Before his state work, he was a city administrator. Over the years, he served ASFPM in a number of capacities, including chair of the board of directors, chair of the Flood Mitigation Committee, and president of CBOR.

French now owns his own floodplain management consulting firm where he is actively assisting communities with their floodplain management ordinances and administration, preparing pre- and post-disaster mitigation plans and programs, and more. He is also the author of many guides for local officials, floodproofing handbooks, and planning references.

French reflects on the early days of the association

1976: In 1976, the National Flood Insurance Program was eight years old. Only three years earlier did it get the attention of state and local governments when the 1973 Flood Disaster Protection Act effectively made the program mandatory for communities with development in the mapped floodplain. The program was administered by the Federal Insurance Administration (FIA) in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Work with states and communities was done by 10 HUD regional offices.

Illinois had a State Flood Insurance coordinator in Chicago since 1973. The Division of Water Resources viewed the NFIP as an important, but not the only, flood program. That office was also in Chicago, primarily because most of the interest in the program was in the Chicago area, but also to facilitate coordination with FIA. In 1976, there were several hundred communities in the emergency program of the NFIP but only four in the regular program — the phase with specific mapping and regulatory requirements. Today, there are 887 Illinois communities in the regular program.

After 3.5 years in local government, including working for communities that had been flooded, French started as state NFIP coordinator in February 1976. He soon learned that the state office had disagreements with the FIA Regional Office. There were both policy and personality conflicts.  

Illinois was not alone. FIA headquarters, represented by Dick Krimm, came out for a meeting with the states in Region 5 to hear about our concerns with the regional office. That’s the first time French met the other Region 5 state coordinators and learned that they too had concerns about the NFIP.

1977: A second meeting of Region 5 states was called in 1977 and French was asked to host a session where the states could meet separately to talk about concerns.

There had been talk of organizing an association of the NFIP state coordinators. At that meeting at the Division of Water Resources’ office, Gordon Lance of Indiana took the lead as chair of the meeting. There was lots of good discussion, but no one was ready to say “Let’s do it.” Then Jim Wright, Minnesota’s state coordinator, went around the room and asked each person by name if they thought we should form an association. It was unanimous, and the rest, as they say, is history.  

A second point was whether the new organization was for states only or could other organizations join. French was specifically thinking about what is now called the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, which had the authority to set floodplain management standards for 100+ communities in the district. It was a major floodplain management actor in the state’s largest metropolitan area.

At that point it was determined that the association would be for states only because states have specific responsibilities, including the authority to enact state laws and local regulatory enabling legislation. This would change over the years as the association attracted more and more members from the local and private sectors.

French’s side note on the people:

• The head of the FIA’s Regional office, Bill Fucik, was reassigned to Washington, DC. He later came back to head the regional office again and it was like a 180° turn around. We then worked very well with him and he gave us great support.
• Gordon Lance was elected as the first chair of ASFPM, but he left state work a few years later and finished his career in the Army Corps of Engineers. He was replaced by Bill Trakimas as state coordinator of Indiana.
• Jim Wright also left state work and went to head the floodplain management office of the Tennessee Valley Authority. He served on the Federal Interagency Floodplain Management Task Force for TVA, where he continued to be a very strong supporter of ASFPM and state concerns.
• It should be noted that all six states that make up Region 5 were active in the formation of the association. The other state coordinators present in 1977 and 1978 were Larry Larson, Wisconsin; Jim Boulton, Michigan; and Peter Finke, Ohio. Other state staff present included Bill Trakimas, Indiana; Pat Bloomgren, Minnesota; and Dave Boyce, John Lardner, Larry Sanders, and Brent McMahan of Illinois. There were always comments about how the host state got to pack the room, but there was only one vote per state.

As host of the 1977 and 1978 meetings (technically the first two conferences of the association) French drafted the agenda and identified the leading issues. We discussed a lot of topics, but additional discussions took place in the hotel rooms at night during that week, which is a rich part of ASFPM lore.

1979: The first annual conference that included states from outside Region 5 was held in St Paul, hosted by Pat Bloomgren, the successor to Gordon Lance as chair and to Jim Wright as state coordinator for Minnesota. It was very interesting to discover other states around the country having the same concerns we did. Newcomers who made an impression included Ed Bush of Alaska (who knew that Alaska shared the same concerns as the Midwest?) and Bob Hendrix of Nebraska, who became the first non-Region 5 chair of ASFPM in 1982.

1979: Larry Larson was elected chair at St. Paul and there was a new effort to work with FIA. President Carter’s head of FIA, Gloria Jimenez, and other headquarters staff appeared more willing to work with ASFPM. French was impressed with this willingness when Gloria called him to discuss Illinois’s position on some issues — something that would not have happened if ASFPM had not been formed.  

This was the first of several meetings that Gloria attended in person and was the meeting where Mark Riebau and Larry Larson suggested that the states would be in a better position to support FIA’s efforts with local governments if they had cost-shared resources to hire additional staff. Not long after, Gloria announced the creation of the State Assistance Program (SAP). This program led to many states adding staff and getting more active in the NFIP. One shortcoming was that inexperienced states became dependent on SAP for both staffing and direction. SAP developed over the years. Today, every state and territory is still being offered cost share funding under what became the Community Assistance Program-State Support Services Element (CAP-SSSE).

