State/Federal Partnerships
As an active partner in responding and recovering to disasters, the federal government must continue to work with governors, states and local governments to provide support for developing and maintaining critical homeland security and emergency management capabilities. Leveraging resources, strengthening coordination and improving information exchange between federal and state authorities remains critical to addressing these challenges and meeting the homeland security and public safety needs of our states and the nation. This includes considering the following:
Developing national plans and strategies in collaboration among federal, state and local governments;
Adequately funding any federal law requirements imposed on states;
Proactively working with state resources, including the robust network of state and local fusion centres, state and local first res-ponders and the National Guard;
Providing maximum flexibility on how grant funds are used and affirming that grant funds should be coordinated through the state;
The federal government, in collaboration with states, should enhance efforts to secure critical infrastructure, transportation systems and food supply chains, including increased use of advanced technology;
Maintaining and expanding efforts to enhance mitigation practices, foster regional collaboration and build more resiliency into disaster preparedness activities.
The Impacts of Cuts to Grant Programs
As you know, Government Grant administers over $2 billion annually in state and local grant programs. This investment helps states develop and sustain critical capabilities such as intelligence fusion centres, statewide interoperable emergency communications and specialised regional response teams. These state and local capabilities allow the federal government to focus efforts on more critical gaps and vulnerabilities.
The success of these grant programs impacts the daily lives of our citizens, and ensures our nation continues to prepare for, respond to and recover from all disasters.
Considerations for Grant Reform and Improvements
As Congress and the Administration look to either reform or modify grant programs, we ask that you continue to ensure that grants maintain strong baseline funding, are risk-based and continue to provide each state and territory funding to support critical homeland security and emergency management capabilities, including personnel costs and the sustainment of investments. Governors believe federal funding provided to states should focus on developing or enhancing common core capabilities and support efforts to measure the effectiveness of grant funds in building and maintaining preparedness and response capabilities.
Funding should focus on developing, enhancing and sustaining common core capabilities.
The federal government should work with states and territories to develop consistent methods to measure or assess progress in achieving common core capabilities.
Grant funding should be distributed through states and territories to enhance regional response capabilities, avoid duplication of effort and ensure awareness of gaps in capabilities.
Consistent with current law, states should be permitted to use a portion of the grant funds for management and administration in order to coordinate the efficient and effective use of grant funds, provide necessary oversight and comply with federal reporting requirements.
Additional reforms to current grant funding programs should evaluate the opportunity to provide additional support for pre-disaster mitigation and resilience investments that can measurably reduce risks and costs associated with future response and recovery.
Any reform to the current grant programs should be collaborative and provide states with flexibility to determine which priorities should be funded and where investments should be made within their borders.
Any grant program should allow flexibility for state cost-share requirements.
The federal government should provide clear, timely and explicit guidelines for conducting threat assessments and how those assessments will be used to determine base-level funding.
The federal government should be more transparent with states in sharing the data used to populate the funding formula/algorithm. States should be provided with a centralized point of contact and reasonable time to review and inform the data.
The federal government should ensure that reforms eliminate inefficiencies, without duplicating efforts, or placing additional administrative burdens on states.
Grants should allow for multi-year strategic planning by states and local jurisdictions.
Ongoing, dedicated federal support is crucial to ensure states and localities have sufficient capacity to handle more routine disasters. Governors and the federal government share the responsibility of ensuring the safety and security of the citizens of the country. States have continued to respond efficiently to disasters even with decreased federal support.