Appearing on MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation” on Sunday, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont was blunt: “I just don’t know if I can count on [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] right now.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) echoed that sentiment Monday at a Hartford press conference.
“They're hollowing [FEMA] out,” Blumenthal said of the Trump administration. “They're destroying it.”
Blumenthal is calling for an investigation into FEMA’s response to this month’s deadly flooding in Texas, which he says was “inadequate.” He wants the investigation to also cover what dramatic drops in staffing and other cuts will mean for the agency’s ability to respond to future disasters around the country.
“It's not reform, it's demolition that we're seeing. That will impact Connecticut, because response times will be much slower, funds will be lacking, support simply will be absent,” Blumenthal said. “The faults and failings that we've seen, apparently, in Texas will be magnified here in Connecticut as the ramifications of these cuts and delays are seen in even bigger magnitude.”
FEMA’s impact on CT communities
Blumenthal praised last year’s FEMA response to major flooding in Connecticut as an example of what the agency can and should do after an emergency.
“FEMA was on the site literally within hours or days, and helped immeasurably,” Blumenthal said. “Those communities are back on their feet. Businesses are back in business because FEMA was there.”
Moving forward, he said, “I think we ought to be deeply concerned that we may see lapses here in Connecticut.”
Blumenthal also criticized FEMA’s cancellation of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, grant program, which he said has stripped $50 million from Connecticut projects.
“This kind of cancellation is cruel and it's dumb,” Blumenthal said. “It is literally counterproductive and more costly to cancel grants for resilience and prevention of damage due to weather disasters, because ultimately the cost will be higher in having to repair.”
Blumenthal was joined at the press conference by Meriden Mayor Kevin Scarpati, whose city has been impacted by the grant cancellation, with funding stripped in the middle of an $11.1 million project meant to reduce flooding risk along Harbor Brook.
“If these funds aren't here for us to utilize, it's going to be on the backs of our taxpayers who are already strained coming into this budget cycle to finish this project,” Scarpati said. “Let alone the two or three other projects we've got lined up in tandem to make the downtown area of the city of Meriden safer, more resilient, and get dozens of properties out of the 100-year flood plain.”
