to help the community recover and become more resilient stops. Everything stops except for very emergent situations.”

“It takes years for people to recover” from a disaster, Budd said.

“If you put a stop to [funding], it takes even longer. It’s very disruptive to the process, and it makes it very frustrating for the survivor to get what they need to recover.”

The Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to Congress, said this in a January report that found that because Congress does not provide adequate disaster relief funding up front, there’s always a shortfall in the budget, which delays funding to communities.

Over the 1992–2021 period, Congress appropriated $381 billion for FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund. Nearly three-quarters of that was provided through supplemental appropriations.

Researchers at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said, “Disaster survivors across the country regularly say that FEMA bureaucracy isn’t moving fast enough, and our research shows that the entire federal system can take years to deliver promised aid.”

“The disaster recovery system is cracking under the strain of more frequent and devastating disasters,” as well as a Congress that struggles with passing a budget each year, they said.

If Congress struggles to pass a national budget, that puts disaster relief in peril.

Expect the Unexpected

Natural disasters and their intensity have increased year over year.

The Congressional Budget Office reported that from 1992 to 2021, U.S. presidents have declared 1,7,00 disasters and directed FEMA to distribute $347 billion from its Disaster Relief Fund.

In 1992, FEMA doled out only $2 billion. Now, the government distributes about $12 billion for disaster relief each year.

“Spending has been driven less by the number of disasters declared and more by the size and severity of them,” CBO said.

The aftermath of the 30 hurricanes since 1992 have cost U.S. taxpayers the most money.

In 2005 alone, Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma cost the U.S. taxpayer $64 billion in FEMA disaster relief.

After hurricanes, non-hurricane-related flooding, severe storms, wildfires, tornadoes, and earthquakes account for the most FEMA disaster relief spending.

FEMA and DHS, which distribute the most money to communities post-disaster, have distributed about $114 billion in recovery spending for the biggest disasters since 2015.

About $12 billion of that went to individuals and households.

The CBO said most disaster relief money is doled out within the first three years after a disaster. “Sometimes, spending continues for more than a decade after a disaster occurs, though—and, in some cases, a small portion of the funds are never spent,” according to the CBO.

CBO said most of the money in FEMA’s Disaster Recovery Fund is used in the aftermath of hurricanes.

Through its Disaster Relief Fund, FEMA arranges for food, shelter, clothing, and it provides citizens with financial assistance to rebuild their homes or find housing elsewhere.

“If anything happens to that, and we have these continued climate disasters, which we’re going to, people will be in real trouble,” Blanchard said.

“That’s why we pay taxes, for the federal government to be able to come in when we have a real disaster and give us base level needs,” she said.

Beyond immediate needs, Budd said FEMA funding could go toward mitigation.

“When we’re talking about recovery, we’re talking about repairing things back to where they were pre-disaster. That’s where FEMA goes. Then there’s mitigation funding available to help reduce the consequences of the disaster again,” Budd said.

“If you have an area that floods all the time, let’s figure out how to make sure we can do the best to make that area more resilient and not be so catastrophic,” she said.

It takes about two years to complete the mitigation grant process for funding. “It’s a daunting process, an incredibly detailed process. For local jurisdictions that need help now, two years is not realistic.”

Environmental Justice at Stake

Blanchard said relying on states to manage disaster relief would also exacerbate existing inequality and threaten environmental justice.

Already, states like Alabama are not equitably distributing disaster relief, she said.

“There’s ongoing Title VI claims against the State of Alabama for not equitably distributing the federal funding they’ve been given around storm water and sewage and water services,” Blanchard said.

The Environmental Protection Agency launched an investigation last year into complaints that Alabama’s Department of Environmental Management discriminates against communities of color when it distributes funding for wastewater infrastructure.

“They are historically racist in the way they distribute this funding,” Blanchard said.

“The beauty of FEMA is that they have criteria that complies with Title XIV and the Constitution, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, that they have to distribute this federal funding equitably. There are very clear guardrails around that,” she said.