Written by Jennifer Berry Hawes
There are serious concerns about the locations of the billions of federal cash that state and local emergency managers get as a result of the turmoil at the country’s leading catastrophe agency.
Applications for a vast array of grants, including ones that many states depend on to fund essential emergency management activities, have still not been made available by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. To make sure they have an emergency manager on staff, several states transfer a large portion of that funding to their poorest, most rural counties.
According to the National Emergency Management Association, FEMA has blown beyond the statutory deadline of mid-May to begin the awards application process, but there has been no explanation or indication of what this might mean. There doesn’t seem to be much precedent for the delay.
Michael A. Coen Jr., the former chief of staff of FEMA under Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, stated that there is no transparency regarding the reasons why it isn’t occurring.
The intricate and diverse FEMA grant program assists communities in anticipating and responding to a wide range of events, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
A different grant program that county and local governments were hoping would help them lower the risks of natural hazards in the future was abruptly canceled by the agency in April. The money that was recouped includes hundreds of millions that had previously been committed. A notification inviting states to apply for $600 million in flood prevention funding was also abruptly withdrawn by FEMA. (See: Jonathan Lord, Director of Flagler Emergency Management, Alerts of Another Catastrophe: FEMA Funds Will Disappear.)
Additionally, Secretary Kristi Noem of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security started mandating that she examine any FEMA awards above $100,000 on June 11. According to current and former FEMA officials, that could bring the agency’s massive multibillion-dollar funding apparatus to a complete halt.
ProPublica’s inquiries concerning the application deadline being missed and the effects of funding cuts and delays were not addressed by FEMA. Instead, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin responded that Noem is committed to holding FEMA accountable for its spending by identifying waste, fraud, and abuse and making sure that only grants that truly assist Americans in need are approved.
The day after President Donald Trump declared his intention to start dismantling FEMA after the end of this fall’s hurricane season, the memo notifying the move was sent.
States that depend on the federal government for the majority of their emergency management financing are now in a challenging situation as a result of all of this. Trump has largely remained silent about the future of FEMA’s grant programs, despite harshly criticizing the agency’s effectiveness in providing relief following catastrophes.
According to Lynn Budd, director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security, which houses emergency management, and president of the National Emergency Management Association, it’s a major worry. Over 90% of the state agency’s operating budget comes from federal funding, including grants from FEMA. It’s really challenging because of the uncertainty, she remarked.
Eighty-two percent of the emergency management agency’s budget in North Carolina, a state recently struck by a natural disaster, comes from federal subsidies. According to an agency spokesman, executives of North Carolina Emergency Management are urging state legislators to give the organization money that will allow it to continue its essential operations and lessen its dependency on federal grant funding.
North Carolina and the other states that transfer a large portion of their FEMA monies to county and local agencies may be disproportionately affected by a forced weaning off of federal funds. Many rural counties are already overburdened and have small tax bases.
ProPublica released an article in May that described the atrocities caused by Hurricane Helene in Yancey, one of the counties. With 19,000 residents, it experienced the storm’s highest per capita death toll and property damage. Its emergency manager, Jeff Howell, stated that he had been requesting further assistance from the county commission for years because he was only using a part-time staff. County commissioners didn’t acknowledge the necessity until after the disaster.
The now-retired Howell remarked, “They realized how big a job it is.”
However, even counties in major cities depend on the grants. Robert Wike Graham, the deputy director of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Emergency Management, which oversees a region with 1.2 million residents and a nuclear power plant, is the reason for the delay in the grant application opening. The community’s safety in the event of a nuclear disaster depends on the training and planning that FEMA grants assist the agency in funding.
However, Graham stated that he has turned to searching news articles and social media posts for tidbits of information regarding the funding and FEMA’s future.
Everybody has to say, “Hey, have you heard anything?” What are you aware of? What’s happening? “Nobody knows,” answered Graham.
On June 11, the director who oversees the nation’s disaster response submitted his letter of resignation, making Trump the second acting administrator of the agency in five months. Along with an undetermined number of the agency’s full-time employees, over a dozen senior officers, including the general counsel, have quit or been let go.
I can hear every emergency manager I know yelling, “You’re messing up the system.” Graham stated that we have all been advocating for reform. However, it’s too much, too quickly.
