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The tumultuous country’s top disaster agency has caused unease among states and local emergency managers, leaving behind major questions about where the multi-billion dollar federal dollars are.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has yet to begin applications for huge grants, including those that many states rely on to pay for basic emergency management operations. Some states pass much of that money to the most rural and low-income counties to make sure they have emergency managers on their pay.
According to the National Emergency Management Association, FEMA was blown away through a statutory deadline in mid-May and began the grant application process. Delays seem to be almost unprecedented.
“There’s no transparency as to why it’s not happening,” said Michael A. Cohen Jr., who served as FEMA chief of staff under former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
FEMA’s grant system is complex and multifaceted, helping communities prepare and respond to everything from terrorist attacks to natural disasters.
In April, the agency suddenly retracted another grant program that it hoped county and local governments would help advance natural hazard risks. The money clawback included hundreds of millions of people already pledged. FEMA also quietly retracted the state’s notice for the state to apply for $600 million in flood mitigation grants.
Additionally, on June 11, the Department of Homeland Security’s Department of Christa Noem began requesting that all FEMA grants be reviewed to exceed $100,000. According to current and former FEMA employees, it could slow down huge billions of grant equipment to crawl.
FEMA did not answer Propublica’s questions about the deadline for losing applications or the impact of reduced funding and delays. Instead, Noem responded in a statement from DHS assistant Tricia McLaughlin that “focuses on bringing accountability to FEMA spending by making waste, fraud, abuse and making efforts to ensure only those grants that will help Americans truly be approved.”
The memo announcing the changes arrived the day after President Donald Trump said he wanted to begin demolition of FEMA at the end of hurricane season this fall.
All of this puts some states in a difficult position, where the majority of emergency management funds depend on the federal government. Trump has been sharply criticising FEMA’s performance for providing assistance after the disaster strikes, but he has said little about the future of the grant program.
“This is a big concern,” said Lyn Budd, president of the National Association for Emergency Management and director of the Wyoming Homeland Security Agency, which houses Emergency Management. State agencies obtain more than 90% of their operating budgets from federal funds, particularly FEMA grants. “Uncertainty becomes very difficult,” she said.
In North Carolina, federal grants account for 82% of the Emergency Management Agency’s budget in states that have been experiencing recent natural disasters. North Carolina emergency management leaders are pushing state legislators to provide “finances that maintain the agency and its core functions” and reduce their reliance on federal grant funding, an agency spokesperson said.
Weaning from federal dollars could have a major impact on North Carolina and other states that pass many of the FEMA grants to counties and local agencies. Many rural counties have modest tax bases and are already thin.
In May, Propublica published a story detailing the horrors of Hurricane Helen’s impact on one of these counties, Yancey. With 19,000 people inhabited, they suffered the greatest loss of life per capita and the damage to stormy property. Emergency Manager Jeff Howell said it was run exclusively with part-time employees and had asked the county board for more help over the years. That was what county commissioners agreed to the necessity after the storm.
“They realized how big of a job it was,” Howell said.
But even large metropolitan counties rely on grants. Holding is related to the opening of a grant application form. Robert Wik Graham, deputy director of Charlotte Mecklenburg Emergency Management, serves 1.2 million communities and is home to the nuclear power plant. Training and Preparting FEMA grants are important for agents to pay to keep their communities safe in the face of a nuclear catastrophe.
However, Graham said he relied on exploring social media posts and news reports for clues about Grant and the future of FEMA itself.
“What have we all heard? What do you know? What is going on? What is going on? What is going on?
Trump is second in five months as FEMA administrator for acting, and the director who coordinates national disaster response has now resigned on June 11th. More than a dozen senior leaders, including the agency’s chief attorney, have been fired or fired along with the unknown mass of full-time workers.
“Every emergency manager I know screams, ‘You’re ruining the system.’ We’ve all been calling for reform,” Graham said. “But it is too much, too fast.
Vulnerable to political change
Shortly after President Jimmy Carter created the FEMA to centralize federal disaster management in 1979, the agency began ousting grants to help the community tackle massive destruction. Over the years, the subsidies swelled, especially when they helped to oppose this surprising new threat and strengthen security.
