The Trump administration advisory body set up to review the Federal Emergency Management Agency is diving deeper into FEMA’s core responsibilities to see what could be led by states or other entities.
The FEMA Review Council held its second meeting Wednesday in Louisiana. The meeting took place against a backdrop of devastating flooding in Texas and New Mexico, where personnel from FEMA and other agencies are currently aiding in the response efforts. The ongoing disaster has underscored the challenges with President Donald Trump’s desire to eliminate FEMA.
Still, at the outset of the council meeting, Homeland Security Secretary Noem heavily criticized FEMA for perceived past failures, while saying state and local governments should lead on emergency management.
“It has been slow to respond at the federal level,” Noem said. “It’s even been slower to get the resources to Americans in crisis, and that is why this entire agency needs to be eliminated as it exists today and remade into a responsive agency.”
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Noem also defended the federal response to the Texas floods. Some lawmakers have raised concerns that the Trump administration’s deep cuts to FEMA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have hampered the preparedness and response to the disaster.
“We owe it to all the American people to deliver the most efficient and the most effective disaster response,” Noem said. “In fact, some of how we’ve responded to Texas is exactly how President Trump imagined that this agency would operate immediately, making decisions, getting them resources and dollars that they need so that they can conduct the response that they need to do on the ground.”
Since its first meeting in May, the council has established several subcommittees.
The “Disaster Response and Recovery Assessment Subcommittee” is being led by Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida division of emergency management, and Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas division of emergency management.
Kidd did not attend the meeting due to the ongoing response to floods in Texas.
Guthrie detailed how the subcommittee is focused on providing recommendations that FEMA could enact “with the stroke of a pen,” as well as a those that would require statutory changes to Emergency Management and Assistance statute under Title 44 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
Guthrie said the subcommittee is specifically examining how FEMA could provide more assurance to states about being reimbursed for their disaster response activities.
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“We think we have some ways that we will be recommending to the acting administrator, as well as potentially 44 CFR revisions, to help get that done, so that governors know that when they do send help, they’re not ultimately going to be given a bill and that comes out of local taxpayer dollars versus coming from the federal government,” Guthrie said.
His subcommittee is also examining “things that have traditionally been a federal role that may be able to be taken over by another partner or nontraditional partner.”
“We’ve already had associations starting to come forward saying, ‘You know what, with just a tad bit more money, we could actually take on that role and do that,’” Guthrie said.
He pointed to the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, or the EMAC, an interstate mutual aid agreement that allows states to share resources during natural disasters.
The EMAC is overseen by the National Emergency Management Association. But NEMA will typically facilitate requests for federal coordination of EMAC activities through the National Response Coordination Center at FEMA headquarters or at a FEMA Regional Response Coordination Center.
Guthrie said NEMA, however, “wants to play a more active role” in the EMAC.
“Perhaps it can relieve some personnel at the [National Operations Center] or the RCCs and some other things, that may be able to help us downsize traditional federal government and maybe put that back into a better, highly functioning space,” Guthrie said.
Meanwhile, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is leading a “Federal-State Coordination Subcommittee” for the council. He said the subcommittee is building a “a spider chart of the comprehensive role of various government agencies, beyond FEMA, in federal support, so that we can understand the full nature of the federal government’s involvement.”
He said the subcommittee has also charted 32 distinct disaster response “capabilities” that are either led by FEMA or state and local governments.
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“We will be able to chart a very clear delineation of the way things work today, the deep challenges with the way things work today, and then be able to provide recommendations on how we shift responsibility to the states, and therefore move FEMA from being a supplant role into a support role,” Youngkin said.
He also said the coordination subcommittee is also mapping out the federal financial assistance that FEMA and other agencies provide to state and local governments during and after disasters.
“How do we move forward with pace in order to meet our citizens needs when we don’t really even know how much the resources are going to be, to provide the answers to the basic needs of housing and food and recovery?” Youngkin said.
Meanwhile, a “Final Report Subcommittee” has been established to draft the report and recommendations that the committee will send to President Donald Trump. The final report is due to the White House by Nov. 16.
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