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Priorities Podcast
Will we return to the 'golden age of FEMA'?
00:30:36
The Federal Emergency Management Agency could be …
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- [00:02]
Sophia Foxowell
Hello and welcome to State Scoop's Priorities podcast. I'm Sophia Foxoell, a reporter for State Scoop. This week I interview Samantha Penta, an associate professor at the University of Albany, about the list of recommendations made by President Donald Trump's FEMA Review Council in its efforts to streamline the federal agency and shift more responsibility for emergency management to state and local governments. But first, here are the biggest state IT stories of the week. Code for America, the civic tech nonprofit, has announced it's partnering with Anthropic, the developer of claude, to build new AI powered tools aimed at helping government caseworkers navigate public benefit policies. The Hawaii Department of the Attorney General has warned the public about a man falsely claiming to be the state's chief technology officer, both at national conferences and on online platforms. California Governor Gavin Newsom last week launched Engaged California, a public participation platform designed to gather resident feedback on how artificial intelligence is affecting workers, government services and the broader economy across the state. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or fema, could be headed for one of the biggest overhauls in its history. For the past year, the FEMA Review Council, under the direction of Trump, has been conducting an in depth assessment of the federal agency's approach before, during and after disasters. The council's latest and final report recommends a broad overhaul of federal disaster response policy, with a major emphasis on shifting more responsibility to states. The report also suggests modernizing FEMA's operations with new IT tools like like predictive modeling, automated reviews and AI assessments. Samantha Penta, associate professor at the University of Albany's College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, talks to me about the report and whether state and local governments are ready to take on more responsibility for large scale disasters. She also describes what it might look like to return to what she calls the golden age of fema.
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Samantha Penta
Its current role is actually to support state and local response. So that's actually already the way the system is structured. So the way the best way to understand FEMA's role in emergency management is to really understand the overall structure or orientation of emergency management in the United States. So a lot of times you'll hear the phrase that all disasters are local, and that's because things always start at the local level. So when something happens, it's first the local level, whether that's a county or it's a municipality, it's that local level that starts first. Then when those resources become overwhelmed, then they put in through their chief executive at that level. So like a mayor puts in a request to the state and that's how the state becomes involved, right? And then when things get so big and the demand is so high that the state can't handle it, then the state governor puts a request up to the president for a disaster declaration. And that's how FEMA becomes involved. So already the way emergency management works is, is when we're thinking about responding to an event, it's starting at that local level, then going up to the state and only going up to the federal level when those state level resources have been overwhelmed. Even when when FEMA becomes involved, it's still state and local actors who are doing a lot of the work. And FEMA is providing a support function, oftentimes through financial resources, but often working with those sort of state and local actors. And the direct people who are interfacing with the public are still the state, state and local actors, with sort of some exceptions.
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Sophia Foxowell
And that's how I kind of understand the role of the federal agency as well. They do come in as honestly as a report a support for resources, whether they be financial, whether they be workforce, whether they be labor, search and rescue equipment, that type of thing. And state and local agencies already play a more dominant role in managing these operations that are happening in their regions. I'm curious, how would limiting fees FEMA's role to more like catastrophic disasters as outlined in the report, kind of determined by objective metrics. So not participating in smaller emergencies, but more the ones that accumulate millions of dollars in damage and often billions of dollars. How would that place kind of more financial burdens on state and local agencies?
