<\/p>\n
California lawmakers sent a letter Friday to FEMA seeking an explanation for why it appears to be withholding more than $1.6 billion.<\/p>\n
Saul Loeb\/AFP\/TNS<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014 A near-complete freeze on federal funding to help California communities recovering from natural disasters better prepare for future hazards has raised alarms among state officials.<\/p>\n
Nearly two dozen Democratic members of California\u2019s congressional delegation sent a letter Friday<\/a> to the Federal Emergency Management Agency seeking an explanation for why the Trump administration appears to be withholding more than $1.6 billion intended for those communities to rebuild more resiliently and reduce their liabilities.<\/p>\n \u201cWe trust that you agree that FEMA should not put Americans\u2019 lives and livelihoods at unnecessary risk,\u201d the members, led by Rep. Sam Liccardo, D-San Jose, wrote. \u201cAccordingly, we request your support in ensuring that our constituents receive the same full, fair, and prompt consideration of their FEMA awards requests as Americans in every other state.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The agency did not immediately confirm that it had received the letter or respond to questions about why it is not providing grants to California and whether that is politically motivated.<\/p>\n FEMA\u2019s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program provides money to state and local governments following a presidential disaster declaration for projects meant to minimize future losses, such as building floodwalls, elevating buildings, making homes more fire-resistant and upgrading utilities.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n But disbursements slowed to a crawl under former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, with FEMA awarding an average of only $3 million monthly during the second half of 2025, the Washington Post reported last month<\/a>. About 1,000 grants are currently held up.<\/p>\n Even after the agency changed course earlier this year under legal and political pressure, almost no money has flowed to California, according to the Post. An analysis by the newspaper found that, between last July and early May, California received only $830,000 in grants, compared with $239 million for Florida, $131 million for Texas and $117 million for Louisiana.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The California Governor\u2019s Office of Emergency Services, which manages the state\u2019s grant applications, said it is waiting on $1.68 billion, including $744 million alone for projects related to last January\u2019s devastating fires in Los Angeles County and other funding to clear vegetation in rural Northern California.<\/p>\n The Post reported that Trump administration officials did not want to give additional grants to states they felt were not spending the money fast enough. They singled out California in particular in an email last June describing a \u201cGov wide CA grant termination effort.\u201d<\/p>\n The White House has previously denied that President Donald Trump is politicizing disaster relief. But California has struggled to secure federal assistance<\/a> during his second term\u00a0\u2014 most significantly, a request for tens of billions in supplemental aid for the Los Angeles fire recovery has languished for more than a year<\/a>. In January, Trump demanded an audit of the money California has already received.<\/p>\n \u201cWe remain concerned that the current administration may have withheld HMGP awards from certain states for reasons unrelated to their eligibility,\u201d the 23 California House members, including San Francisco\u2019s Rep. Nancy Pelosi, wrote in their letter Friday.<\/p>\n They were joined by three Democratic members of the congressional delegation from Colorado, which the Post reported has received no hazard mitigation grants since last July.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cWe know of no eligibility or statutory factors that justify California and Colorado\u2014together home to roughly one in eight Americans\u2014receiving less than one-tenth of one percent of HMGP awards this year,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n Notably, no Republicans joined them.<\/p>\n Reps. Tom Clintock of Modesto and Kevin Kiley of Rocklin (Placer County), who dropped his party affiliation in March, both represent communities with projects whose hazard mitigation grants have stalled. Neither of their offices responded immediately to questions about whether they are concerned about delays to the program or if they were asked to sign on to the letter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California lawmakers sent a letter Friday to FEMA seeking an explanation for why it appears to be withholding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,204,13],"class_list":["post-348591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-election","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}