Give States the Power to Lead TA Efforts for Hazard Mitigation

For my first column of 2023 I thought that I would write about something near and dear to my heart – Technical Assistance (TA). In my early career while working in Ohio’s floodplain management program and with FEMA’s Community Assistance Program (CAP), we provided technical assistance to nearly 700 Ohio communities that were participating in the NFIP. What I didn’t know at the time is that CAP is a particularly good model for how a TA program should work. First, it leverages state staff to provide technical assistance to the communities in that state. After all, who better to know and understand a community’s needs, barriers, and opportunities than state staff who talk to community members every day and are familiar with each state’s unique policies, programs, and laws? Experience shows that few communities, especially small and financially disadvantaged ones, will ever call a federal agency for advice; but many of them have relationships with the state staff who they talk with on a regular basis.

Here is a little history on CAP. By 1978, there were 16,116 participating communities in the NFIP, but only 2,818 were in the regular program; the rest were in the emergency program. A 1979 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted continuing deficiencies in Federal Insurance Administration’s (FIA – the predecessor to today’s FIMA) monitoring of communities’ compliance with NFIP requirements, which were updated in 1976. The GAO also observed that FIA makes relatively few visits to communities and noted “major differences in the approach, scope, and duration of the visits conducted by personnel from two different [FIA] regional offices.”

ASFPM leaders at the time met with FIA Administrator Gloria Jimenez to discuss ways that technical assistance could be effectively performed by states. In 1979, the State Assistance Program (SAP) was created. In 1985, the Community Assistance Program (CAP) was established to provide assistance on floodplain management to communities by drawing on state resources in addition to FEMA’s regional offices. The State Support Services Element, which replaced the SAP, used states to provide this assistance. Similarly, the Federal Support Services Element makes use of federal agencies, such as the TVA, USGS, the Corps of Engineers, and the Soil Conservation Service. 

In 2017, FEMA initiated a comprehensive evaluation of the CAP program which resulted in a report containing several conclusions and recommendations for improvement. One of the conclusions was:

Across the board, FEMA, the States, and other stakeholders and previous evaluators of the CAP-SSSE program agree that States play a critical role in the success of the NFIP. The long-standing partnership between FEMA and the States as well as the flexibility of the CAP-SSSE grant itself provide an important opportunity for States to utilize and apply their unique expertise and understanding to ensure their communities are safer and more resilient.

The report noted that the amount of technical assistance provided by states was extensive. For example, between 2001 and 2017, states conducted over 31,000 Community Assistance Contacts and Community Assistance Visits through the CAP program. Today, CAP is nearing the completion of a multi-year transformation which not only has reinvented the structure of the program but has expanded available funding resources; increasing funding levels from about $10 million/year to its current $15 million/year. The three primary goals of CAP today are: 1) Grow local capacity and capability to improve resiliency through floodplain management, 2) Build state floodplain management capability and promote strong state inter-agency coordination and collaboration, and 3) Promote the benefits and drive demand for strong floodplain management development standards and insurance.

I mention this bit of history because FEMA and several other federal agencies have identified a tremendous need to provide technical assistance across various programs, and many of the models that have been suggested are limited at best. In short, a model for federal programs with direct federal assistance to communities will never be successful because the federal government simply doesn’t have the bandwidth or local perspective to help the more than 22,00 communities that need it.

In terms of FEMA programs, ASFPM has suggested a new funding approach for hazard mitigation technical assistance modeled after the CAP program. This approach would serve to build a base state capability to successfully implement FEMA’s array of mitigation programs, including providing technical assistance to communities who otherwise do not have that capacity. The state would still retain state management costs as a surge funding when capacity is needed due to disaster or when large grant awards need monitoring. We are currently working on this idea with a couple members of Congress who’ve expressed interest in a new approach. Further, ASFPM continues to work with other agencies, including the US Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA, in providing input on how best to provide technical assistance. While there are many TA models and approaches out there, few have proven to be as successful as those where dedicated state-level professionals do the work.

Your partner in loss reduction,