The Diva is not clear on who is to blame for the many examples of lost funding after a disaster. This is the first time she has seen this discussion: Missed deadlines cost millions in potential disaster aid.
Note that Joplan
Recovery Diva
Long-Term Recovery from Disasters
Recovery Diva 
There’s really no “one” to blame in this instance. Unless we want to indict the whole system.
A slow-moving train wreck is occurring in that all levels of government have been under consistent pressure, decades in the making, to do “more with less”. We now have tens of thousands of examples across the country of highly under-paid “volunteers” (the pay is mostly symbolic) populating local civic positions of authority w/o the requisite skills to give the position what it truly deserves.
Combine that with enhanced requirements of not only responding to and recovering from disaster events but also the rules involved with taking on Federal disaster funds and you have a scenario where the “assistance” is often more cumbersome than the the old standard of “we just did it!”
With changing weather patterns/intensity of events nationally & world-wide, all it takes for Uncle Sam to save disaster funds is to be more black & white with already set policies. All the while morphing past recommendations into requirements. This particular situation is more of the former, not the latter.
However, I’m no prophet but have to imagine the 2nd piece is maturing rapidly, with all the tangible data we’re collecting, where past federal recommendations to perform things like peacetime emergency planning/coordination, enforcement of standards and resiliency activities are not heeded and therefore could be easily placed on a grading chart (of sorts) as part of a bigger decision-making tree about how much federal money is plied toward a local effort. Sound familiar? Look up the acronym “BCA” in the FEMA world and see what you get. Repetitive loss determinations are going to rain (pun intended).
The more I do this work the more I truly believe all phases of the disaster cycle should garner equal attention & resources; actually getting there feels somewhat like hunting for the Holy Grail. But, hope springs eternal!
Keep up the good work Diva & company!