From Naco: FEMA Bill Staffer Offer Insights into Reform Effort

One perspective on proposed changes:

“Senators are here, they are bored and they are interested in learning something new,” congressional staffer Logan de La Barre-Hays told members of the task force Oct. 28.

de La Barre-Hays (R) and her counterpart Lauren Gros (D) are professional staff members for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which recently passed the Fixing Emergency Management for Americans Act (FEMA Act) on a bipartisan basis, 57-3. They gave NACo task force members a look at the thinking behind some of the bill’s provisions that would appeal to counties.

The FEMA Act proposes making FEMA, currently part of the Department of Homeland Security, an independent agency. It would also transition to a grant program for public assistance, ending a lengthy reimbursement process that left counties fronting millions of dollars for all sorts of recovery costs. It would also reform mitigation programs, create a universal application to simplify paperwork and transform individual assistance policies.

It would reset a system that has formed over the years

There’s nothing in the Stafford Act that prescribes the system as it exists,” de La Barre-Hays said. “It is mostly precedent.”