The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been flouting a court order to restore a key disaster-prevention program, U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns said on Friday.
In early December, Stearns ordered FEMA to restore a natural-disaster resilience program that the agency, then under the leadership of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, tried to eliminate seven months prior.
But despite pressure from states across the country that are growing increasingly desperate to access federal funds for disaster-prevention projects, FEMA has not done so. No state has seen any funding from the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, programs since FEMA tried to cancel the program in April, calling it “wasteful.”