Trump's plan to begin ‘phasing out' FEMA after hurricane season burdens states, experts warn

Winnipeg Free Press

a day ago

SAN DIEGO (AP) — President Donald Trump's plan to begin 'phasing out' the federal agency that responds to disasters after the 2025 hurricane season is likely to put more responsibilities on states to provide services following increasingly frequent and expensive climate disasters, experts said.
'We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level,' Trump said Tuesday in an Oval Office appearance with administration officials about preparations for summer wildfires.
Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have repeatedly signaled their desire to overhaul, if not completely eliminate, the 46-year-old Federal Emergency Management Agency. While there has been bipartisan support for reforming the agency, experts say dismantling it completely would leave gaps in crucial services and funding.
'It just causes more concern on how states should be planning for the future if the federal government's not going to be there for them,' said Michael Coen, FEMA chief of staff during the Obama and Biden administrations.
Disaster response is already locally led and state-managed, but FEMA supports by coordinating resources from federal agencies, providing direct assistance programs for households and moving money to states for repairing public infrastructure.
Trump said Tuesday he wants to 'give out less money,' and to 'give it out directly,' sidestepping FEMA programs. He said he did not know who would distribute the funds, saying they could come 'from the president's office' or DHS.
'I was left with the impression that he doesn't really understand the scale of what FEMA manages on a yearly basis with a budget of over $30 billion,' said Coen.
Dismantling FEMA, or even changing how much of the costs it shares with states in the event of a major disaster declaration, would require action from Congress, including amending the 1988 Stafford Act, which outlines FEMA's roles and responsibilities and the cost share between the feds and the states.
Declaring fewer major disasters or giving less federal support could put an untenable financial burden on states, said Sara McTarnaghan, principal research associate at the Urban Institute.
'Very few of them would have had enough funds set aside to anticipate the federal government stepping back from its historic role in disaster recovery for major events,' McTarnaghan said.
A recent Urban Institute analysis found that between 2008-2024, quadrupling the economic threshold of when major disasters are declared would have shifted $41 billion in public assistance costs alone to state and local governments.
'I think the trade off for states and communities is going to be, do we accept a less full recovery or do states draw on other resources to meet these goals and needs, perhaps at the cost of investments in other kinds of social programs or functions of the state,' said McTarnaghan.
Not all states will be able to generate much more revenue, she added.
'The confluence of states that have really high disaster exposure and states that have relatively limited fiscal capacity are overlapping in many ways,' she said. 'That's the case for a lot of states along the Gulf Coast that we're concerned about going into hurricane season but also the case for some Midwestern states that face issues with severe convective storms.'
Trump dismissed the idea that states can't handle the bulk of disasters on their own.
'The governor should be able to handle it and frankly if they can't handle the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn't be governor,' he said.
He suggested that some of the gaps could be filled by more collaboration among states. Noem said FEMA is building communication and mutual aid agreements among states 'to respond to each other so that they can stand on their own two feet.'
A national mutual-aid structure called the Emergency Management Assistance Compact already exists, but its operations are typically reimbursed by the federal government, said Coen. 'There's already robust communication between states. The confusion is what they can expect from the federal government.'
Regarding the current hurricane season, which began June 1, Noem said FEMA 'stands prepared.' But there have already been changes to how the agency operates. It suspended its door-to-door canvassing program that helped enroll survivors for assistance. More than 2,000 FEMA staff, around one-third of the full-time workforce, have left or been fired since January.
After severe weather this spring, some states waited as long as eight weeks for their disaster declaration requests, and several requests are still pending. Trump has not approved any requests for hazard mitigation assistance since February, a typical add-on to individual and public assistance that helps states build back in more resilient ways.
A FEMA review council established by Trump and co-chaired by Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will submit suggestions for reforms in the next few months, according to Noem.
In its first meeting in May, Noem told the group of governors, emergency managers, and other officials primarily from Republican states that Trump is seeking drastic change.
'I don't want you to go into this thinking we're going to make a little tweak here,' she said. 'No, FEMA should no longer exist as it is.'
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