Sponsors (2)
The bill makes disaster-aid decisions more transparent and prioritizes vulnerable, hard-hit communities (including retroactive reconsideration), but does so by imposing fixed weighting rules that limit FEMA discretion, risk administrative delays, and can disadvantage certain prior recipients or higher-cost areas.
Low-income, rural, and hard-hit communities will be more likely to be prioritized for Public Assistance because the bill requires explicit weights for localized impact and economic need in grant evaluations.
State and local governments will receive a transparent, formula-based scoring system for evaluating Public and Individual Assistance requests, reducing subjective denial decisions and making determinations more predictable.
Individuals in areas with concentrated damage, trauma, or special populations will get clearer consideration for Individual Assistance because the bill specifies weightings (including a 20% factor) for those conditions.
State and local applicants may be harmed when FEMA's discretion is constrained by rigid percentage weights, preventing case-by-case judgment for unusual or complex disaster circumstances.
Applying the new rules retroactively will create significant administrative burdens and could delay current and past assistance as FEMA and states must re-evaluate prior denied requests.
Communities that previously received aid or have higher insurance coverage may be penalized in future allocations because the weighting explicitly counts past assistance and insurance penetration.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Directs FEMA to adopt explicit weighted criteria for evaluating Stafford Act Public and Individual Assistance and apply them to denials since Jan 1, 2012.
Official title: Require rulemaking by the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to address considerations in evaluating the need for public and individual disaster assistance, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 24, 2026 by Richard Joseph Durbin · Last progress February 24, 2026
Requires FEMA to rewrite its regulation for evaluating major disaster requests so that specific factors are given explicit weights when deciding Public Assistance and Individual Assistance eligibility. The rule change must be completed within 120 days and must be applied retroactively to Governor requests denied on or after January 1, 2012. Public Assistance decisions would be driven by seven weighted criteria (for example, localized impacts 40%, estimated cost 10%, insurance 10%), while Individual Assistance decisions would use seven weighted criteria emphasizing concentration of damages, trauma, and special populations (each weighted 20% for the top three). The rule must also require consideration of specified local and State economic indicators.