A Trump administration panel tasked with reviewing the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s portfolio has unveiled its full plan to shift the brunt of the responsibility for disaster response to state and local governments.

In its plan, the Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council called for a major overhaul of disaster response: making it more difficult for states to qualify for federal aid, consolidating federal assistance for individuals into one payment program, and emphasizing that state and local authorities should be taking the lead role after natural disasters. Several of the changes it calls for would require Congress to act.

The FEMA Review Council’s final report comes after months of delay: It was initially expected to release its report in December before the council’s meeting was abruptly canceled.

The public’s instinct during a national disaster is to “rely on or expect the federal government to complete a whole-of-government national response,” the report reads, calling thisa “misconception.”

Instead, the report calls for creating a national standard for state disaster response and transforming FEMA to “reinvigorate a national system to ensure” state, local, and private and nonprofit entities can work together.

One of the council’s recommendations to hold states more accountable is to make the threshold higher for states to receive federal funding. The report says that the current process “does not adequately account” for local governments’ ability to respond to a disaster and “disincentivizes” local disaster-preparedness efforts.

The report also criticizes the red tape involved in FEMA’s current Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, saying it “is hampered by administrative burdens that delay funding distribution until well after rebuilding begins.” To fix this, the agency recommends a state-led system in which “project priorities are nationally set and environmental reviews are handled locally.”

And to help with the agency’s “confusing” and “inefficient” individual assistance program, the council recommends making temporary emergency shelters the responsibility of states.

“Number one, return leadership of emergency response and recovery to the states and to the tribes and to the territories,” former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, a member of the council, said in a meeting Thursday morning with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. “I’ve said that several times, but nothing can be more important than empowering the states to take on this responsibility.”

Michael Coen, a former FEMA chief of dtaff in the Biden administration, doesn’t think these changes will be easily implemented.

“The final meeting illuminates the significant risks the nation faces and the necessity of emergency management,” Coen said in a statement to NOTUS. “The next step should be collaboration between the Executive branch and Congress. The goals of these recommendations can’t fully be implemented without legislative statutory changes.”

“FEMA has been changing and improving since 1979 and the work continues,” he said. “As a nation we should be judged by how we support communities and disaster survivors during challenging times.”

In addition to giving states more responsibility, the report recommends that FEMA review the number of employees it has working in the field versus at headquarters every two to three years, in an effort to reduce “the agency’s bureaucratic bloat.”

Ahead of the meeting, disaster advocates were skeptical that the council’s findings would reflect the issues at the agency. The disaster-recovery advocacy group Sabotaging Our Safety gave FEMA failing grades for its leadership, hurricane preparedness and workforce in its own report card ahead of the meeting.