On March 15, 2020, Governor Abbott waived Texas laws that prohibit trucks from the alcohol industry from delivering supplies to grocery stores during the COVID-19 response.
This allows additional transportation assets to be used to resupply grocery stores of necessary supplies.
The Supporting and Improving Rural EMS Needs (“SIREN”) Act of 2018 was introduced the the U.S. House of Representatives on April 5, 2018 with the aim to reauthorize the Rural Emergency Medical Service Training and Equipment Assistance Program with some modifications. HR 5429 includes a provision for $10 Million in appropriations to be authorized each fiscal year between 2018 and 2022.
This grant program has been in existence for several years. The grant was originally introduced as part of the Health Care Safety Net Amendments of 2002 that authorized several different grant programs.
FEMA released the 2018-2022 strategic plan last month. The new plan focuses on three goals: (1) Building a culture of preparedness; (2) making the nation ready for catastrophic disasters; and (3) reduce the complexity of FEMA. Throughout the document, FEMA acknowledges many of the issues it learned while responding to many disasters in 2018. Appendix 1 of the Strategic plan will showcase FEMA’s progress along it’s measures of performance (“MOP’s”) through 2022.
GOAL 1: The first goal of building a culture of preparedness acknowledges the issues that many Americans face with not having enough resources to react to a disaster. It’s not as much of being aware (something the profession has focused in the past), as it is having a “real” plan and the resources to back it up. For example, Goal 1, Objective 3 not only includes training and
planning measures of performance, but also to “increase the percentage of people with savings set aside for an emergency.” It would be interesting to see if this question is included on the census scheduled for 2020.
GOAL 2: The second goal focuses on building the readiness of the federal government to answer the call of state and local governments when needed. This comes not only from building a ready on-call incident workforce, but also by improving the logistics tail that supports that workforce and impacted communities. One of Goal 2, Objective 4’s three performance measures includes to increase the number of states with comprehensive continuity plans and 
programs that comply with the Continuity of Guidance Circular. (Keep in mind, CGC 1 and 2 were combined this past February into a single document). There was talk in 2017 that FEMA would begin soliciting input from the field to better develop these grant conditions. Inclusion as a performance measure in the strategic plan could mean that FEMA could planning to follow through on its interest in making CGC planning a condition of future grant funding.
GOAL 3: Goal three focuses on reducing the complexity of FEMA, something many will probably celebrate. Much of this goal sounds like there is a good departure from Classical Public Administration with an embrace of New Public Administration (and some aspects of New Public Service). In short, this is a shift from focusing on the process to one that is responsive to customer/citizen needs, transparent, and focuses on the outcomes. Something to keep an eye out for is feedback solicitations in the Federal Register. FEMA will likely seek feedback from the field as it looks at the impacts of process and program changes to make sure they have their intended effect.
On February 5, 2018 the U.S. House of Representatives introduced and referred the Disaster Assistance Rental Fairness Act to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The bill was sponsored by Representative John Culberson of Texas. The bill seeks to add a subsection to the Stafford Act by prohibiting the consideration of “income of an individual or household in determining whether to provide, or continue to provide, to that individual or household rental assistance under this section.”
42 USC §5174(j) allows for the president to promulgate rules on determining eligibility. 44 CFR §206.113 speaks in generalities and doesn’t have a specific provision requiring the use of income in determining rental assistance eligibility. See also 44 CFR §206.117 (Referring to §206.113 when determining eligibility for rental assistance). However, the Individuals and Households Program Unified Guidance details exactly how the amount of rental assistance is determined by using the monthly adjusted gross income of adults in the household receiving rental assistance. This bill seeks to change that.
On February 16, 2018 Governor Abbott extended the disaster declaration for 60 counties in Texas. This is the sixth renewal of a disaster declaration for the counties in the declaration. To view the full extension of the disaster declaration, click here.
HR 4995 was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on February 8th and seeks to bring more scrutiny to the selection of contractors to perform disaster response and recovery work. The bill is styled as the “Due Diligence for FEMA Disaster Contractors Act of 2018”. This bill comes just months after public controversy over contractors tasked with supporting the Puerto Rico recovery efforts.
