Report: States Need to Reassess Budgets for Disaster Relief
Diane Bernard, Producer
Thursday, July 9, 2020
RICHMOND, Va. -- The summertime hurricane season has come to Virginia, and a new report shows how the Commonwealth funds its responses to natural disasters.
According to the research from The Pew Charitable Trusts, Virginia uses a combination of mechanisms to make sure money is available to pay for destructive natural events, such as flooding, which have increased in the state in recent years.
Researcher Colin Foard, associate manager for fiscal federalism at Pew, says the Commonwealth and other states need to assess their approaches to natural-disaster budgeting as disasters become more expensive, frequent and severe.
"Right now," says Foard, "states are facing mounting challenges relating to rising disaster costs, tight budgets in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing uncertainty about the federal and state roles in paying for disasters."
Virginia ranks 19th in the nation for annual disaster-aid funding from the federal government, according to an online report by GOBankingRates. From 2013 to 2020, it received $151 million in aid.
Robbie Coates, grants administrator for the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, says the Commonwealth does not have a rainy-day fund as other states do. Instead, the department relies on the state budget and requests additional funds as disasters arise.
"A major hurricane that's about to hit Virginia would obviously have a lot more funds associated with it than maybe a smaller-scale event that maybe affects one local jurisdiction," Coates explains. "And we then have to justify those costs."
The Government Accountability Office estimates the federal government spent $460 billion on federal disaster assistance between 2005 and 2019.
Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
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