A presidential council finalized on Thursday new recommendations for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that could lead to a generational shift in federal disaster policy.
The President’s Council to Assess the FEMA, consisting of federal and state lawmakers, experts and local leaders, outlined a series of ten recommendations that would primarily give state and local governments additional responsibility and control in disaster management and response. The council was created by Executive Order in January 2025 and extended twice before issuing its final vote.
The final 75-page report calls for a transformed agency that would retain core federal functions but shift program management, training, mitigation planning and recovery execution to state and local governments. Following the council’s approval, the report, its ten recommendations and approximately 150 recommended actions will be sent to the president’s desk for review.
Some of the most substantial council-proposed changes would affect FEMA’s grant and reimbursement programs. The report recommends replacing the current Public Assistance reimbursement model with a reformed direct-funding system that would send funding to states within 30 days of a major disaster declaration. Federal funds would be distributed based on objective, pre-established disaster metrics rather than project-by-project reviews.
Council members stated that state and local governments face multiyear-long delays prior to receiving FEMA reimbursements. Among the distributed funding, significant portions are consumed by administrative and project management costs as opposed to its intended purposes.
The report also calls for raising the Public Assistance per-capita indicator to account for historic inflation. The council estimated that if the higher threshold had been in place from 2012 to 2025, 29% of declared disasters would not have qualified, reducing federal spending by about $1.5 billion over that period.
Among its recommendations, the council’s report also targets two grant programs focused on mitigation and disaster insurance, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) and the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).
The report suggests replacing the HMGP with a two-phase Refined Risk Reduction Program. Under that model, states could receive an initial mitigation advance within 30 days and a second allocation within six months, with funding tied to federal priorities, state performance and projects such as repetitive-loss property mitigation and infrastructure hardening.
NFIP, a program created by Congress, offers flood insurance through shared risk among flood losses and development restrictions for floodzones. The report calls the program financially unstable with more than $20 billion in standing debt. Council members also anticipate transitioning from federal management to a centralized network of private insurers, while utilizing updated flood maps and risk rating strategies.
State and local governments would have time to respond to some of the changes proposed by the report. Many of the recommendations would take two or three years to implement, according to the council. Additionally, the report notes many of the largest changes would require congressional action, including replacing Public Assistance, restructuring mitigation grants and reforming flood insurance.
Should the president garner congressional support and direct federal officials to implement the actions, it would signal a shift away from FEMA-led disaster management and response to states and local governments, requiring additional regulatory oversight, training, personnel and planning. On the federal level, council members suggest that the actions would reduce administrative bloat, delays in the delivery of funding and lengthy federal environmental reviews during emergencies.
Photo by G. Edward Johnson, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, from Wikimedia Commons
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