From Federal to State and Local: The Shifting Landscape of Disaster Preparedness

On March 20, 2025, President Trump enacted sign an Executive Order (EO) titled “Achieving Efficiency Through State and Local Preparedness", aimed at enhancing national security and infrastructure resilience through state and local preparedness. It emphasizes the importance of common-sense approaches and strategic investments in infrastructure to benefit taxpayers and improve national security. The order empowers state, local, and individual preparedness by prioritizing risk-informed decisions in infrastructure investments, which helps save lives, secure livelihoods, and reduce taxpayer burdens. The order effectively strips out the central role played by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and charges state and local government with responsibility to plan for, respond to, and recover from major disasters. Specifically:

“Within 240 days of the date of this order, the [Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs], shall…recommend to the President the revisions, recissions, and replacements necessary to reformulate the process and metrics for Federal responsibility, move away from an all- hazards approach.”

This is an incredible shift in emergency management doctrine that will ultimately place the Federal finance and execution apparatus of response and recovery directly onto state and local agencies. 

More importantly, and even potentially less obvious (even though it’s right in the EO’s title), is that the fundamental practice of preparedness will be shifted to state and local government. Preparedness is a massive piece of FEMA’s funding portfolio, and it is unclear from the EO how that shift can happen without the hundreds of millions – sometimes billions – of dollars spent by FEMA on state and local preparedness programs every year.

This will be a unique once in a lifetime opportunity in emergency management and preparedness to redesign how we prepare for our greatest disasters. Unless you work in emergency management or public safety, “preparedness” is not a word you hear a lot. It’s one of the four phases of the disaster lifecycle: Mitigation, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery.

Preparedness is all about preparing communities for potential disasters. FEMA spends almost $2 billion a year on preparedness programs, all which fund states and local communities so they can create emergency plans, conduct exercises, stockpile supplies, and manage early warning systems to ensure that communities are ready to face a disaster. FEMA does this almost entirely through grants to the states, which are managed out of the Grant Programs Directorate, or GPD. I only know this because in 2005, I packed up and moved to Washington, DC, after being hired by Booz Allen to support what was then known as the Office of Domestic Preparedness (ODP) inside the recently anointed Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Eventually ODP changed its name to the Office of Grants & Training, and then later, when it was absorbed by FEMA, it became GPD. The name may have changed a few times, but the mission largely stayed the same.

So, what happens when – per this EO – the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA) recommends to the President that, as part of the Federal government’s new focus on efficiency, FEMA’s key functions around preparedness should be moved to the states? Well, FEMA does a *lot*, and it’s important to understand that I’m only focusing on one aspect of the agency’s role in a broad lifecycle of programs and funding. But FEMA’s primary role at the end of the day is to run checks and balances on two swaths of funding; the Disaster Relief Fund DRF, which Congress funds on a somewhat annual basis to pay for disaster response, and non-disaster funded programs, which mostly consist of the programs initially authorized by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. That may sound like a disservice to the many other roles FEMA plays in the emergency management world, but the role of “steward” for grants and contracts is its most critical, as it delivers billions annually in funding, goods, and services to state and local communities on an annual basis.

At the center of that role are literally thousands of people who wake up every day to ensure those programs are a direct representation of the communities they support. So, to answer the “what happens when” question from earlier… the first shift will be organizational. If for some reason the APNSA decides the core offices of FEMA are no longer necessary, and that funding should move directly to the states with no FEMA oversight or adjudication, it will be up to each state to formulate their own plans and policies around the absorption and allocation of that funding. This is a best-case scenario. It’s unclear if the funding will even remain intact if programs and the offices that support them go away. So, then the worst case becomes one where the money goes away entirely, and states will have to identify new revenue streams to make up for the loss to retain the preparedness footing it has built since 9/11.

It's clear that every agency in state and local government that has been touched by these programs will be affected in some way. Either you’re getting a ton of money, and you don’t have the people or infrastructure to manage it, or your funding will be severely cut to the point of states having to implement new taxes to fund some level of continuity to maintain your communities’ readiness. In either case, state and local agencies need to start preparing for this eventual change in how these programs operate now. In less than eight months this is likely to be implemented.

The APNSA has 240 days to make a recommendation, which is just 45 days into the next Federal fiscal year (FY) 2026. That’s about the time FEMA will be making key decisions around their FY 2026 grant programs, which would not afford states a lot of time to react. We all know moving this quickly could cause whiplash, so planning now for a rather uncertain horizon may be the most prudent move. November is also the end of our traditional Hurricane Season. So, take that for what it’s worth.

Unfortunately, a lot of us saw this coming. TJ and I have spent a good amount of time talking about what this kind of move would mean if what had been outlined in the President’s campaign came to fruition and how there would be a need, even if temporary, to absorb that change quickly by state and local agency leadership.  When the order hit yesterday, we knew we had been right to plan for these types of changes. By transferring significant responsibilities from FEMA to the states and local agencies, the role of federal government in disaster preparedness has been redefined, and the resulting financial and organizational challenges for states will be significant. 

With the clock ticking on the APNSA’s recommendations, proactive planning and strategic decision-making will be crucial for ensuring that communities remain resilient in the face of uncertainty. We are here as a resource for any agency that may want to engage key fractional leadership with significant experience in emergency management, grants, organizational change and are ready to start their planning right now.