Sponsors (5)
The bill gives state and local grantees more flexibility and time to use leftover FEMA management-cost funds to build preparedness and resilience, but it risks diverting resources from direct assistance and creates capacity and oversight challenges for smaller grantees.
State and local grantees (and nonprofits) can use unspent FEMA management-cost funds for capacity-building, preparedness, mitigation, and management costs for other disasters, giving them flexibility to strengthen future disaster readiness.
State and local grantees gain a 5-year availability period for these funds, enabling longer-term planning and implementation of resilience and recovery projects without immediate lapse pressures.
Taxpayers and the public benefit from increased transparency because GAO reporting will track actual FEMA management-cost allocations and use.
Disaster survivors and taxpayers could receive less direct disaster assistance if redirecting unspent management-cost funds reduces what is available for other aid when overall appropriations are constrained.
Smaller grantees, including small local governments and nonprofits, may lack the capacity to plan and execute multi-year resilience projects, producing unused balances or inefficient spending.
Allowing cross-disaster use of excess management-cost funds could complicate tracking and oversight, raising the risk of misallocation and making accountability harder.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Allows FEMA to convert unspent management-cost allowances from disaster and emergency grants into funds grantees/subgrantees can use for capacity-building and related management activities for five years.
Allows FEMA to give grantees or subgrantees any unspent portion of the authorized management-cost allowance from disaster or emergency grants and lets recipients use those excess funds for capacity-building and certain management activities. The law makes those excess funds available for up to five years, applies to declarations and grant awards made or funded on or after enactment, requires a GAO report on recent management costs, and does not authorize additional appropriations.
Introduced February 27, 2025 by Margaret Wood Hassan · Last progress February 27, 2025