However, states are now working to fund their basic emergency management needs, including planning and preparing for future activities and recovering from past disasters during the off-season. This is largely thanks to frozen FEMA funding, which has been captured by the office of wider Management and Budget Directives starting in late January, directing agencies to temporarily suspend federal aid to states and review the funding to ensure it is “aligned with the president’s policies and requirements.” Twenty-two democracies filed a motion against federal law enforcement in February, accusing the government of scrutiny of funds that provided important FEMA funding for disaster and state-level emergency affairs managers.
A representative for the Oregon Emergency Management Program told WIRED that FEMA is still retaining millions of dollars in funding, including emergency management performance grants the state uses to pay local emergency managers to local emergency managers. Oregon usually pays employees’ salaries to the county at the end of each quarter, but if funds continue to be frozen, the deputies said, “We will not be able to repay local jurisdictions.”
Under the new agency policy, local partnerships are also breaking down. Last summer, Middletown, New York, was selected as part of the FEMA Building Resilient Infrastructure and Community (BRIC) program. FEMA representatives came to Middletown to circulate floodplain, fragile wells and flood-affected bridges. Town representatives begin meeting regularly with FEMA to discuss grant opportunities and share expertise.
In mid-February, a few minutes after meeting with town representatives at 9 a.m., Middletown’s FEMA contact sent an email, canceled the phone and shared that the BRICS Plan was suspended. When town council member Robin Williams began looking for other grants to replace federal funds, she said she removed FEMA from the agency’s website just days after the call was cancelled, designating Middletown as a specific disaster area at risk. FEMA has never contacted Middletown groups. Williams learned that the BRICS Plan ended earlier this month from an article about environmental news website Grist.
“They didn’t say, ‘Hey, sorry, the plan is actually over.’ “They didn’t say anything. ”
Internal FEMA communication memorandum issued in early March indicates that activities from webinars to meetings to external meetings are not related to the current disaster and authorization forms are now required to be submitted to obtain approval before employees can attend or attend work.
“I’ve submitted a lot of stuff and I’ve been shot down every time,” one employee said. “The fact is that floods, tornados and fire seasons are actually here. Now we should sit down and wait for these horrible things to happen before we can pick up the phone and talk to our partners.”
A FEMA spokesman described the plan in a press release announcing the cancellation of BRICS cancellations – designed to help vulnerable communities prepare for future storms, floods and hurricanes, “another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program.”
