When disaster strikes, Americans expect the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to swoop in and make everything right. But behind the scenes, the reality is far more complicated. In recent days, the challenges and complexity of FEMA’s disaster relief programs have been highlighted repeatedly by President Trump. These are not new revelations.
Over the years, numerous FEMA senior officials have proposed strategies including states taking more responsibility for disaster relief with their own funds and limiting FEMA’s role to catastrophic disasters by dispersing block grants using triggers like you might find in a parametric insurance policy. Reducing complexity has been on the mind of FEMA for decades. They have been making progress to reduce the burdens of existing relief programs which are heavily structured around demonstrating proof of damage and expenses.
As experienced local emergency managers, we know first hand the frustrations of getting our communities disaster relief dollars from FEMA. But we also know that while the process is broken, it’s not FEMA’s fault. The agency is constrained with numerous laws and federal regulations intended to curb fraud, waste, and abuse. Unfortunately, the many restraints put in place by the Office of Management and Budget and the guardrails enacted by the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act often end up serving as the mechanisms of waste and abuse.
Simplifying disaster relief and removing it from FEMA’s purview can allow the agency to become a more nimble response organization. With full authority and a direct reporting relationship to the White House, a revitalized FEMA should focus on preparing for and stabilizing crises by coordinating federal resources and interfacing with the already successful mutual aid compact between all states. The Emergency Management Assistance Compact has been leveraged over 500 times since 1993 to enable Governors to support each other in times of need with staffing and resources. FEMA’s goal should be to swiftly transition long-term recovery to state, local, tribal, and territorial authorities, rather than remaining entangled in disasters for decades. Serving as “America’s disaster checkbook” is not the best use for FEMA’s expertise, especially when considering the successes seen in the Department of Treasury’s execution of flexible relief funding during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dispersing federal relief dollars is only one of a diverse and sometimes puzzling set of activities that FEMA is responsible for. When created in 1979 by President Carter’s Administration, FEMA combined nearly 100 different disaster-related programs into one. Today, the agency’s activities range from providing funding to community food pantries as part of the Emergency Food and Shelter Program to a secretive classified mission to ensure “enduring constitutional government.” When placed under the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, FEMA’s already loosely-coupled missions became entangled with many unrelated activities ranging from immigration policy to protecting the President.
When the National Governors Association (NGA) created the blueprint for this new approach of organizing government disaster programs in their 1977–1978 Emergency Preparedness Project, the optimal emergency management agency was recommended to be “very small as it coordinates existing functions and services” Additionally, when considering how the local, state, and federal government would divide up responsibilities in this new system, NGA noted “emergency activity should be managed at the lowest level possible.” The consolidation of FEMA’s diverse activities has resulted in a scattered agency where reducing the nation’s disaster risk remains overshadowed by the demands of disaster response and recovery.
Rather than eliminating FEMA, its components should be unbundled and placed within the federal agencies working in these spaces every day. Risk reduction activities—focused on prevention and mitigation—should be reassigned to agencies where there are logical synergies. Take for instance FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), with the primary mission to “reduce federal expenditure on disaster assistance after floods.” It’s unclear what benefits were achieved by moving the NFIP from its original home in the Department of Housing and Urban Development to FEMA, where it now sits alongside programs focused on terrorism preparedness. Important pre-disaster activities like the NFIP should be elevated and integrated with other federal initiatives to ensure they get the attention they deserve.
Unbundling FEMA doesn’t work unless we address one of the most significant issues plaguing the disaster space—the insufficient capacity of state, local, tribal, and territorial governments to handle crises that should be below the threshold for federal involvement. Building capacity at these levels is essential to ensuring that communities can respond and recover effectively without excessive federal intervention. During our time as local emergency managers, we’ve frequently been surprised by the low threshold that ends up triggering federal funding to reimburse our emergency response activities like setting up community shelters or roadblocks for flooded roads.
Most importantly, jurisdictions must appropriately fund and strengthen their own emergency management offices to ensure they are equipped and resourced as the “chief problem solvers” of their communities. It would be absurd to discover that the state police agency or local fire department where you live is fully funded by federal subsidies. However, this is often the case with emergency management agencies, relying heavily on grants administered by FEMA to fund staff, training, and equipment. Many local jurisdictions do not even have a dedicated emergency manager to prepare for and coordinate their community’s response to a disaster, often relegating the responsibility as a collateral duty for an already busy first responder or volunteer.
Simplifying and streamlining disaster assistance for families and governments after disaster is a welcome step in reforming our national emergency management system. But rather than eliminating a broken FEMA, the Trump Administration and Congress should reinvest many of its programs to departments in the federal family where the constant distraction of polycrisis doesn’t prevent them from getting the attention they deserve. Furthermore, the Administration should continue to beat the drum on the need for state and local jurisdictions to take a larger share of responsibility in dealing with crises and invest in building professional emergency management teams that are familiar with and are representative of the communities they serve. Until these changes are realized, we will continue to see the perpetual finger pointing after each disaster.