The primary source of all this trouble is FEMA’s “per capita damage indicator,” the result of dividing the estimated damage from an event by the population of the state in which it occurred. If this quotient exceeds a certain threshold, a disaster is declared and aid is disbursed. Despite changes in the value of the dollar, individual incomes, and states’ fiscal health, FEMA has made few modifications to the indicator since it was introduced in 1985. “FEMA’s 30-year hesitancy to update it has significantly inflated the number of officially declared ‘disasters,’” averred Coburn. To begin with, the per capita damage indicator has never been properly adjusted for inflation. FEMA started out with a threshold of one dollar, which remained unchanged through 1999. Coburn pointed out that FEMA considered adjusting it for inflation in 1998 but decided against doing so “because of the influence of state emergency management officials,” who realized that raising the threshold meant they would have more difficulty getting federal aid. Since 1999, the threshold has been adjusted for inflation, though FEMA has chosen to use the consumer price index rather than the growth in personal income as its measure of inflation, leading the threshold to increase to just $1.37 instead of $2.16. As a result, the number of declared disasters has grown dramatically, with 2011 setting a record of 242 declarations. (There were 59 declared disasters in 1979, the year FEMA was created.) According to Coburn, a 2012 Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis of disaster declarations from 2004 to 2011 “found that nearly half — a full 44 percent — of those disasters would not have met the threshold public assistance per capita indicator if the indicator had been adjusted for changes in income, and that 25 percent would have failed to qualify had the public assistance per capita damage indicator been adjusted for inflation.”
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 01:06:46 +0000
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