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Samantha Penta
So there are two things that you have to understand about through the US context in order to understand the implications of sort of reducing FEMA's role. One is because the country is so big and has such a range of populations and there's a range of sort of financial resources, other kinds of resources, and a range in hazard scapes. There's a lot of variability in terms of actual local resources on the ground. And that does a couple of things. One is that it means that the federal government and the resources the federal government brings to bear in these situations can in some ways be more important for some areas than others. But the other thing to keep in mind is that actually inherently makes setting an objective measure really, really difficult. Because even just thinking about like the difference of the cost of living right for New York City compared to or la compared to maybe a more rural rural area in Oklahoma or in the south or in the Midwest somewhere, right? If you're setting like a dollar value benchmark Some of those places could have something that's absolutely devastating to those communities, but it doesn't reach the dollar value because everything is cheaper there and there isn't as much sort of concentration of loss there. So saying that FEMA is only going to respond to those really, really big events kind of doesn't acknowledge sort of the variation of what a big event can be in different places in the US and considering the sort of spread of critical infrastructure and things like that, something happening in a smaller area could still be really impactful. The other thing to keep in mind is that disasters don't necessarily respect political boundaries. So even just looking, even just looking at Hurricane Helene as an example, right, it affected multiple states. And even if you look at the ones that were hit exceptionally hard, you're still talking about more than one state. Right. And so inherently, if you're talking about a multi state response, that means a couple of things, right? One, FEMA is probably going to become involved because of this sort of cross border element in terms of the cross state borders. But also one of the things that states often do, and this can happen at the local level too, is relying on their neighboring municipalities, neighboring states. And the reality is sometimes you can have a big event that's geographically widespread that makes it so your state neighbors are also dealing with the state issue, that same issue, right. And in which case then are you going to go even farther away or are you going to pull from the federal government which has that infrastructure to coordinate and sort of see the big picture of wow, we have Tennessee and North Carolina and all of these other places that are being hit. We need to think about this holistically so reasonable people can disagree about like what the sort of size or scale of FEMA involvement should be or what kinds of disasters they should be involved in. The idea that one standard can be universally applied and that we can sort of negate the fact that hurricanes are big, fires can be big. Right. And that we can affect multiple areas, it sort of doesn't really match with how things actually have unfolded, particularly recently
- [07:38]
Sophia Foxowell
in the U.S. yeah, that's kind of what I'm hearing, is that these objective measures, they might be good ideas in theory, but in practice they will not translate well to on the ground actual disaster response. That, you're right, might not hit a certain monetary threshold for, for damages in Oklahoma versus California. I wanted to follow up on that as well because that's such a good point that there's such a discrepancy in terms of the infrastructure, of the resources of the standard of living, state to state, region to region. How would limiting FEMA's role also place a burden on some of these smaller municipalities that may not have the type of resources as larger states or larger local entities may have?
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Samantha Penta
Yeah. So in addition to its response function. Right. FEMA provides support in a lot of different ways. There's mitigation resources and when we talk about mitigation, that's basically things that we do to try to either reduce the likelihood of an event from happening or to reduce the severity of the consequences if it does occur. That very broad level. So FEMA provides a lot of resources with that. They also do a lot of things with like training and providing those kinds of resources. And those are useful everywhere. But those can be especially important support structures for those lower resourced communities that just don't have the money. Right. There's a, there's not the tax base to support the, the local level sort of cost needed associated with maintaining those resources. So really that, that's a lot of help coming directly or indirectly from the federal government, typically through it's passed through the states.
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Sophia Foxowell
The report also recommends kind of changing the way disaster reimbursement is distributed to states. Rather than it taking months or years and distributing smaller amounts, the report recommends distributing kind of like a lump sum block style grant. What are your thoughts on that and if it'll be more beneficial and efficient to distribute money and funding that way for disaster aid and response measures rather than continuing the way that they're doing now with like smaller payments over a longer portion of time?
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Samantha Penta
Yeah. So the way that FEMA distributes aid and how people qualify for it and all, and the kind of aid that's provided, there's a lot of debate about, about what the best approach is and there certainly are some valid criticisms to the way it's handled. Now. I wouldn't necessarily say like just keep going how it's going, but I also wouldn't necessarily say that the one, the, the one block amount would be the right approach because there's again, there's so much nuance in all of this. Right. It's very, very difficult. It does take a long time for people to get aid in some cases, and that's especially been the case over the last sort of year or so. And it can also be difficult to figure out what sort of aid you qualify for as an individual or as a public entity and how to navigate that application process. So there's definitely areas for improvement in there. It's a difficult process. And when people are Already, you know, really overburdened. But again, when we think about that like, uniform block of things, that can be difficult then to account for the variation in experience and nuance of what it means to be a disaster survivor. Right. So if you lost your house, like your house is completely damaged, it's uninhabitable, and then you've lost all the financial investment in that, and maybe you lost a loved one, right? That's one kind of impact. But what if your house is still standing, but you're the restaurant where you work, that you don't own, but that where you work is closed and out of business and a lot of other businesses in the area are closed because there's no, there's no one coming to shop or to eat or anything like that. So then your employment is compromised. Do you count for that to that for that lump sum? Right. And what sort of counts? Or are you seen as not a sort of, not a victim or not as qualifying for aid? And then thinking about, well then what, what should you get? What shouldn't you get? What does that sort of look like? So there's a lot of nuance and a lot of variation, even within the same disaster event, as to what a negative consequence looks like. And while some direct payments can be really helpful, and while simplifying the process, I don't think anybody would, would disagree with, but having to be really thoughtful about what kinds of supports are needed, when they're needed, and what the size of those supports are and how you figure out what's fair across the board or what's appropriate in terms of support. So it's a really complicated, messy issue. There's a reason why we still grapple with this periodically because it's very difficult to find a way that is efficient that also makes sure that the people who really need the aid are getting it and people who maybe aren't as in need aren't getting more than what would be helpful. But you also got to be able to do that in a way that, you know, doesn't take a long time and that people can navigate. So it's a very, very difficult challenge.
