Warren, Cruz team up on disaster relief bill
BOSTON (SHNS) – As a bill to attract more federal dollars to the Bay State moves to the governor, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is filing her own federal bill meant reform the way disaster relief is distributed to states — changes she says could benefit Massachusetts as weather-related emergencies become more frequent.
Sens. Warren, Ted Cruz of Texas and Congressmen Brian Babin of Texas and John Garamendi of California filed the bill Thursday to amend the law that dictates that the federal government can provide funding to communities recovering from major disasters.
Currently, the Federal Emergency Management Agency distributes dollars to states that reach a certain threshold of need.
FEMA intervened in New York and Vermont last summer after severe flooding across the Northeast, and though there was significant damage in parts of western Massachusetts that qualified for some federal help, most of those towns didn't access the same FEMA grants as parts of other states that hit damage thresholds.
As of August 2023, Essex County met a threshold of $3.6 million in damages, but Massachusetts overall had to reach roughly $12.6 million tied to the summer storm to be eligible for the same federal public assistance program as its neighbors.
Certain households qualified for separate FEMA programs, or other federal grant help, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture designated seven Massachusetts counties as primary disaster areas after flooding in July 2023 to access federal loan support — but in some instances of that storm-torn summer, when the Bay State's neighbors were receiving federal assistance, Massachusetts didn't qualify for help.
Under the bill, all communities directly affected by a major disaster would be eligible for FEMA relief, regardless of state or county lines.
"They were hurt just as badly as other communities, but they were on the wrong side of the state line. So since most of the communities that were affected were on the other side of the [New York] state line, federal law kept our Massachusetts communities from qualifying," Warren said in an interview with the News Service. "Disaster does not follow state or county laws. They go where they go, and we need the relief dollars to go where the problem is."
A second part of the bill would allow FEMA to declare major disasters based on cumulative damage to a community. It would modify the definition of a "major disaster" from one event, to include emergencies over the preceding 12-month period for which the governor sought a major disaster declaration, even if none of the disasters individually reached the threshold for federal relief.
"If a community gets hit by three big disasters instead of one giant disaster, there's no federal help available," Warren said.
Disaster relief has been a topic of growing concern on Beacon Hill in recent years as towns and cities have experienced a rise in natural disasters that require greater emergency response than their local resources can support alone.
The state provided $20 million in relief aid during the summer 2023 flooding, and the Healey administration launched a somewhat unusual fundraiser campaign soliciting private donations to help farmers recover from the event.
Gov. Maura Healey also proposed this year to divert a portion of excess capital gains tax revenue toward a proposed Disaster Relief Trust Fund, which could be tapped to help various sectors of the economy respond to incidents like severe flooding and strong storms.
The Legislature did not adopt the administration's proposed funding mechanism, instead dedicating $14 million from a consolidated net surplus at the end of the year. The closeout supplemental budget that Healey filed last week includes an additional $11 million to seed the fund immediately, according to the Executive Office of Administration and Finance.
"As the climate crisis grows, natural disasters and emergencies are going to become more and more frequent," Warren said. "We've seen that right here at home, from floods in Leominster to North Adams. Strong, federal, state and local government partnership is critical to help people who have been devastated."
