County governments have high hopes for reforming the way the Federal Emergency Management Agency does business, as it currently requires issuers to wait for reimbursements for disaster recovery funds.
"Tangipahoa Parish is funded by a one cent sales tax that renews every four years," said Robby Miller, Parish President of Tangipahoa Parish, La. "We don't have any bonding capability, so we'd have to have the cash, or our vendors have to hold on and wait."
The comments came during a panel discussion hosted by the National Association of Counties last week.
FEMA response times can affect the credit ratings of municipalities struggling to recover from natural disasters.
NACo, the National League of Cities, the American Public Power Association, the American Society of Civil Engineers and the National Low Income Housing Coalition are all backing a bipartisan bill passed out of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in
The Fixing Emergency Management for American Act institutes a list of reforms including substituting reimbursements with upfront grants to start repairs quicker.
"If we could have that money up front, we then know what we can budget and start rebuilding right away," said Michelle Lincoln, Commissioner for Monroe County, Fla.
Monroe County incudes the Florida Keys which took a big hit from Hurricane Irma.
"Our county sustained about $60 million worth of damages," said Lincoln. "That was in 2017 and we are still waiting to be reimbursed for over $8 million."
Hurricane Ian added another $2 million of damage to the tab.
"When you start adding that all together, if you are a fiscally constrained county, you are now even more in debt and asking for bonds and struggling even more to get your economy going again," said Lincoln.
The House bill provides incentives for mitigation efforts to soften the effects of natural disasters before they happen.
"It has a sliding federal cost share scale ranging from 65% to 85% depending on whether or not the communities have made mitigation and resilience efforts on the individual assistance side," said Jim Henderson, executive director for the Kentucky Association of Counties.
The Senate currently does not have a companion bill but there are reports of behind-the-scenes, bipartisan meetings taking place.
The funding model provided by the American Rescue Plan Act remains popular at the county level.
"The ARPA money went straight to counties," said Miller. "All of you got money straight to you. How many of us spent it improperly? Virtually no one. Less than 2% spent misspent the money. It's a magic formula that worked phenomenally well. FEMA could do the same thing."
Miller's parish has absorbed a double whammy of an industrial fire at a grease plant that's being handled by the Environmental Protection Agency and Hurricane Ida which racked up recovery costs of $65 million.
Continuity at FEMA is another pain point for the communities trying to recover.
"There's really no common sense in federal government," said Miller
"Our people are working with a case manager from FEMA. We're flowing well, everything's moving and that person says, 'By the way, I'm rotating out tomorrow. You're going to have Jim instead of me.' Jim comes in and says, 'Okay, so where are we?' And you start all over again."
