State Officials Are on Edge About FEMA’s Bandwidth as DHS Shutdown Drags on

State officials are starting to get nervous about what the ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown means for the Federal Emergency Management Agency as the funding lapse drags on.

FEMA, the disaster-response agency which is housed under DHS, is in regular contact with communities recovering from disaster, and many of its critical operations continue to operate through a reserve of cash unaffected by the shutdown. But on Wednesday, FEMA reportedly paused the deployment of more than 300 responders prepared to travel to disaster-stricken areas.

State officials had concerns about how else the agency might be strained.

“Local governments have bills to pay and already-tight budgets,” a spokesperson for North Carolina Democratic Gov. Josh Stein told NOTUS in a statement. “They need to be reimbursed for disaster-related expenses in a timely manner, and the largest law enforcement agency in the country should have basic measures of accountability. There is no reason we can’t have both of those things.”

The governor’s office added that the shutdown would affect the distribution of grants and mitigation programs would be affected.

Farther north, the ongoing Potomac River spill, where an estimated 300 million gallons of sewage have flooded into the river, has led to a round of finger-pointing over who is responsible for the cleanup, despite the fact that the line that collapsed is under the federal government’s jurisdiction.

The Trump administration is arguing that Maryland is responsible for requesting assistance from FEMA to help (though FEMA is not typically involved in the response to this type of sewage spill). Anna Sierra, an assistant secretary at the Maryland Department of Emergency Management, told NOTUS on Thursday that the state won’t be requesting FEMA assistance “because the responsibility for the repair and subsequent clean up does not fall to Maryland.”

Still, Sierra said that a lengthy shutdown could create problems for the state should another crisis occur.

“A prolonged federal shutdown could affect certain administrative functions at the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Sierra said. “If Maryland were to request a federal disaster declaration for a future incident, the review and approval process could be delayed due to staff furloughs.”

The DHS and FEMA did not respond to a request for comment.

But a top official at FEMA told members of Congress last week that the agency’s Disaster Relief Fund, the cash reserve FEMA is continuing to operate on, could be “seriously strained” if a disaster occurred during a shutdown.

Tom Sivak, a former FEMA regional official in the Biden administration, told NOTUS that the only employees typically allowed to work with pay through the shutdown are employees deployed to disasters funded by the Disaster Relief Fund.

“It means that the day-to-day employees that engage with states and tribal nations in communities for technical assistance or just our day-to-day administrative work that relates to preparedness and readiness and response, those employees are not working right now,” Sivak said.

“The bottom line is this, disasters have no boundaries,” he continued. “Communities on both sides of the aisle are impacted by disasters, have been impacted by disasters in the recent weeks.”

Several states had already been working with FEMA following January’s winter storms, which hit Tennessee, Mississippi and other Southern states the hardest. North and South Carolina have continued working with FEMA in long-term response to Hurricane Helene.

Tiffanie Barrett, the chief of public information of the state’s emergency management division, told NOTUS Wednesday that it’s “in close coordination” with FEMA during the shutdown and said that the state’s Hurricane Helene recovery efforts haven’t been disrupted.

As of this week, more than 300,000 acres have also been scorched across Oklahoma and Kansas as fires continue to burn through the region.

Republicans from those states argued that they were well-positioned for disaster response.

A spokesperson for Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford’s office told NOTUS that the state’s emergency management agency was “prepared” ahead of the DHS shutdown and added that FEMA “quickly” approved grants to help with the wildfire response. The spokesperson said the senator’s office doesn’t expect other projects to be hindered by the shutdown.

But even as they blamed Democrats for the shutdown, at least one Republican acknowledged that the state may eventually come to rely on the federal government to step in to help with wildfire response.

“At this time, Kansans have responded to the needs of our communities, but as dangerous wildfires continue across our state, our communities may depend on federal assistance,” said Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall in a statement to NOTUS. “I remain in close contact with state and local officials and will continue working to make sure Kansans have the resources they need.”

Democrats are refusing to provide Republicans with votes to fund DHS until they agree to new guidelines for federal immigration officers. It’s a sticking point that Democrats, including some candidates, are largely standing behind.

“I think that this is a worthy cause right now, because ICE cannot keep killing American citizens without some sort of repercussions or some sort of guardrails,” Evan Turnage, a former top lawyer for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer who is now challenging Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson for his seat, told NOTUS.

“But on the other hand, it shouldn’t be the case that people who might need other services from DHS like disaster relief are left in the cold as well … I’m not aware at the moment of any particular FEMA projects that are in jeopardy right now,” Turnage added. “But the calculus might change if that changes.”