- [12:46]
Sophia Foxowell
I know it's, it's making my head spin a little bit to think about how complex this, this issue is. Even if we're just talking about, as you mentioned, the same disaster impacting people differently across the region, whether their houses are still standing, where the business they can still go to, whether the road is still drivable, that they can drive on, like what the resources are needed. And I Imagine over the course of repair for, for months and possibly even years, the money could also change to the needs and resources to address those repairs and to, you know, clear the rubble or debris removal or rebuilding homes. I imagine those costs can also fluctuate as changes to like materials fluctuate. If the city wants to make different repairs to infrastructure to make more defensible spaces for wildfires or flood mitigation, I would think it's not a one to one proportional thing that a lump sum could cover everything and one off cost wouldn't come up throughout the process.
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Samantha Penta
Yeah, it's just there's incredible variation within a community affected by a disaster. There's incredible variation disaster to disaster and it's very difficult to think of a universal approach to providing support or relief or aid. There's I think the way I would describe disaster relief, whether you're talking about an emergency term sort of thing, or if we think about going into the recovery period, is it's a balance of an art and a science. You want to have criteria, you want to have some mechanism, so that way you have clear decision making guidance. So that way there's transparency in the process and people can follow along. But it's hard to anticipate all the different ways that this could come up, that this could emerge for people. And there also needs to be space to recognize there's a unique set of needs here and it's justified in people looking to local, state, federal government to get some support in this circumstance. How do we make sure we meet that need? So it's, it's that art and science kind of blend that's really difficult to navigate because you want to have some flexibility to meet needs. But there's, there is validity in wanting a set of standardized criteria or at least a set of decision making guidance. So then that way when someone sees why a decision was made, they're like, yeah, that, that tracks. And that seems consistent and fair and anticipated.
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Sophia Foxowell
Yeah, that makes sense. In, I mean, in speaking of that, one of the recommendations in the report is also to kind of modernize FEMA's IT operations and spread that out throughout the board, across state and local governments by introducing more predictive modeling when it comes to disaster disaster predictions or disaster preparedness, or using AI or automated review assessments to assess a city's disaster preparations, mitigation tools that, that they have. What do you think about introducing more of these tools into the process, whether it's before, during or after a disaster, to kind of help with those objective metrics as well as to increase efficiency across the board for disaster preparedness and relief.
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Samantha Penta
So I don't necessarily know all the specific technical things, but I can sort of give some broad comments here. So having tools is always great, but with a lot of these things, what matters is that the data informing those tools is useful, accurate, complete, and that we also then prioritize and resource the choices we would like to make based on using those tools and to comment on both of those pieces. In order, for instance, climatological models to be accurate and for us to be able to make realistic decisions based off of the predictions that comes from those models, we need to invest in a data collection infrastructure that can then feed accurate data into that model to make the prediction. The model doesn't just magic a prediction out of there information that we have. Right. And so if we don't support the data collection infrastructure that collects the climatological or hydrological data that we need to feed into those models, it's great that you have this technical tool. But like how, how good is that prediction?
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Sophia Foxowell
That makes, that makes a lot of sense to me.
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Samantha Penta
Yeah, so it's, it's not that AI is inherently good or bad, but if you don't support it is one tool in a toolbox. And if you don't have all the other tools that make that work, then it's only so helpful. The other piece of this is that a lot of the things that we can do that have the biggest impact when we think about disasters is mitigation. It's those sort of boring, unsexy things that really make a big impact. So things like elevating homes above the 100 year floodplain or, or locally rezoning an area so then that way you don't build new homes in an area that floods every year. Right. Or changing some of our land use management practices, maybe encouraging planting of fire resistant vegetation in areas that have drought. Those kinds of things, those cost money. Right. And again, they're not flashy, they're not sexy, they're not necessarily things that get a lot of attention. But if, if we look at these models, if we look at historically where disasters have occurred and we can identify certain things that are happening, we have to then put our money where our mouth is and be willing to invest in actually following through on whatever it is that we have learned will be useful based on whatever tools we have available. And that is, I think where we in many places across the country fall short. Sometimes that could just be short sighted. A lot of times it's because People are dealing with really difficult decisions where we have lots of things that we need to address in our communities and only limited budgets and when tough calls have to be made. But that's if we don't resource and prioritize actually following through on any of these things, then we can have all the great technology in the world and we're not going to be safer for it.
