The federal government knows it’s cheaper to prevent disasters than rebuild after them

Terry Gerton GAO’s got a fairly recent report out looking at the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities or BRIC program at FEMA. The program was created in 2020 around the idea that investing before a disaster is cheaper than rebuilding afterward. So as you looked at the program’s first several years, how did you find they were What are you doing?

Christopher Currie Thanks for having me. Over the past few years, FEMA’s had about $4.8 billion to help communities get ready for disasters before they happen, as you set up. So that’s things like flood walls, stronger buildings, and safe rooms. So by the time FEMA announced the program was ending in 2025, only about half of that money had been awarded, and very little had actually reached the communities. Then, for 11 months, FEMA told the states and towns almost nothing about what was happening to their projects. Some stopped work, some paused it, some walked away from the work they were doing, and over that period of time costs went way up. So the program is back now, but it’s starting from behind and FEMA really needs to move faster and communicate better about what it’s doing. That’s kind of the bottom line of the report.

Terry Gerton Well we have eight more minutes to talk, so let’s dig into some of the details. Separate from the period of 2025 to 2026 when it was sort of in abeyance, what were the big issues in getting grants out? Was it a staff and capacity problem? Was it process problem? Did they just not have the rules right?

Christopher Currie Well, it was a new program. So Congress set this up in 2018 in law, and then FEMA actually started it in 2020. So anytime there’s a new problem, it takes a little while to get it going and get state and local communities used to a new grant program. So that was part of it. But also part of it is just the process behind what it’s like to approve these types of infrastructure projects. It’s actually pretty consistent with what we’ve seen in FEMA projects after a disaster. So, you know, a lot of times these things are not just ready to go off the bat. They take planning, they take engineering studies, and then, you know, they’re construction projects, so they take a while. What we found is that FEMA has a pretty in-depth process for reviewing these grants, even once they’re awarded. And so this is things like it took them seven to 11 months, in some cases, to approve certain aspects of like environmental and historical reviews, engineering, things like that. And there’s so many projects that, you know, a lot of communities were waiting on their funding, even before they decided to cancel the program in early ’25.

Terry Gerton So those review processes sound really in depth, very cautious. Did you find places or ways they could have sped that up? Did they need all of that detail?

Christopher Currie Part of the problem is that there’s often times when a grant goes from the federal government down to the local level, the local has to implement all these different requirements. So they have to meet federal requirements, they have meet state requirements, and they have to make local requirements. And that was true here. For example, these environmental and historical preservation reviews and, you know, some of these things are very complicated and you have to meet federal level, you have to meet the state environmental rules, and then you have meet the local environmental rules. And all of those levels of government don’t necessarily accept the other levels requirements and reviews. So in many ways it’s kind of the classic story of, you know bureaucracy between the layers of government and it just takes time to get those things approved.

Terry Gerton Chris Currie is a director for homeland security and justice at the Government Accountability Office. Chris, let’s go back then and talk about that timeframe in 2025 when basically the program was in abeyance. GAO’s language in the report is very measured, but that timeframe was like anything but normal. FEMA was suffering pretty significant personnel losses. They didn’t have a confirmed director. They had… A lot of conversation over whether they would even continue to exist as an agency. So you can kind of understand that they might say, we’re just not gonna do anything for a while. But what was the impact on that in the communities who had maybe submitted grants and then just got radio silence on the other end of the line?

Christopher Currie Yeah Well, early in the administration in ’25, there was a lot of pressure on federal agencies to cut waste and cut spending. And, you know, one of the things that FEMA and through DHS did was they identified a number of different things they wanted to cut out and this was on the chopping block. And it was very fast and very decisive. I mean, they basically said this program is wasteful and we’re canceling it. Come to find out that there wasn’t a lot of information or data behind that decision. I don’t know if we’ll ever know exactly why they decided to do that early on. But over time, this caused a lot of problems because this was a program that was very popular throughout the country and in red and blue states. In fact, there were over, you know, $16 billion in requests for this funding. Only $4 [billion] and change was able to be given out. But that just kind of shows you across the country how much demand there was for pre-disaster resilience. So I’m canceling it outright had a huge impact, not just on the projects that were ongoing, but also people that were planning to apply for these in the future. So, you know, it’s kind of like this. If you get a quote to redo your kitchen, for example, and then, you sort of wait in silence for two years to say yes or no, the price is not going to be the same either. And that’s kind of what happened over this two-year period. So a lot of these projects were already waiting seven to 11 months, as I said, for approval and to move forward. And then the program was canceled, and for 11 months there was zero communication. So you can imagine during that time, all sorts of things could happen. Some localities were able to find additional funding and they kept going with their projects. Some of them did not have the funding and they just stalled or stopped. And then some of them were just canceled because it just wasn’t possible to continue on. Some of these projects, for example, were seasonally dependent. I mean, there’s only certain times of the year they could, like, for some wildfire projects in the West, like they could only work on these projects in the warmer months, not the colder months. So, basically, it was kind of a debacle, you know, it just stopped, no communication and, you know, and this is what led to the states suing FEMA and the federal government because of these problems.

Terry Gerton You’ve done a lot of work in other audits about disaster preparedness and the capacity of states to position themselves for this. What does the demand for this program, regardless of FEMA’s capacity to actually deliver it, but the demand from the states, tell you about how well they could actually do this on their own?

Christopher Currie Oh, no doubt that from a funding perspective, that they would not be able to. I mean, one of the most revolutionary things about the BRIC program when Congress created it is for many years, all the money for disaster resilience typically came after the disaster, which wasn’t very strategic. It meant it goes to places that have the most disasters and the most costly disasters. BRIC really changed that whole dynamic. It freed up a tremendous amount of funding to strategically go throughout the country to address things well before they happen. You know, fixing the roof before the storm comes. And you know this is like wildfires, floods, hurricanes, all sorts of, different drought even, you know extreme, heat, all sort of things that there would never be the kind of money available. And then like you said at the local level, I mean some of these projects for example were larger than you know the city or townships whole budget for a year, they’re never going to have this kind of money, or they’re never going to find this kind of funding to do these kinds of projects, so it was huge.

Terry Gerton Well, the program is back on track, or at least the doors are back open at this point. Your report here makes seven recommendations to FEMA, which are the most important in actually addressing some of the underlying challenges and getting things back on tracks.

Christopher Currie Yeah, so first of all, they have a lot of making up to do because they had almost a two year window of no communication and a two year backlog. The first priority is just to kind of assess what they’re going to do with all those over 700 some odd projects that were waiting to move forward even before the cancelation. So they have to go back to the states and the localities and say, are these things still going on? They still being funded? Remember, there’s also going to be cost increases in those. Again, inflation, they don’t stay stagnant. Things aren’t getting cheaper. So they have to get through that. But they also just had a $1 billion notice of funding for the next two fiscal years. So they have award the next projects as well and start funding those too. And so the recommendations we made really get to getting through that backlog and then trying to speed up the obligation of new funds as they as they move forward.

Terry Gerton FEMA does now have a confirmed administrator. Do you have a sense that this is at the top of his priority list?

Christopher Currie I don’t know where this falls in priorities, but I can guarantee it probably does because members of Congress see this as a huge priority. You know, the thing about these types of programs is it affects every state and every district. And this is money that’s going to districts, you know, to build resilience and for, you know, repair and infrastructure projects, shovel-ready projects. So they are going to be under a tremendous amount of pressure to get these projects moving. And they were, they were, even before the cancelation, but now it’s just going to twofold.