A proposal to eliminate the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is gaining ground. Some officials in Florida are backing the idea as they believe it would give states more control over disaster relief efforts.
President Donald Trump recently talked about the possibility of "getting rid of the agency" while surveying disaster sites in California and North Carolina.
“I’ll be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA," Trump told reporters on Friday, Jan. 24, at the Asheville Regional Airport in N.C.
Asheville is still recovering from the impacts of last year's Hurricane Helene. President Trump has criticized FEMA for being "too slow" in getting funds out to impacted communities.
He said he’d rather give recovery dollars directly to state governors, leaving them responsible for managing their own disasters.
“You want to use your state to fix it instead of calling FEMA and wasting time," said Trump. "FEMA gets here, they don’t know the area and they have never been to the area...FEMA has turned out to be a disaster.”
"Where's our money?"
In Taylor County, where the community is still recovering from three hurricanes—Idalia, Helene, and Milton—residents think the change could be a good thing.
"We have yet to receive any help on the total loss of our home from FEMA. We have jumped through every hoop they have sent our way, with no progress," Perry resident and local business owner David Hall told WFSU on Tuesday.
David, and his wife, Leslie Hall, owns Spring Warrior Fish in Perry. Following Helene, the Hall's took cell phone footage of their fishing charter business in shambles.
The Hall's confessed to WFSU on Tuesday that they have yet to receive any money from FEMA for last year's Hurricane Helene, despite them contacting the agency numerous times.
"We had no insurance after Hurricane Idalia, it's all of pocket," said David. "We may loose our business, as well as our home, due to not receiving nay help."
Residents like David, also say they've been submitting paperwork but have not seen results.
Florida lawmakers are siding with Trump
State Representative Jason Shoaf, R-Port St. Joe, shares that same frustration. He’s been helping Taylor County get back on its feet for the past two years.
Shoaf thinks FEMA slows down the recovery process and that the state of Florida is better equipped to handle natural disasters like hurricanes, than most federal agencies.
“States can do better on every level," Shoaf said at a Jan. 30 Taylor County legislative delegation meeting.
"If [the federal government] they allocate the resources that they normally would to each state, it would allow the states with that additional surplus of resources, to do even better things for their people.”
Faster is not always better
Craig Fugate, a former Administrator of FEMA, says faster is not always better. Fugate served as the FEMA administrator from May 2009 to January 2017 under former President Barack Obama.
Fugate spoke with WFSU in an exclusive phone interview on Thursday, saying most people don’t understand FEMA’s limits and that certain rules and regulations are in place to protect against bad actors.
“Congress wants FEMA to make sure that we get money to people fast, but we don't get money to people that aren't eligible; people that are fraudulently claiming they live somewhere or saying they have damages, and they don't,” Fugate said in the phone interview.
Fugate also said that Florida has benefited from a lot of FEMA assistance programs, pointing to 2018 when Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle. FEMA, then, gave millions of dollars to families in grants, loans, and flood insurance payments.
Fugate said while the process is not always the quickest, it works.
“This is your money," he added. "Are you going to give it with no strings attached—or do you want to make sure it goes towards the right thing and for things that are supposed to be paid for, gets paid and built back better?”
Trump got started with his initiative, by issuing an executive order on Jan. 24 to create a task force called the Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council, to keep a close watch on the agency and advise the president on recommended changes.