As hurricane season begins, a storm is gathering that may have ruinous consequences for local governments. Unlike the storms that build off the coast of West Africa, this one is human-induced, and took a notable portion of Flagler County Emergency Management Director Jonathan Lord’s annual briefing on the hurricane season that begins today.
On May 7, the 12-person council President Trump appointed to recommend an overhaul to the Federal Emergency Management Agency released its final report, proposing to do just that. The recommendations, which would have to win congressional approval, would make it more difficult for disaster areas to win federal designations, which in turn will make it more difficult for those areas to be eligible for money.
Under proposed rules, a third of the disasters between 2012 and 2025 would not have been eligible for the designation. The financial burden for storm recovery would shift significantly to states and local governments. If, for instance, Hurricane Matthew in 2016 had not been a federally declared disaster, the federal government would not have provided three-quarters of the cost to rebuild the Flagler Beach pier, or 75 percent of the cost of several beach-reconstruction segments. Local emergency management, city and county governments and the sheriff’s Office would not have been reimbursed for storm overtime and other storm-related expenses. Debris removal would have been a fully local cost.
If that had happened with Hurricane Matthew, it would have “wiped out” the county’s reserves, Lord said. The reserves are healthier now, at $7.3 million, but it would not take much to deplete them.
The new rules also propose to shrink the National Flood Insurance Program.
“The burden of disaster cost shifts more to state and local governments and less on the federal government,” Lord said. “So, based on that, my expectation is it’s going to be harder for a community to be cleared for disaster moving forward,” if the proposals are adopted in law.
“I am not a fan of that in any way, shape, form. I’m just being a realist that I think that’s what’s going to happen,” Lord said.
Right now, he said, there is a myriad of programs across multiple federal agencies that residents impacted by disasters can tap into. The review council suggested that the programs all be consolidated into one to make it easier. But it will be harder to qualify for what money there is.
“As we sit today, that has not changed yet,” Lord said. “It takes FEMA, it takes Congress, as well as the President to implement these changes over time, and I don’t assume they would happen right away. But that is what the report is recommending. I think it fundamentally changes disaster funding for the country, and it doesn’t spread the risk out in the same way it used to, so I’m definitely not a fan of that concept. But whether I’m a fan or not, ultimately one of the reasons we have an emergency management program is we need to build the programs and we need to assume that some of these changes are happening and we need to make sure our communities are prepared whether or not the federal government’s there to help us financially. We have to do that as a county government. We have to take care of our community, regardless of the federal financial backstop being available.”
But county funds may not be enough, especially when the second gathering storm is taken into account. That’s the special session taking place in Tallahassee this week. It could potentially result in a proposed constitutional amendment that would either wipe out homesteaded property taxes altogether or diminish them significantly. The voters would have to approve the proposal with a 60 percent majority at the November ballot. If they do, that, too, would not only fundamentally change the way government is funded, but the way it operates. Relying on local dollars for disasters may not be an option.
“I’m extremely concerned about the loss of homestead revenue, not just for emergency management, for every service our community is provided by its local governments,” Lord said, including the cities. As with FEMA, he said, “changing property taxes are a fundamental shift on services, or how services are funded at the local level, and decisions that have to be made by our elected officials of prioritizing services if local tax revenue is not there.”
If the FEMA transformation takes place alongside a reduction or elimination of homesteaded property taxes, a hurricane would be only half the disaster. The other half would be the local governments’ difficulties in meeting the financial challenge to rebuild. Hurricanes are not in anyone’s control. Funding policy is, as Lord notes.
“Our residents, our voting residents, need to be well aware of what those impacts are. Your votes have consequences, right?” he said. “Isn’t that what the elections office says all the time? Votes have consequences. Maybe it’s a good consequence for somebody, maybe it’s a bad consequence. So property tax elimination or significant reduction will have significant consequences, including the ability to fund disaster programs and be ready for disaster programs that are inherently currently funded at the local level throughout the entire state of Florida.”
The bulk of the cost in disaster response is always local. But that bulk is made up in sizable part of property tax revenue. “The folks that are helping rescue people are coming from our fire stations, coming from our sheriff’s deputies and our police departments,” Lord said. “They are local folks that are funded locally. To lose those individuals or have a reduction in those inherently totally changes our ability to take care of ours.”
Homesteaded property taxes account for 60 percent of local general fund revenue. To lose that, Lord said, is a “fundamental change in our ability to prepare and take care of our community.”
Lord’s annual media roundtable at the Emergency Operations Center is typically a repeat of known facts and methods, summaries of planned responses in case of a major storm, predictions by the major forecasters–this year, 13 to 14 named storms, six to seven hurricanes, two to three major hurricanes–and the names of coming storms (Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, and so on.) That was all part of his presentation, too.
So was his customary reminder that the forecasts mean nothing when it takes just one storm to devastate a community. Flagler County has not had a direct hit by a hurricane in decades. That, too, is meaningless, as is the “old wives’ tale,” as Lord put it with understandable hesitation (over the terminology’s old style sexism) that Flagler County is immune from hurricanes. There is no such immunity, he said, noting that the Panhandle thought it was immune from Category 5 hurricanes, until Hurricane Michael struck in 2018.
It is all about preparedness, Lord said, including raising the number of people who are part of the AlertFlagler system that immediately informs residents, no matter where they are, of emergencies–tornadoes, severe storms, a criminal on the loose. (Register here.)
Unquestionably, however, the storm on Lord’s mind is also the potential combined realignment of FEMA and local revenue. As with many storms, the probability of a worst-case scenario is low. But it is nowhere near zero. This cone of probability has all of Florida in its sights, and it is becoming more inescapable by the day.
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