The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently denied a request for disaster assistance from Allegany County, Maryland, which voted for Donald Trump by a margin of 40 percentage points. Many assumed there had been a bureaucratic misunderstanding. “They thought he was going to take care of the little person,” said one resident. “Because that’s what he said.” The decision was made on the same day that FEMA approved aid for disasters in Alaska, Nebraska, and North Dakota—all states that supported him last year. Requests were denied from Vermont and Illinois—states that voted for Harris.
Are disaster-aid decisions political? Are the Trump administration’s decisions unique? A review of the literature suggests that the “politicization of disaster relief is baked into the cake of electoral politics and congressional resource allocation regardless of who is in charge.”
During the New Deal, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration allocated aid to Western states that were pivotal to getting the president reelected. In the 1990s, “nearly half of all FEMA disaster relief is explained by political influence rather than actual need.… These outcomes are not the product of particular personalities or partisan affiliations, but of the incentives created by the institutional structure of politics.”
My colleague Chris Edwards has recommended transferring the responsibility of disaster response to the states and eliminating FEMA. He listed 10 reasons. The research I have described provides an 11th.