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Sophia Foxowell
I'm just listening, hearing my, you know, my grandmother's old adage, you know, a, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in terms of invest.
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Samantha Penta
Yeah.
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Sophia Foxowell
Investing into all of these preventative measures, whether it's like you, you said, to more defensible structures, rezoning actual like egress and working with the Department of Transportation to make sure there are ways for people to, you know, navigate a disaster if they need to, to get out. I'm also imagining, you know, tools like, I'm thinking back to last year for the disastrous flooding that happened in, in Texas because the emergency warning system was not up to date or even working properly, so they couldn't even alert the camp goers at Camp mystic to, to evacuate. I'm seeing so many more instances of states analyzing and assessing their emergency warning places, trying to place a bigger emphasis on these preventative measures. Where do you think the federal government comes in when it comes to state and local agencies assessing the mitigation tools and preventative measures that they have? How can the federal agency, how can FEMA better support them?
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Samantha Penta
One of the things that is useful about having a federal agency dedicated to emergency management is not only can you have that collection of financial resources, material resources, but there's also a collection of expertise having people who have done this for a really long time who are aware of some of the challenges and opportunities and strategies and ways to make use of these tools, things to anticipate. That is one area where the federal government can really support state and local and territorial governments is in thinking about how do we, what is the knowledge they can bring to bear and the expertise that they can bring to bear. Going back to your question earlier about the value of FEMA to some of these smaller areas that may be not as well resourced. This is a huge area where that FEMA can be a resource where you have people in headquarters and at the regional offices who have this expertise and can share that. I think sometimes people really undervalue the importance of having people with experience and knowledge and who know what they're doing and having them on staff and regularly available.
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Sophia Foxowell
One of the recommendations in the report is also kind of reassessing whether or not FEMA should remain within the Department of Homeland Security, return to being an independent agency like it was before 2003, or even get shifted underneath the White House's control. What are your thoughts about, about that either moving it out of dhs, it becoming an independent agency, or moving it underneath the White House's jurisdiction. How will that change FEMA's operations?
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Samantha Penta
So I found that recommendation to be super fascinating because as you mentioned, FEMA was like prior to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA was a standalone agency. And during those years, particularly like the 1990s, it's actually referred to as the golden age of FEMA in, in history books. You look it up.
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Sophia Foxowell
It's a thing I was about to say. I've never heard somebody use the golden age and FEMA in the same sentence before.
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Samantha Penta
Exactly. But at that time it was when it was really professionalizing as an organization. The director was really well experienced, really well respected emergency manager. They, while they weren't like a secretary in the way that you have a Department of Homeland Security secretary, the FEMA administrator was a cabinet level sort of person, had direct access to the President. And all of that was seen as showing that there was a prioritization of FEMA and FEMA's goals and that FEMA had direct access to decision making power. Because actually FEMA doesn't tell people what to do. The President is the one that actually makes a disaster declaration and indicates that they can become involved. So in a lot of ways FEMA being as a separate organization agency with that little power was a very good thing. And one of the challenges that happened when it did get folded into the Department of Homeland Security is that suddenly its mission was sort of competing with the mission of like 21 other organizations and agencies that were folded in. The vast majority of which were actually more security focused. Right. If you think about the, the kinds of organizations that are in DHS and that mission around dealing with natural hazards and sort of non threat threat based things in terms of like terrorism, I see it kind of got buried. And that's part of, it's one of the things that people identify as being one of the issues leading up to Hurricane Katrina was a de priorit of FEMA's mission. And that's where you then sort of see a reaction after Hurricane Katrina and trying to sort of empower and support FEMA more. So I don't necessarily think that pulling FEMA out of DHS would be a bad thing hierarchically, whether it's under the White House or separately. I, I'm not sure. Emergency management has always been connected to this executive branch. Right. So it's emergency managers at every level. They're involved in managing and coordinating, but the actual decision maker is the chief executive, so the mayor at the local level, the governor for the state and the president for the country. So it makes sense to give emergency management more direct contact in some way with that chief executive. But organizationally, what that looks like, I think maybe is still, is still up for a bit, as long as it has the ability to perform its function and communicate with the leader who is making that decision, but still have the ability to act with its own accord and not just become sort of like a tool for political machinations or anything like that. I think it's really about empowering FEMA and showing that we care about things that come from natural hazards as well as things that are caused by sort of violent actors.
