Searching for Silver Linings: Decentralization and Experimentation in U.S. Disaster Policy
The turmoil at FEMA could usher in a new era of curiosity around disaster programs
Like many of my readers, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the recommendations from President Trump’s FEMA Review Council. The Republican-dominated group has been working for nearly a year to develop recommendations for the President about the future of FEMA, after he suggested that the agency might be gotten rid of. Those recommendations will be weighed against the vision of the FEMA Act, a significant and bipartisan piece of legislation that is moving through the House and will likely soon have a companion bill in the Senate. Leaks about the Advisory Council report have started and are flying fast and furious. I won’t summarize them here, but suffice it to say that the leadership of DHS seem committed to significantly reducing FEMA’s role and capacity.
No matter what vision of FEMA ultimately prevails (the Advisory Council’s, DHS’s, or Congress’s), the ongoing debate here in Washington has made it clear that no one is satisfied with the status quo. One of the core themes that unites reform conversations - especially on the political right - is to give states greater control and responsibility for long-term efforts on disasters, i.e. hazard mitigation and disaster recovery. Visions of decentralization come in multiple forms, whether it passing federal mitigation and recovery funds to states via block grants (an approach long favored by mainstream conservatives) or by dramatically reducing the federal contribution altogether (an approach favored by the authors of Project 2025 and reportedly Secretary Noem).
I’m very worried about decentralizing disaster policy and management, for obvious reasons. From an efficiency standpoint, do do we really need 50 state agencies designing disaster programs? From an equity one, how well-served will you be in a state that doesn’t get many disasters when they do happen? Etc. In fact, these same concerns led to the creation of FEMA in the first place.
There is at least one silver lining, however. For many years I have stood on my grumpy soap box and complained about the profound lack of curiosity at FEMA (and its overseers in Congress) about the efficiency and efficacy of its own programs. I won’t go through my whole tirade here, but ask yourself:
Why doesn’t FEMA conduct or sponsor research on basic questions like, does having a hazard mitigation plan reduce the costs of disasters? How much do IA benefits speed up recovery, and for what groups?
Why doesn’t FEMA - as the federal agency who is in contact with every disaster survivor who applies for individual assistance - support a large cohort study of long-term disaster recovery, to help us answer basic questions on recovery issues like displacement, economic health and well-being, and long-term health impacts?
Why doesn’t FEMA experiment with policy and program changes and use techniques like randomized controlled trials to judge the impact?
I could go on and on. This isn’t to say that there hasn’t been some progress - OpenFEMA, for example, has been a terrific resource for researchers and the GAO has been doing the Lord’s work. But by-and-large our most important (and expensive) disaster policies remain shockingly understudied, feeding a toxic cycle where outrage from disaster survivors, their advocates, and local and state governments - rather than data and evidence - seems to be what drives policy reform.
At last, my point…in a world where disaster policy becomes decentralized, there will be tremendous opportunities for changing this dynamic. As 50 states (and 5 territories) shoulder the responsibility for designing and executing mitigation and recovery programs, some of them will be interested in rigorously studying their approach and how effective and cost-efficient it is. They will want to experiment. They will be eager to share what they learn with others, and contribute to a growing evidence based on disaster policy.
The irony of FEMA’s avoidance of research is that research capacity on disasters has never been higher. The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 greatly expanded scholarly interest in disasters and led to an influx of scientists (myself included) who value applied research. The field has only grown with each successive disaster and become more mainstream given the burgeoning impacts of climate change. Nearly every university has disaster experts across multiple disciplines, and a dozen or more research centers have joined the ranks. Policy think tanks like mine have dedicated groups of experts focused on disaster- and climate policy, and other groups in the disaster policy ‘ecosystem’ have significant research capacity.
The good news is that in an era of decentralization, state and local governments committed to rigorous research on ‘what works’ in disaster policy will have many willing and capable partners.