Hearing

Opening remarks, as prepared, of Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Ranking Member Sam Graves (R-MO) and Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Member Carol Miller (R-WV):

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Ranking Member Sam Graves (R-MO):
First, I want to thank Rhonda Wiley on our second panel for being here today.  She is the Emergency Manager, 911 Director, and Floodplain Manager from Atchison County, Missouri – my home county. 

The flooding in my district is ongoing, making it difficult for us to move to full recovery mode.  Further complicating our recovery efforts is the split declaration for individual assistance.  If your home was flooded on certain dates, you qualify, and if your home was flooded on other dates, you do not.  This makes no sense, given reforms we passed in the Disaster Recovery Reform Act that directed FEMA to give more consideration for localized impact and multiple recent disasters.  Despite this, my constituents are resourceful and resilient.  They have come together to pull resources and help each other.

As Ms. Wiley points out in her written testimony, we may have smaller populations in rural areas like my district, but our communities are critical to the Nation’s supplies of food and other resources.  When even a few people are displaced, that causes a significant impact on the local economy.  Even where the homes and farms of families were not flooded, roads and bridges to access them washed out or are still under water.  It is hard to comprehend, unless you are on the ground to actually see the extent of the flooding.

I am pleased that, along with FEMA, we have EDA here today so we can talk about rebuilding in a way that will also help with our economic recovery.  Last month, EDA announced $2.1 million in grants to communities in Missouri hit by disaster, including Clarksville in my district, and Mississippi County.  In Clarksville, they will be using this money to design a movable flood wall that could protect the town from future flooding along the Mississippi River.

I hope today we can hear how FEMA and EDA are working to get help out quickly to communities hit by disaster and how we can ensure rural and farming communities can recover faster and better.

Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Member Carol Miller (R-WV):
Our Subcommittee’s jurisdiction is expansive, covering all areas of emergency management.  I want to thank the chairwoman for this hearing today because so many communities across this Nation are directly impacted by disasters and are recovering from, or are still dealing with wildfires, flooding, tornadoes and hurricanes.  We have an unprecedented number of open disasters, with FEMA responding to 60% more active disasters than just a year ago.

We need to continue to ensure our oversight is consistent and strong, and where there needs to be reforms, we must be willing to quickly act.  Already this Congress this Committee has acted in bipartisan fashion to pass several pieces of important disaster reform legislation I hope will be enacted by the end of the year.

It is critical we ensure our federal emergency management capabilities are as effective and efficient as possible.  A key piece of this is recovery.  The longer it takes for communities to recover, the longer the impact on people’s lives, the higher the costs to the taxpayer and the longer FEMA and other federal partner resources are spread thin.

Our goal should be to respond and get disaster assistance out the door quickly and support states and local communities in building back faster and better – to mitigate against the next disaster.  As we see more disasters, speed, efficiency and mitigation become even more critical.  We cannot afford to do this the old way, spending years or even decades to recover.  We have given FEMA the tools to do that through reforms we passed after Sandy and more recently in the Disaster Recovery Reform Act. 

We should be seeing recovery move faster.  However, at times, it seems the red tape we take out somehow gets put back in.

We have a duty to ensure disaster funding is used and spent appropriately.  Yet, we also know that going back to the old way of doing things – arguing over every door knob -- will cost the taxpayer more money than simply providing states and communities more flexibility.

Let me be clear – I have a lot of respect for the men and women of FEMA.  They are Americans who put their own lives on hold to be sent to help communities respond to and recover from disasters.  The reforms we enacted should help them do their job faster and easier.

However, despite the improvements needed in FEMA’s process, an even slower and more bureaucratic program is not represented here today.

We invited HUD, given that it has received more than $37 billion since 2017 for its disaster recovery program.  While I appreciate their written testimony and the briefing they provided us, our constituents need to hear publicly from them and what steps they are taking to improve their process.  How do we, as the Committee that oversees federal emergency management programs, do our job if one of the largest disaster programs is not represented here?

I appreciate the witnesses who are here with us today.  I look forward to hearing from them on where we are in our recovery efforts and whether more reforms are needed to ensure we are recovering faster and smarter.