Collaboration between the National Weather Service and Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection was essential during last fall’s wildfires. However, federal budget cuts could gut the program.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Jan Ellen Spiegel to discuss her article, “Trump cuts to weather and emergency services could force CT to fend for itself,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Jan’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Jan. We've experienced a cascade of cuts to federal services since President Trump took office for the second term. Why should we in Connecticut be concerned about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)?
JES: Let me count the ways. On the simplest front is NOAA, and there are many, many, many components I haven't even gotten into yet, but the simplest part is the weather service operates through NOAA, and the National Weather Service is the consistent way that the nation uses to get weather information. So this storm warning in Connecticut means the same thing as a storm warning in California or in South Dakota or wherever. And these guys do all the research. They do scientific analysis. That's where the National Hurricane Center functions through anything you get in terms of weather. You may think you're getting it off the app on your phone or from the local weather guy on TV, but they are all plugged into the weather service.
As for FEMA, that is the emergency service. Now, the emergency service works on a bunch of levels that, you know, again, I don't get into things like cyber security, stuff like that. But these are the guys who don't just clean up the disasters that can occur when the weather forecasters say we're going to get a hurricane. They also provide various programs to help prevent some of the destruction that can occur during one of these things. You can't totally get out of the way. But you know, some of it, what do they say? I believe it was Benjamin Franklin: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
And just to add one other component, these guys also provide certain amounts of funding into the states at fairly high levels to do these sorts of things, so just the plain old money goes away. Our ability, as a state of Connecticut, like any other state in the country, is going to have diminished capability of doing that.
WSHU: Now, is it possible that as a state, we can fill the void of the cuts? Is that practical?
JES: It would seem to me to be almost impossible. These are huge amounts of money. I'll give you an example for FEMA: if you're coming in to get public assistance funding after a storm to help — take the floods that we had last August, which really decimated roadways and buildings and public structures at that time, if we're going to get money from the federal government to help do that, they'll pay for 75% of it, and the state still has to come up with about 25% of it. Now, what has been discussed, and this goes back to the old Project, 2025 when it came up during the political campaign, was to flip those percentages and --
WSHU: .. have the bulk of the money be borne by the state and just a helping hand from the federal government, right?
JES: Yes, or get rid of it altogether. Wow. So could you do it? From that standpoint, highly unlikely. I would also say that in our emergency services department here in Connecticut, the director told me that fully two-thirds of his employees are paid through federal funding. I would also say on the federal fund when it comes to the Weather Service, could we do all of it? Well, no, we'd have to come up with our own weather service, and it would have to dovetail with, you know, all the states around us, and then they'd have to dovetail with all the states around them and all the states around them. And, oh, wait a minute, we already have that. It's called the National Weather Service.
WSHU: Yeah, because the weather doesn't respect state boundaries. So, what is the state doing about this? I talked with the attorney general on several occasions, and he is involved in a series of lawsuits trying to push back on these cuts. What is his position with the state right now, as far as dealing with any of the cuts that are coming to the National Weather Service or to FEMA?
JES: The main thing that the state is doing, other than worrying, is really dealing with the FEMA cuts, and that's because there are about a dozen different programs that the state uses, and those have come under the same funding freezes that the Trump administration started early on, and those have not despite now three court orders, three court orders have not been unfrozen. And so that has Given Attorney General Tong and 22 of his co-attorneys general, plenty of fodder to go back into court. The most recent “you got to release the funds” came out just this past Friday. So that's one avenue. Another is the state is somewhat looking at maybe finding some funding on its own, but it certainly won't cover all of it. It turns out that back years ago, after hurricanes Irene and Sandy, a disaster sort of “slush fund” was created where there would be money to draw on to help after an emergency like we had at that time, but it was never funded.
So that's being looked at a little bit, and there's at least a couple of pieces of legislation out there, most of which are retreads from last session that didn't pass, but coming up with resilience planning and funding it so towns on their own could begin to come up with their own funds to help with resilience and do some of their own projects. I would also add that, you know, a lot of what comes in from the federal government to the emergency services department here then gets funneled into cities and towns. So the emergency services director, Bill Turner, said to me that about 140 of the 169 cities and towns in this state get their emergency services director and department funding from the state, which gets it from the federal government.
WSHU: Wow. In the meantime, what do we do? Because the money is frozen, if we have an emergency, how do we deal with it?
JES: Well, not much has changed yet. On Friday, our resilience program, which is very, very popular, was announced it was being discontinued, but that is not an emergency services program. We stand to lose a lot of money through that. We had a lot of projects earmarked for that. We hadn't received the funds for a good chunk of them, so those may be gone. That said, despite the recent first Atlantic hurricane season warning, which is worse than average, but not as bad as last year's season, you might want to hope they're wrong. And what do you do? As a state, we keep applying through the programs that continue to exist, whether the funds for them will get freed up, whether the programs will get discontinued if they end the programs that Congress has funded, that will leave the attorneys general, like Attorney General Tong the ability to go to court again, because the way I understand the law, the president can't do that.
WSHU: So pretty much, we're going to try and get our way through as we get into the hurricane season.
JES: Well, I'm not a meteorologist, and I'm not an emergency services director, but I would say crossing your fingers would be helpful.
