Investigations As To How Noem Broke Federal Laws "Managing" FEMA Will Have Plenty To Work With [View all]

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As DHS secretary, Noem also raised eyebrows for an unprecedented degree of control over staffing and spending at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She paused most FEMA payments, leading to extensive delays for disaster recovery, and sought to slash the agency’s on-call workforce by thousands of employees. She also expressed a desire to downsize or eliminate the agency entirely, shifting the burden of disaster relief onto the states. A growing number of critics and experts believe that Noem’s interference with FEMA may well have been illegal. This week, two Senate Democrats released a report alleging that Noem’s blanket freeze on FEMA payments violated federal law. At the same time, lawyers for a federal workers’ union argued to a federal judge in California that Noem’s workforce cuts also violated the law. In both cases, critics pointed to legislation passed after Hurricane Katrina, which prohibits DHS from interfering with FEMA.

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These accusations will remain relevant if Noem’s apparent successor, Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, continues her quest to make permanent changes to FEMA’s structure — a goal that the president has frequently suggested he supports. Though President Trump has in many cases been able to make unilateral cuts to federal programs on a rapid timeline — as with the Department of Education and U.S. Agency for International Development — the post-Katrina law may put FEMA on stronger footing for the rest of the president’s term.

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Congress tried to fix this in 2006 with a law requiring that FEMA leadership have experience in emergency management and giving the agency the ability to report directly to the president during disasters. The law also stated that “the secretary [of DHS] may not substantially or significantly reduce the authorities, responsibilities, or functions … or the capability of the agency.” Noem attempted to do just this. Trump has not nominated anyone to lead FEMA since he assumed office last year — the law requires a FEMA administrator with at least five years of emergency management experience — and has instead designated three different acting administrators, avoiding Senate confirmation and the emergency management experience requirement. The most recent, Karen Evans, has been in office since December. It appears that all three of these acting administrators have taken direct orders from DHS, allowing Noem to fill the leadership vacuum.

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A report released this week by Senators Gary Peters of Michigan and Andy Kim of New Jersey found that the spending pause delayed more than 1,000 disaster-related projects. These included the opening of a call center after the July 4 floods that devastated the Texas Hill Country, temporary housing for survivors of Hurricane Helene and the Maui wildfires, and housing inspections for storm victims in places like Missouri. The senators argue that this blanket spending policy violates the post-Katrina law by depriving FEMA of autonomous control over its disaster spending. (After Senator Tillis berated Noem during her Senate appearance, FEMA released around $80 million in Hurricane Helene recovery funding to his state.)

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https://grist.org/politics/kristi-noem-fema-trump-markwayne-mullin/