Bonta Sues Trump (Again), This Time for Torching Disaster Prep in Crisis-Prone Summer

In the middle of an already disaster-laden summer, California — along with 19 other states — sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over what they say is the illegal termination of a program that helps communities pay for projects that avoid the worst damages from natural disasters.

The lawsuit said FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has ended the program known as Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, without required approval from Congress.

“The BRIC program proactively fortifies communities before a natural disaster strikes,” Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a July 16 press conference.

“In doing so, it saves lives, reduces injuries, protects property and saves our municipalities, states and nation untold amounts of money.”

According to FEMA’s own fact sheets, every $1 spent on federal mitigation grants saves $6. After Hurricane Katrina, Congress passed laws to give FEMA the ability to better help areas prepare for natural disasters and give it greater autonomy and authority.

Those laws “bar the executive branch, including the president, from substantially or significantly reducing FEMA’s ability to carry out its mission, reserving that right for Congress,” Bonta said. “The Trump administration has broken the law by preventing FEMA from mitigating and preparing for disaster and entirely cutting Congress out of the picture.”

The lawsuit is just the latest in a steady stream, perhaps even a firehose, of legal actions Bonta and other attorneys general and governors have taken against the current administration.

“It’s becoming a hallmark of Trump’s presidency,” Bonta said. “Trampling over the separation of power, sidelining a Congress led by Trump’s own party, violating the Constitution and putting the American people in harm’s way.”

On KQED’s Forum on Thursday, Bonta said his office had filed 33 lawsuits against the administration so far this year, more than one a week. He said the reason they’d filed so many suits was simply because the administration was so frequently breaking laws.

The BRIC program, which rebranded and reformed prior disaster mitigation and funding efforts, was established in 2018 during Trump’s first administration, with broad bipartisan support. It was given additional funding in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Considering how valuable pre-planning is in a disaster, and how hard it has historically been for states to fund infrastructure projects, BRIC was a milestone in foresight, according to Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, associate professor at the Columbia Climate School and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness.

“What the BRIC funding did was it created a standing mechanism where states and localities, through the states, could get funding for these really sort of large, kind of expensive infrastructure projects that would actually build resilience and prevent the loss of lives and loss of livelihood,” Schlegelmilch said. “So it marked a really important turning point. It was actually a very forward-looking achievement.”

According to the lawsuit, in the past four years, the program picked nearly 2,000 projects across the country to receive a total of $4.5 billion in BRIC funding. Every state has received some federally funded mitigation grants. And four — Louisiana, New Jersey, New York and Texas — have each avoided at least $10 billion in post-disaster costs thanks to the grants.

The lawsuit comes days after severe flooding around the country, and two weeks after tragic flooding in Texas that took the lives of more than 100 people.

Coastal communities have received the largest portion of funds over the past four years, especially California, Louisiana, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina and Washington.

An analysis done by Schlegelmilch of past BRIC funding cycles indicated that projects to address flooding received the most money. Energy projects, including projects like removing vegetation to ensure electric-grid resilience during wildfires, were also some of the best-funded.

In California, Bonta highlighted three projects that have been approved but may not get their promised funding:

• A project in the city of Rancho Palos Verdes to reduce landslides, aiming to protect homes, roads, sewer, water, gas, electricity and communication lines.
• A project in the city of Sacramento to reduce the danger of flooding by improving floodwalls, levees and moving a pump station. The project aims to protect 4 miles of interstate highway, an airport runway and 27,000 homes.
• A project in Kern County to retrofit the Kern Valley Healthcare District’s hospital for earthquakes. If it cannot be retrofitted, the hospital may soon need to close. Thousands in this district would then need to drive to hospitals over two hours away to seek care.

FEMA announced in April that they would close the program, saying it was rife with “waste, fraud and abuse,” without providing examples or data. In a since-removed press release, the administration said the BRIC program had partisan political aims. FEMA is not only closing future funding rounds, but they are also not giving out already promised funds.

While the Trump administration’s goal is to get states to take care of their own disasters, Schlegelmilch believes shuttering this program makes that target much harder to hit.

“I don’t disagree that states do need to do more in the disaster space,” he said, “but this is one of those key programs that were designed to help states help themselves.”

If the administration is allowed to strip this funding away completely, it may be years before we know the full effect of the harm.

“Really, of all the disaster interventions that are damaging our resilience as a nation, I think this is the most damaging of the programs that have been cut.”