Sen. Peter Welch said “administrative bloat” at the Federal Emergency Management Agency is consuming resources that would otherwise go to disaster survivors, and he introduced legislation this week that would investigate how much of the agency’s budget is spent on bureaucratic overhead.
Vermont Public published a report earlier this summer that found that, after last summer’s floods, FEMA incurred nearly $80 million in administrative costs on a recovery mission that distributed $44 million to flood survivors.
Welch told Vermont Public this week that the findings highlight a pattern of “administrative bloat and bureaucratic inefficiency at FEMA.”
“When talking to colleagues in other parts of the country, they’ve seen it as well,” Welch said.
Welch said the FEMA Operational Transparency Act would direct the federal Government Accountability Office to conduct an audit of administrative costs at FEMA and also recommend ways to reduce those overhead costs.
“So this audit would be about documenting what the administrative costs are, and the goal would be to reduce administrative costs and increase direct assistance,” he said.
So this audit would be about documenting what the administrative costs are, and the goal would be to reduce administrative costs and increase direct assistance.Sen. Peter Welch
Welch said the audit would track the ratio of administrative costs to recovery assistance in various FEMA programs, including public assistance, individual assistance and hazard mitigation.
FEMA did not respond to a request for an interview for this story.
All three members of Vermont’s congressional delegation sent a letter to FEMA last month calling for “long-term and structural” reform at the agency.
Flood survivors in Vermont say they’ve struggled to navigate bureaucratic hurdles at FEMA as they seek to draw down individual assistance for damage related to last year’s floods. And municipalities say similar obstacles in the public assistance program have led to long delays in towns getting reimbursed for the cost to repair roads, bridges and other local infrastructure.
Welch said he hopes the GAO’s review will set the stage in Congress for a radical overhaul of FEMA’s national structure. He and other federal lawmakers favor a disaster-response system that gives state and local officials more control over the distribution of federal recovery funds.
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