The Case for Pre-Disaster Planning in an Uncertain Federal Landscape

The Pew Charitable Trusts released a report last month that got some well-deserved attention in policy circles: county leaders across the country are calling for simplified federal disaster assistance, more reliable pre-disaster funding, and clearer interagency roles.

It’s a reasonable agenda. And it reflects something I hear consistently from the states and localities I work with.

The fragmentation of federal disaster assistance across 30+ agencies isn’t news to anyone who has navigated a disaster declaration. Different agencies. Different timelines. Different documentation requirements. Different match ratios. States and localities have been managing this complexity for decades.

What’s different now is the uncertainty layered on top of that complexity.

Bigger Disasters, More Questions

The disasters communities face today are more expensive, more visible, and less predictable. The Maui wildfires. North Carolina’s recovery from Helene. These aren’t events that resolve in a year. They drag on, absorb enormous resources, and test every part of the system communities rely on.

At the same time, the federal policy environment is in flux. FEMA’s future staffing and structure is subject to ongoing discussion. The scale of federal investment in disaster recovery — always subject to congressional appropriations — remains a question. State and local officials I talk to are paying close attention to these developments, trying to plan around conditions that aren’t yet settled.

That uncertainty is something communities can and should account for in their planning — not as a reason for alarm, but as a reason to build more local resilience.

A Holding Pattern Has Costs

Most state and local governments are in a wait-and-see mode right now. They’re watching the federal landscape and hoping the programs they’ve relied on will continue to function as expected.

That’s understandable — budget constraints are real, and local governments are stretched. But the cost of inaction is also real. The county leaders in the Pew report are asking for reliable pre-disaster planning funding because they’ve seen the alternative: communities that arrive at disaster recovery unprepared face slower timelines, higher costs, and worse outcomes for residents.

Building Resilience Now

If I’m advising a county commissioner or state recovery director today, the message is the same regardless of what happens at the federal level: invest in pre-disaster mitigation planning while funding is available to support it.

Programs like FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program and various state-level resilience initiatives fund exactly this kind of work. Accessing them takes time and local administrative capacity — both of which need to be developed before a disaster creates urgency.

Beyond grant funding, mitigation planning builds the institutional knowledge communities need: an accurate picture of the housing stock, an understanding of which populations are most exposed, and documented needs that can inform any recovery effort, regardless of which federal programs are available to fund it.

The county leaders calling for a clearer federal resilience agenda are making the right ask. And in the meantime, the most valuable thing local governments can do is build the capacity to lead their own recovery — whatever federal support looks like when they need it.