Trump's FEMA Overhaul Would Make Federal Disaster Declarations Harder to Trigger — And Less Generous When They Arrive

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sabotaging Our Safety (SOS) today released the final installment in its series examining the Trump administration's FEMA Review Council’s final report, focusing on proposals that would simultaneously raise the bar for federal disaster declarations and reduce the federal share of costs when declarations do occur. Critically, the recommended threshold increase would have blocked nearly one in three disaster declarations made between 2012 and 2025—meaning roughly 16 fewer major declarations per year—leaving those communities to absorb the full cost of recovery on their own.

The combined changes would shift an estimated $1.5 billion in costs onto states, counties, and survivors. For rural communities, smaller jurisdictions, and states with large low-income populations, that isis a guarantee of unmet need.

"The FEMA Review Council looked at a system it said was too generous and decided the fix was to make federal help harder to get and less valuable when you get it," said Sabotaging Our Safety Advisory Council member Davante Lewis. "The communities that will be locked out by a higher threshold are the same ones that don't have the budget reserves to cover a major disaster on their own, that’s why they need a functioning federal partner. The $1.5 billion in federal savings this report claims doesn't disappear, it becomes $1.5 billion in unmet need at the local level."

A Higher Threshold That Would Have Excluded Nearly a Third of Recent Declarations: The Council recommends raising the per capita impact threshold for disaster declarations from $1.94 to $2.99 per capita — a 54 percent increase — while adding new minimum state expenditure requirements before a federal declaration can even be requested. The report's own figures confirm this would have excluded 29 percent of disaster declarations made over the past 13 years.

The National League of Cities has warned the combined effect of these changes could make it significantly harder for smaller and rural jurisdictions to qualify for federal disaster assistance. The recommendations would also likely violate the Stafford Act's requirement that disaster assistance be provided in an equitable and impartial manner.

The Federal "Savings" Are Communities' Losses: The report projects $1.5 billion in federal savings from the threshold change. That figure represents costs shifted onto state governments, county budgets, local emergency managers, and individual survivors — institutions that, unlike the federal government, are not designed to absorb large, sudden disaster expenditures.

Most states operate under constitutionally required balanced budgets with no reserve mechanism built for disaster cost absorption. In Nevada, 81 percent of the state's emergency management budget comes from federal dollars. Many local governments have no dedicated emergency management offices at all. The report assumes states can absorb the gap. There is no evidence that is true.

A Sliding-Scale Cost Share That Punishes States That Can Least Afford It: For disasters that do cross the higher threshold, the Council recommends replacing the current 75 percent federal baseline cost share with a sliding scale of 50 to 75 percent tied to state preparedness benchmarks. States that haven't met those benchmarks would see their federal share drop to 50 percent.The states least likely to meet preparedness benchmarks are the states with the least fiscal capacity to invest in them in the first place. 

A Per Capita Formula That Already Fails Rural Communities Made Worse: Smaller and rural jurisdictions face the greatest exposure to lost funding under the new “per capita” threshold recommended by the FEMA Review Council. Statewide disaster damage is calculated by total state population, meaning catastrophic disasters in rural counties don’t always generate enough statewide per capita impact to cross the threshold, let alone the higher threshold proposed by the Council. 

Read the full SOS report here. 

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