Today, FEMA operates approximately 12 preparatory grant programs. Above all, this money acts as a financial carrot, avoids spending, and ensures that even tax states and counties will hire emergency managers to help communities prepare and respond to terrorist attacks and natural disasters.
Former FEMA leaders said the state is mostly happy to sit down and make the federal government pay. As a result, the grants have created a dependency system that will leave emergency managers vulnerable to ever-changing national priorities, and at this point the president has set it up for dismantling the institutions.
According to a 2024 National Emergency Management Association report, across the nation, the proportion of state emergency management agencies’ budgets paid by federal funds ranges from zero to 99.4%. Propublica did some canvas as the spokesperson refused to provide a state-by-state collapse.
Wyoming is over 90%. Texas agents earn around three-quarters of their operating budget from federal funds. Virginia wins about 70%. South Carolina provides approximately 61% federal funding for its daily business.
Emergency managers in most states agree that their states need to reduce their dependence on the federal government for their funds.
Some states need more than a decade to prepare for such earthquake changes, especially those budgets every other year. The parliament is in the midst of budget negotiations for 2027-2028.
Please contact us
Propublica continues to report on the aftermath of Hurricane Helen in North Carolina. If you are an emergency manager who wants to talk to us about your needs or share your experience with recovery efforts, please send us an email [email protected].
If emergency managers are scrambling instead, “the effect we’re trying to see on the line is lack of preparation, coordination, training and partnerships being built,” Budd said. “We can’t respond either.”
Despite the risk of national political upheaval, the main reason why states are so dependent on FEMA grants is that despite their important role, the state legislature and local elected leaders do not always prioritize payments for emergency management itself. With FEMA grants, they didn’t have to.
W. Craig Fugate has seen his reluctance to separating FEMA grants from governments at all levels. He served as FEMA administrator under Obama and before that he was head of Florida’s emergency management department under the then GOVS. Jeb Bush and Charlie Christ.
“My experience says I won’t step up unless the locals are dealing with the catastrophe,” Fugate said.
Most reserve grants do not require matching from state or local governments, which deprives them of the motivation to compete, especially for other pressling needs.
“The real problem is how much of this is actually important and should be the responsibility of the local government that provides the funding,” fugate said. “Neither local government nor national government has provided funding beyond the minimum to match federal dollars.”
Small towns in North Carolina
After Hurricane Helen, the North Carolina Emergency Management Department commissioned a report pointing to the state’s “overrelationship on federal grants to fund basic operations.” Only about 16.5% of state institutional budgets come from the state budget.
The report noted that this trust has led to inadequate investments by states in emergency management staffing and infrastructure. The shortage of staff at the agency “strickenly violated the state’s response to Hurricane Helen.” In particular, the staff shortage has hampered the ability of the state emergency response team to maintain a 24-hour operation, which is supposed to help local and county officials overwhelmed by the massive storm.
North Carolina Rep. Mark Press, Republican co-chair of the House Emergency Management and Disaster Recovery Committee, said the state’s conservative spending and $3.6 billion in reserve “gives the ability to fund myself for preparation.”
But Democrat Robert Reeves, a minority leader, worried that if planned, financial flexibility would drain and potential tax cuts over the next few years could lead to a lack of forecasts.
In rural Washington County, mainly along the Hurricane-prone coast of North Carolina, Lance Swindell is the one-person emergency management office. His county, which is home to 11,000 people, does not have a large tax base.
Helen’s Unprecedented Warning
Like other emergency managers across the state, Swindell said he supports FEMA’s deficits and waste reductions, but said “financing is a major source of funding solely to maintain lighting.”
One of the FEMA program’s grants, past the deadline to open the application, pays half of his salary. The grants can fund core local businesses such as staffing, training and equipment. It is important for your local emergency management office. Almost 82% of counties across the country report using it.
This particular grant cut under the Biden administration has already reduced what North Carolina has acquired. North Carolina was allocated $8.5 million in 2024, down from $10.6 million two years ago.
Looking ahead, Swindell is still waiting for applications to open while he wonders whether FEMA will cut grants more dramatically. If so, whether his county can find the money to continue his full-time salary.
Mollie Simon contributed to the research.
