Noem’s $17 Billion FEMA Bottleneck
NYT: Sec. Noem’s Demand to Review FEMA Expenditures Over $100,000 Has Delayed Billions in Aid
WASHINGTON, D.C. — This morning, the New York Times reported that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s onerous demand to personally sign off on any FEMA expenditure above $100,000 has delayed $17 billion in critical federal disaster funds for states. Secretary Noem’s red tape has extended the process for state and local governments—many of whose requests have already been approved by local FEMA officials—to receive necessary aid by months. The news comes as a winter storm covers much of the South, raising concerns about FEMA’s ability to support local response.
“Secretary Noem and the Trump administration have undermined FEMA at every turn, and $17 billion in delayed aid speaks volumes to the damage they’ve done,” said Rafael Lemaitre, Sabotaging Our Safety Advisory Council Member and former Director of Public Affairs at FEMA. “FEMA processes thousands of grants every year, and forcing them through Noem's desk creates exactly the kind of bureaucratic nightmare that costs lives and destroys communities. You can't save lives while micromanaging routine aid decisions and keeping FEMA under such incompetent and overtly political control.”
See more below:
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Extra Scrutiny of FEMA Aid to States Has Created a $17 Billion Bottleneck
About $17 billion in federal disaster funds for states is getting an extra layer of review by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, causing unusual delays in payments, according to internal Federal Emergency Management Agency documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The delays stem from a directive issued by Ms. Noem in June that said any expenditure of $100,000 or more must be approved by her office, which oversees the disaster agency, to root out “waste, fraud and abuse.”
The bottleneck includes money that had already been approved by regional FEMA offices for things like debris removal and repairs to roads, bridges and water and sewer systems.
Ms. Noem’s directive has extended the final processing of large projects, a stage that normally takes a few weeks, by months, causing the backlog to balloon, according to three FEMA employees familiar with the process who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. FEMA has barred staff from discussing review timelines with state officials who ask about the status of aid, the employees said.
FEMA and Homeland Security officials did not respond to questions about the aid backlog.
In many cases, state and local governments have already completed relief and recovery work at their own expense, often under significant budget constraints, based on a pledge from FEMA to reimburse a share of the costs. In other instances, work cannot begin until Ms. Noem allows the money to flow. Some of the outstanding aid owed to states dates as far back as Hurricanes Harvey and Maria in 2017.
The $17 billion figure, which has not been previously reported, illustrates the scale of FEMA’s role leading disaster preparation and response, even as the Trump administration’s plans to reshape the agency, if not eliminate it in its current form, remain in limbo. FEMA spent an average of $12 billion per year on disaster aid over the three decades that ended in 2021, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
At the same time, new disaster claims are accumulating after a winter storm spread snow and ice from Texas to New England over the weekend. President Trump approved emergency declarations across a dozen states as FEMA officials said they had readied hundreds of power generators, 7 million meals and 3 million liters of water at agency distribution centers.
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