When Trump ran in 2016 I wrote a blog post about what I thought would happen to emergency management during his administration. I was mostly right, unfortunately. As the Biden administration begins tomorrow, I thought it would be an appropriate time to write out a few guesses as to what emergency management will look like for the next four years.
My overall impression is that emergency management during the Biden administration will largely look like emergency management under the Obama administration. I expect there will be some more minor, incremental policy changes supported by the administration (á la Sandy Recovery Improvement Act) but no radical departure from the usual democratic approach.
Biden himself has said relatively little about emergency management (outside of the COVID response) and some of his proposed plans are confusing. He fell mostly in line with the other Democratic candidates during the primary. Both Biden and Harris had similar overlap in the emergency management parts of their climate plans.
Climate change will be better integrated into the work FEMA does. I think it’s safe to assume we can expect superficial changes like having the words “climate change” appear in key documents like the FEMA Strategic Plan. I’m sure the climate page on the FEMA website will be updated. These are minor and bare minimum changes, but I do think they will help signal a shift in emergency management culture and help push back at climate denialism among some practitioners. I’m less certain that much will change operationally. While some view Harris and, I guess by proxy Biden, as advocates of environmental justice it’s not clear the extent to which this extends specifically to emergency management policy (though my fingers are crossed).
Biden has recently talked about the central role he expects FEMA to play in the continued COVID response and specifically their role in vaccine distribution. I expect this to be very bumpy, to say the least, mostly because of factors outside of FEMA’s control. How much of the blame FEMA will ultimately get for the failed COVID response is very unclear to me at this point.
The Biden administration will support policy reform in the wake of the pandemic, but it will primarily be centered around public health, not emergency management. My impression is that Biden doesn’t think there was anything wrong with FEMA and that the problems we’ve seen in the past four years are solely a product of the Trump administration. If that’s true I think it’s unlikely the administration will try to usher in any kind of comprehensive emergency management reform. Especially at a time when so much else needs to be addressed across federal agencies, and because emergency management reform is notoriously politically unpopular. I do think one possible exception to this could be in the wake of a significant natural hazard-driven catastrophe in the next four years. Regardless, I would still expect that reform to be reactionary and not comprehensive.
I think the next four years will be a time of keeping FEMA steady rather than implementing any kind of radical change. I think this is largely because so much of the focus will be on the pandemic response and juggling other frequent disasters (understandably). Doing vision building work in the midst of ongoing crises is difficult, to say the least. Where there is growth in FEMA’s vision it will be primarily spurred on by Criswell, which is appropriate.
Biden will take FEMA and emergency management seriously. I don’t expect him to get into Twitter fights with local officials in the midst of a catastrophe. I expect him to be empathetic and sympathetic to disaster survivors. He will demonstrate Presidential Leadership in emergency management.
I am also very sure Biden will not throw paper towels.