Two Democratic Senators sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Friday urging her to end a policy requiring her personal sign-off on grants of more than $100,000.
“We write to convey our deep concerns about the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) policy requiring the Secretary’s personal approval of all expenditures exceeding $100,000, including those for disaster-related costs,” wrote Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.).
“This directive, as currently implemented, creates dangerous delays and undermines the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) effectiveness, placing lives at unnecessary risk,” they continued.
This comes after reports that FEMA’s response to the devastating Texas floods in June may have been delayed by Noem’s policy.
The letter said this resulted in call centers being “understaffed in the crucial early days of the disaster, leaving thousands of survivors without answers or assistance.”
The senators argue $100,000 is an extremely low threshold given the scale of FEMA’s work. Disaster recovery often requires millions of dollars in resources to be mobilized in hours. These extra bureaucratic steps, according to the letter, also hinder the agency’s ability to coordinate with other local agencies.
“These failures are not isolated missteps, but foreseeable outcomes of a policy that centralizes decision-making at the expense of speed and flexibility,” the senators wrote.
Noem last month denied the policy had slowed federal response efforts in Texas, saying it was an “accountability measure” in an interview with NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”
“So those claims are false,” she told NBC News’s Kristen Welker about the reports. “They’re from people who won’t put their name behind those claims. And those call centers were fully staffed and responsive. And this is the fastest, I believe, in years, maybe decades, that FEMA has been deployed to help individuals in this type of situation.”
Murray and Peters set an Aug. 31 deadline for Noem to respond to several questions in the letter.
Among the questions is, “What metrics, if any, are being used to evaluate whether the Secretary review policy improves accountability or financial stewardship without compromising emergency response?” Another one asks, “Has DHS conducted or commissioned any after-action reviews to assess how the Secretary’s review policy affected the response to the Central Texas floods or other disasters? If so, please share those findings.”
The Hill has reached out to DHS for comment on the letter.
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