Governor Kim Reynolds says if President Trump shuts down FEMA — the Federal Emergency Management Agency — the State of Iowa will be able to significantly streamline the process of getting federal disaster aid to Iowans.
“We’re all so different,” Reynolds said during a news conference this week. “Every state is different. Every state has different challenges.”
Reynolds said it was a struggle to help Iowans whose homes were damaged in last year’s tornadoes and flooding get approval from a FEMA-approved inspection that repairs met code requirements and the homeowners could move back in.
“But they have all these separate contracts with all — sometimes with their buddies, and it takes forever to get them in and I’m always operating on their timeline,” Reynolds said. “…We can do that more quickly, more efficiently.”
Reynolds says there’s “too much bureaucracy” involved in getting federal aid distributed to disaster victims who qualify for it.
“We need one single sign in, one single point of entry that goes across all of the agencies,” Reynolds told reporters.
Under the current structure, disaster victims fill out multiple rounds of paperwork to see if they qualify for assistance from FEMA, the USDA, the Small Business Administration or any other federal agency.
“Those poor people that are in distress and have lost everything — help ’em!” Reynolds said. “Don’t make ’em show five different times and go through almost the same questions.”
President Trump posted a statement on social media about FEMA, calling the agency “slow and totally ineffective” and he called for FEMA to be “terminated.” Trump said individual states “should handle storms as they come.”
Governor Reynolds indicated that while Trump is talking about shutting down FEMA, she expects state officials would be in charge of distributing federal assistance to people who live in regions designated as presidential disaster areas.