Vulnerable to Political Shifts
FEMA started awarding grants to areas dealing with extensive damage shortly after President Jimmy Carter established the agency in 1979 to consolidate federal disaster management. Its awards have increased dramatically over the years, particularly in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when massive new initiatives assisted states in strengthening security against this frightening new threat.
There are now over a dozen preparedness grant programs run by FEMA. The funding, among other things, acts as a financial carrot to guarantee that even states and counties with limited resources and a tight budget hire emergency managers to assist communities in anticipating and responding to natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
According to former FEMA commanders, states have mostly been happy to wait for the federal government to make the payment. They claimed that as a result, the grants have established a system of reliance that makes emergency managers susceptible to changing national goals and, currently, a president who is determined to dismantle the agency.
According to a 2024 National Emergency Management Association report, the proportion of state emergency management agencies’ budgets that are funded by federal funds varies from zero to 99.4% nationwide. ProPublica canvassed several states after a representative refused to provide a state-by-state breakdown.
Wyoming surpasses 90%. Approximately three-quarters of the Texas agency’s operating budget comes from federal grants. Virginia receives about 70%. About 61% of South Carolina’s daily activities are funded by the federal government.
“There needs to be some glide path or timeline where we can all work toward the goal,” Budd said, adding that the majority of state emergency managers concur that their states need to rely less on federal funding.
She warned that other states, particularly Wyoming, which budgets every other year, might require up to ten years to get ready for such a drastic change. Its legislature is now negotiating the fiscal year 2027–2028 budget.
According to Budd, if emergency managers are rushing instead, the results will be a lack of coordination, training, and partnerships being formed, as well as a lack of preparedness. We won’t be able to react as effectively.
A key reason states have become so dependent on FEMA grants despite the risk of national political upheaval is that state legislatures and local elected leaders haven t always prioritized paying for emergency management themselves despite its critical role. They haven’t had to thanks to FEMA’s handouts.
W. Craig Fugate has seen reluctance to wean off FEMA grants from all levels of government. He served as FEMA administrator under Obama and, before that, as head of Florida s emergency management division under then-Govs. Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist.
My experience tells me locals will not step up unless they are dealing with a catastrophe, Fugate said.
Because most of the preparedness grants require no match from state or local governments, he said, it strips away any motivation for them to do so especially with other pressing needs vying for those dollars.
The real question is how much of this is actually critical and should be the responsibility of local governments to fund? Fugate said. Neither local governments nor states have been very forward in funding beyond the minimums to match federal dollars.
Small-Town North Carolina
After Hurricane Helene, North Carolina s Emergency Management agencycommissioned a reportthat pointedly criticized the state s over-reliance on federal grants to fund basic operations. Only about 16.5% of the state agency s budget comes from state appropriations.
The report noted that this reliance had led to an inadequate investment by the state in its emergency management staffing and infrastructure. A staff shortage at the agency severely compromised the state s response to Hurricane Helene. Among other things, a lack of staff hampered the State Emergency Response Team s ability to maintain a 24-hour operation that was supposed to support local and county officials who were overwhelmed by the massive storm.
North Carolina state Rep. Mark Pless, the Republican co-chair of the House Emergency Management and Disaster Recovery Committee, said the state s conservative spending and $3.6 billion in reserves have afforded us the ability to fund ourselves for preparedness if FEMA suddenly yanks its grants.
But Democratic Rep. Robert Reives, the House minority leader, worried that any financial flexibility would dry up if planned and potential tax cuts in the years ahead create a budget shortfall, assome have predicted.
In mostly rural Washington County, along North Carolina s hurricane-prone coast, Lance Swindell is a one-man emergency management office. His county, home to 11,000 people, lacks a big tax base.
Like other emergency managers across the state, Swindell said he supports cutting FEMA red tape and waste, but grant funding is a major funding source just to keep the lights on.
One of the grants in the FEMA program that blew past its deadline for opening applications pays half of his salary. That grant can fund core local operations such as staffing, training and equipment. It is critical to local emergency management offices: Almost 82% of counties across the country report tapping into it.
Cuts to this particular grant under the Biden administration already reduced what North Carolina gets and therefore what gets passed down the governmental food chain to people like Swindell. North Carolina was allocated $8.5 million in fiscal year 2024, down from $10.6 million two years earlier.
Looking ahead, Swindell is still waiting for the applications to open while wondering if FEMA will more drastically slash the grants and, if so, whether his county could find the money to continue paying his full-time salary.
Mollie Simoncontributed research.