1981: A new Federal Insurance Administrator was appointed by President Reagan. Jeff Bragg started making changes to staffing and programs. His major drive was to make the NFIP self-supporting. Jeff was a very strong promoter of eliminating the NFIP’s subsidy of insurance premiums.

ASFPM had two major problems with this. The first was that the federal subsidy was very important to getting communities to join the NFIP, one of the primary jobs of the state coordinators. Removing the incentive would reduce the number of participating communities. In our view, the basic compact of the NFIP, local floodplain management in return for subsidized flood insurance, was being rescinded.

Secondly, Jeff had a very strong insurance interest and it appeared that the importance of floodplain management in the agency was decreasing. Our interests were being threatened. A good number of headquarters and regional staff seemed to share our concerns.

1985: Relations with FEMA headquarters were at a low point. At our 1985 national conference in New Orleans, FEMA sent only two representatives, both from headquarters, down from a dozen or more FEMA headquarters and regional staff who came to some previous conferences. It was an explicit message.

Within ASFPM there appeared to be two factions, one in support of following Jeff Bragg’s lead and the other pushing for a stronger commitment to floodplain management, to the states, and to keeping the subsidy. While there were two “factions,” there were really just a few spokespersons for each side. Most members watched.

The spokesperson for the first perspective was Bill Trakimas, vice chair of ASFPM and chair of our Insurance Committee. He had been to FEMA HQ more than most anyone and carried the message back to the association. As vice chair, he was the obvious successor to the Chair Jean Brown who announced he was not running for re-election.

French was chair of the Mitigation Committee at the time, not even on the Board, but he was called by other states and encouraged to run against Trakimas. After some deliberation, French called Trakimas and told him he was going to run. French won the election at the New Orleans conference where he took the good advice from Jon Kusler, who told him “You have to go to Washington and talk to them.”

Larry Larson (the executive director since 1982) and French went to Washington and met with Jeff Bragg, other FEMA staff, some other state organizations, the Corps, and several Congressional staffers. At their meeting, Jeff Bragg said something to the effect of “I don’t care what the states think, we’re going to make the NFIP self-supporting.” French told Larry and the board that we couldn’t roll over when someone says he doesn’t care what the states think. The association needed to act.

The best way we could show folks that the states (i.e., ASFPM) mattered would be to send a message on the effort to eliminate the subsidy. French and Larry made several trips back to Washington to explain the NFIP and the benefits of the subsidy to more Congressional staffers. They had help from a former head of FEMA’s Congressional relations office, Martha Braddock (who was later replaced by Merrie Inderfurth as our Congressional relations liaison). Congressional staffers wanted to hear from us folks in the field.

Within a year or so, Congress voted to cap the increases on NFIP premiums at 10% per year. French thought that was the perfect outcome: both sides got something ‒ Jeff Bragg got his premium increases and we got the message across: FEMA couldn’t jack up rates fast in order to make the NFIP self-supporting. We are an organization that had a little clout, at least enough that federal agencies need to listen to what ASFPM has to say.

Another side note on people from French:

• Trakimas stayed on as Insurance Committee Chair and supported the association in every way. He was the epitome of an ASFPM member – always working toward the common good. His contacts with FEMA staff were very valuable.
• I have to say that Jeff Bragg was a straight shooter. He never sugar-coated where he was coming from and always came through on his statements to us. As with Trak, Jeff was the lightning rod for the position that most of us opposed. To his credit, Jeff initiated the concept of the Community Rating System in FEMA. To him it was an insurance tool, but to us it became an effective way to encourage communities to go beyond the minimum NFIP floodplain management requirements.

1987 and soon after: At the end of his term as chair, French called a meeting at FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute (EMI) with a number of ASFPM leaders. Bill Riebsame, head of the Natural Hazards Center in Boulder, was asked to facilitate a session that would tackle some of our organizational growing pains. The best outcome of the session was the support of the Administrative Council or AdCo, a loose group of 5–10 leaders the chair would select based on the topics to be discussed. and which ASFPM could afford to bring together since there was not enough money to bring the entire board). The AdCo recommendations were provided to the board to assist in providing direction for the organization.

AdCo had 2–3 day meetings a couple of times a year at different locations around the country. Depending on the issues, different people were invited. A key person who attended a couple of sessions and who had no real position as a committee chair or anything, was Janie Douglass of Kentucky. She was a highly influential resource and very active in getting ASFPM to expand its voting franchise to all individual members (except federal employees). The board of directors was also reorganized to allow non-state employees to be members. In 1988, French left state government to start French & Associates, Ltd. He has continued to help with association issues. He returned to the position of chair of the Mitigation Committee for a number of years and testified in support of mitigation funding as part of FEMA’s Disaster Assistance program where the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program was added in 1988. He has served on the inaugural Certification Board of Regents (CBOR) and was its second president. He was also instrumental in the formation and execution of the Community Rating System. In 2018, French was designated a Fellow of the ASFPM Foundation.