Hurricane season officially began June 1, and as a Mississippian who navigated Katrina in 2005, I don’t need a reminder of what’s at stake. I watched that storm devastate communities across my state and saw friends lose everything overnight. But I also saw what’s possible when leaders rise to the moment: my former boss, Governor Haley Barbour, became a national model for disaster response. His central lesson was that the best recovery happens when leadership focuses on people, not process, and that’s exactly what federal disaster reform today is finally trying to get right.
In early May, two major developments reshaped the federal disaster landscape. The President’s FEMA Review Council released a sweeping final report calling for the most significant restructuring of federal disaster policy in a generation, and Congress quietly enacted a new law requiring FEMA to publicly track all disaster reimbursement requests in real time. This is a transparency win that local governments have sought for years.
Meanwhile, the bipartisan Fixing Emergency Management for Americans (FEMA) Act passed out of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee by a 57-3 vote in September 2025 and is still awaiting a floor vote. This past February, 50 members of the House from both parties signed a letter urging leadership to bring the bill to the floor, a sign of sustained bipartisan support. Taken together, these developments signal that federal disaster policy is entering a period of genuine, consequential change.
What's Actually Being Proposed
The FEMA Review Council’s report, approved May 7, 2026, puts forward ten recommendations built around a single organizing principle: disaster response should be locally executed, state-managed, and federally supported.
In practical terms, that means:
- Money moves faster. The current system requires project-by-project damage assessments before any reimbursement flows. The Council proposes replacing that with a parametric model, with funds triggered by objective measures like wind speed or flood depth, released to states within 30 days of a disaster declaration. No more waiting years for federal approval on each subgrant.
- The bar for federal involvement goes up. Federal disaster declarations would be reserved for events that genuinely overwhelm state and local capacity. Smaller disasters would no longer automatically trigger federal involvement.
- Individual assistance gets simpler. More than 15 overlapping assistance categories would be consolidated into a single direct payment: up to $150,000 for homeowners, up to six months of rent for renters. Survivors would know upfront what they’re entitled to, without navigating a maze of applications.
- Hazard mitigation funding gets redesigned. The proposed replacement mitigation grant program would put initial mitigation money in states’ hands within 30 days with states managing the process, rather than a 12+ month federal approval process.
- Overhead gets capped. Nearly 25 cents of every disaster dollar currently goes to administrative costs rather than communities. The Council calls for hard caps and a reduced role for private consultants.
- FEMA gets restructured. The agency would be rebranded, downsized at headquarters, and refocused with more authority and resources flowing to regional offices and state partners over a two-to-three-year transition.
The Congressional Track: The FEMA Act
Separate from the Review Council, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed the bipartisan FEMA Act. The bill would make FEMA an independent, cabinet-level agency by removing it from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and institute sweeping reforms to both public assistance and individual assistance programs.
Key provisions of direct relevance to local governments include a shift from the reimbursement model to a grant model to eliminate and streamline reviews and recovery, as well as a public assistance dashboard requirement that mirrors what Congress already enacted in the DHS funding bill.
The Transparency Win That's Already Law
Section 313 of the recently enacted DHS funding bill is already on the books. It requires FEMA to build and maintain a publicly accessible dashboard tracking every reimbursement request under the public assistance program, the mechanism through which communities recover costs for roads, utilities, and public infrastructure after a federally declared disaster.
FEMA must post data within 90 days of receiving a request, and within 60 days of a project entering final review. Every grant will be visible at the project level: cost estimates, submission dates, project descriptions, and the federal-versus-local cost share breakdown.
What This Means for Your Community
More responsibility, more autonomy, and more accountability will flow to states and localities. That is both an opportunity and a challenge. Prepared communities will be better positioned to capture faster funding and meet new compliance expectations; unprepared ones may face a higher bar before federal help arrives at all.
There are concrete steps municipal leaders should be thinking through now:
- Understand your current open disasters. If your community has outstanding public assistance reimbursements, the new dashboard will make that status visible to you and to the public. Know where you stand before that transparency arrives.
- Assess your state’s readiness. Much of what the Review Council proposes depends on states having the fiscal and operational capacity to absorb greater responsibility. Understanding how your state is positioning itself matters for how local governments plan.
- Build relationships now. Whether funding ultimately flows through a reformed FEMA, a restructured grant program, or new state-managed mechanisms, the communities with existing relationships at the state and federal level will be better positioned to navigate the transition.
- Plan around uncertainty. None of the Review Council’s recommendations are law yet, and the congressional timeline is compressed. Communities should plan for multiple scenarios rather than assuming a single outcome.
The Bottom Line
Federal disaster policy has been broken for a long time. What’s different now is that the political will and legislative momentum for real change appear to be converging. The Review Council report, the FEMA Act, and the new dashboard requirement represent the most serious reform effort in decades. For municipal leaders, the window to get ahead of this is now.
Shellie Purvis
Managing Director
Named a “2024 Top Lobbyist,” Shellie Purvis excels in navigating the federal funding landscape, securing over $200 million for municipal and private sector clients across infrastructure, transportation, clean energy, and emergency management sectors. Her strategic approach to the budget and appropriations process transforms challenging objectives into funded initiatives. She has proven particularly effective in revitalizing small community infrastructure, advancing major metropolitan initiatives, and engineering congressional reporting requirements with critical federal policy implications. While others see roadblocks in Washington’s tight fiscal landscape, Shellie’s unique ability to discover alternative funding solutions has established her as a crucial partner for clients with complex federal objectives. Her command of both technical details and political dynamics enables her to consistently deliver results in even the most challenging budgetary environments.