Representative Christopher Smith of New Jersey introduced HR 2405 “To amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to clarify that houses of worship are eligible for certain disaster relief and emergency assistance on terms equal to other eligible private nonprofit facilities, and for other purposes. Currently facilities that benefit the membership of the religious organization are not included in PA Program Facility eligibility. The concept behind facility eligibility is that it benefits “the community at large.” The current thought process is that a sanctuary or other type of worship facility does not benefit the community at large.
The introduced legislation would bring the entire Private Non-Profit (“PNP” Religious facility into the eligibility matrix for consideration as a facility. The facility would still need to be eligible in other ways though. This legislation was just recently introduced and the exact contents should be available soon. It must still Pass the full House, Senate, and be signed by the President to become effective law.
Texas SB 2078 currently working its way through the Texas House, essentially requires more detailed planning to be included into the School District’s Multi-Hazard Emergency Operations Plan (“MEOP”).
The biggest change is the addition of six requirements into the MEOP establishes for only school districts:
#1: The Chain of Command/Line of Succession Identification;
#2: 2 scenario specific response plans, with more that can be designated by the Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University;
#3: Portable building safety
#4: a parent/guardian communication plan
#5: statement on amount per student spent on school/district safety
#6: identification of the safety and security committee.
The interesting part is the statement on amount spent per student on school/district safety. The legislative history doesn’t currently suggest a reason why. It can be assumed that this is intended to be a marker for the community to see how their tax dollars are being spent.
The accountability and enforcement mechanism to this bill is essentially public shaming. The new Tex. Education Code §37.108(f) would allow the Texas Education Agency to post online those who fail to submit a MEOP, submit an MEOP that doesn’t meet standards, or fail a safety and security audit.
Texas Senate Bill 1897 was introduced on March 10th, 2017 seeking to require more information be put into a local disaster declaration. State Senator Charles Perry of Lubbock, Texas introduced the legislation which has been referred to the Agriculture, Water, & rural Affairs Committee on March 23, 2017.
Here are the highlights from this legislation:
“An order or proclamation declaring, continuing, or terminating a local state of disaster issued under this section must include: (1) a description of the nature of the disaster; (2) a designation of the area threatened; and (3) a description of the conditions that have brought the local state of disaster about or made possible the termination of the local state of disaster.”
If the political subdivision to which the order or proclamation applies maintains an Internet website, a copy of the order or proclamation shall also be posted on the political subdivision ’s Internet website.
In accordance with Section 418.016(e), the presiding officer of a political subdivision may request the governor to waive or suspend a deadline imposed by a statute or the orders or rules of a state agency on the political subdivision, including a deadline relating to a budget or ad valorem tax, if the waiver or suspension is reasonably necessary for the political subdivision to cope with a local disaster declared under this section.
Follow the bill’s actions and progress by clicking here.
Visit State Senator Perry’s Website by clicking here.
The 85th Texas Legislature just called their first regular session this past month. With that, a plethora of bills were filed by state legislators seeking to get their ideas out into their chamber for consideration. One of theses bills was proposed by Senator Kirk Watson from District 14. SB 351 proposes establishing a disaster recovery fund and providing post-disaster grants to local governments (county and municipal), state agencies, and volunteer organizations.
The current system of emergency management under the Stafford Act Disaster Relief Act requires that each level of government or entity exhaust their response and recovery resources before asking for support from the next higher level. In the past, the Texas has been able to provide some funds to entities within the state for recovery purposes; state statute has generally limited support to helping with the state’s cost share of federal disaster grant programs. This is not a hard rule because there are many areas in state statute that allow for disaster grants to be awarded by the governor; however, the funding is largely driven from the federal level. This bill could change all of that.
SB 351 would establish a Disaster Recovery Fund and allow the Texas Division of Emergency Management to administer the fund. After reading the initial text of the bill (which has not been heard in committee yet) it appears that this is essentially duplicating the federal program, at the state level. This can be a good thing for Texas in helping relieve the need to try and help areas impacted by a disaster that has not received a declaration status by the president–which is highly discretionary and is considered to be highly politicized.
We will help keep an eye on this bill as it moves through the State Senate.