- [24:52]
Sophia Foxowell
Yeah. I was also really fascinated to see that recommendation in there and looking more into it, seeing that it was actually an independent agency prior and hearing you call it the golden age when it was functioning, you know, at its probably most like its highest level in terms of efficiency, in terms of response, in terms of, you know, mitigation strategies and an approach, I can see how returning back to that model might alleviate also some of the criticisms that it's been facing in the past 20 years. Whether it's slow to respond, whether, whether it's bogged down by bureaucratic hurdles, whether it comes to, you know, financial resources and distribution.
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I can see how it could possibly
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be a good thing to return. So I'm curious to see if one of those recommendations are adopted. And looking at the broader picture, do you think this set of recommendations in the report ultimately strengthen disaster preparedness and
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resilience at the state and local level,
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or do they kind of risk creating uneven response capabilities?
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Samantha Penta
That's a really good question.
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Sophia Foxowell
I saved it for last.
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Samantha Penta
Yes, Any successful model of emergency management at any level has to grapple with the substantial variation in conditions and circumstances and resources across the country. That's the reality of this situation, is we have variations in resources, variation in disaster experiences. And so the, the important thing is to make sure that FEMA is empowered in a way to efficiently and effectively support people whose lives have been disrupted by disasters and to effectively and efficiently support state and local and territorial governments in trying to prevent disasters from happening as much as possible. So to the extent that any, any recommendation or any change is evidence based and informed by the realities of how, of how these things unfold in the United States, I think that that can be really helpful. I think if we get to the point where we're really sort of turning a blind eye to the, the variation in need, then maybe we're, we're not setting ourselves up for success in terms of thinking about disaster mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. FEMA has a very important role to play in emergency management in the United States. And we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are definitely ways that we can improve the way that FEMA works and the ways that people who survive these events get the help they need. But there are also a lot of, a lot of valuable resources and experience and good people at FEMA that really dedicate their lives to helping the people who've gone through the worst day of their lives. And I think it's important that we don't lose sight of that. Emergency management is kind of funny and FEMA in particular, and that people don't really think about FEMA or think about emergency management until they need it, right? So they have no idea what it's supposed to do, what it's designed to do, until they need something. And then if it doesn't meet their expectations, then they're really understandably upset by that. But I think one of the challenges that we face is people at all levels, whether we're talking about the lay people who might experience a disaster one day and need support, or people who are talking about this in different sort of position in the government, don't always understand really what FEMA does. And so I think one of the things that's really important is for people at all levels to learn and appreciate what FEMA does and what it doesn't do and what it's, what it can do and what it can't do by law and what its role is. And whatever changes do or don't take place, if people don't understand what those changes are and how that works, then we aren't changing one of the fundamental issues that affects emergency management. The other thing I'll say is we have a lot of conversations about what it means to have an efficient government or to appropriate use of resources and what's needed and what's not. And that oftentimes comes down to discussions of dollars and cents, right? How much do want to pay? Good systems require investment, and it's really not a question of if we pay, but how we pay, because we can either invest in good systems and good practices and an educated, expert workforce that can respond when we need them to and and do what they can to prevent these things from happening. And we can spend money to do that, or we can pay in financial losses and loss of life and injury and hardship when these events happen and we didn't do anything to try to prevent them. So I would encourage people to really think about this in terms of not if we pay, but how and what are we willing to give up and what are we willing to invest for the well being of ourselves and our families and our homes and the places where we live?
- [30:02]
Sophia Foxowell
Thank you to Samantha Penta for participating in that conversation. You can subscribe to the priorities podcast@priorities
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That small extra step helps more people like you find the show. This podcast is a production of Scoop News Group in Washington, dc. Adam Butler and Carlin Fisher helped put it together. Until next week, I'm Sophia Foxowell. Thanks for listening.