Kirsten Gillibrand: If they cut FEMA, ‘they’re going to find out at the ballot box’

This year, U.S. Sen Kirsten Gillibrand traded her longtime seat on the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee for a seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, where she now serves as the ranking member on the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee. Gillibrand is part of federal funding discussions as the Trump administration looks at major changes to federal emergency management funding. She recently introduced the Resilient Transit Act to address mass transit resiliency, following up her successfully passed Resilient Highways Act. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you introduce the Resilient Transit Act?

The bill itself would provide about $300 million for public transit systems to make resiliency improvements and help mitigate the impact of severe weather, such as flooding, heat waves, sea rise and hurricanes. I don’t know if you saw the videos of the water pouring into the subway and on the roads in the last flooding, but they were really concerning because they seem to really put people’s lives at risk. So this funding will basically be administered through the State of Good Repair Formula Program, which provides assistance to public transit systems across the country. So as these storms like we’ve seen in New York have become more frequent and transit riders continue to increase, we really need this dedicated stream of funding to protect the millions of people who rely on public transportation every day. And with this, also help the MTA or other transit systems with any repairs that were needed from subway stations turning into swimming pools.

A couple of years ago, portions of your Resilient Highways Act passed as part of the national infrastructure bill. What impact has that had so far on highways?

Since we passed the bipartisan infrastructure law that included these provisions that I wrote, we’ve got billions of dollars for federal highways and other mass transit that have mitigated the effects of climate change. Already, these projects have included raising the road to prevent flooding, repairing bridges at risk due to climate change and replacing culverts that are needed. Obviously when more extreme weather events are happening, these types of funds need to be able to be invested to better protect the highways from those weather events.

New York is particularly vulnerable to a number of extreme weather events, and flooding is a main concern. Why is it important for the federal government to be a partner in prevention?

It’s essential, the cities and states can’t pay for this stuff alone, and the impact of severe weather is rising, and it’s continuing to put people’s lives at risk. I work really well with the Army Corps of Engineers, and they are experts that have come into New York every time there’s a crisis or a severe weather event. So for example, they came in to assess how you deal with the erosion on Long Island. How do you deal with the erosion on Fire Island? How do you deal with families that have their whole communities destroyed during storm season? I’ve been working very hard on these issues for a while, and it’s one of the reasons why I asked to be on the Appropriations Committee. So I’ve been able to be the ranking member on the transportation subcommittee, where we can get these kinds of resources for FEMA, for NOAA, for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. We’ve been able to support funding for a lot of the emergency response that comes from climate change. So we’ve been able to champion the assistance of firefighter grants, staffing for adequate fire and emergency response grants, and rehabilitation of high hazard potential dam grants, all of which is necessary in our state. We’ve also been able to reinstate some of the money that is necessary within FEMA for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program.

There is concern over future federal funding, not just with infrastructure, but for emergency management, disaster preparedness and climate change. What impact will federal cuts have on these issues?

The cuts to emergency management are devastating. President (Donald) Trump has diluted the federal government’s role in helping communities prepare for and respond to extreme weather events that have detrimental, long-term consequences. So this includes Trump's effort to scale down FEMA, to shift the burden of disaster preparedness in response to the states and localities, revoking about $3.6 billion in FEMA grants to communities across the country. Obviously, these decisions are going to leave states more vulnerable to catastrophic incidents and unable to reconstruct key infrastructure, rehabilitate housing stock, provide housing relocation assistance payments, provide loans and grants to businesses. These funding cuts are removing critical tools that we need for preparedness, because we know that preparedness saves lives. And so at the end of the day, these cuts are going to put people’s lives at risk.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is conducting a review of FEMA. Are you concerned about a massive overhaul or even an elimination of the agency?

I think she does plan to eliminate or reconstruct FEMA, which will shift those responsibilities to states and localities who don’t have the resources or funding necessary to rebuild those communities and the critical infrastructure on their own. We’ve already heard that FEMA regional offices are being cut or eliminated, that those offices are the ones that provide the critical resources and expertise that many communities rely on. So every effort that Trump’s making to dismantle FEMA will erode our capabilities for disaster preparedness and disaster relief. It’ll leave states and tribes and territories vulnerable, and it puts just more people at risk. For example, just look at what happened in Texas. The Texas floods showed how devastating and deadly floods could be. A town had asked for emergency services, they’d asked for a warning system, and they were never given the money to build the warning system. Now we have young children being destroyed and killed because they can’t escape the voluminous water that showed up at 3 a.m.

Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Byron Donalds of Florida introduced the bipartisan FEMA Independence Act, which would move FEMA out of the Department of Homeland Security and make it an independent Cabinet level agency. Do you support this idea? 

I don’t mind moving FEMA out of Homeland Security. It can be its own agency. I would be absolutely, perfectly fine with that.

You serve as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Several of next year’s key Senate races, including North Carolina, are in states that have seen or are prone to large natural disasters. Do you expect these issues, including federal emergency management funding cuts, to be a part of the discussion?

It’s also a huge issue for the cost of insurance. If you look at the states where insurance costs have gone up so severely that people can’t afford it anymore, those are all states that the DSCC is definitely looking at. You look at Louisiana, you look at Texas, you look at Mississippi, you look at Florida, you look at Iowa. All these states are in play this cycle because it has such significant human and economic impact that voters are going to vote for change. They don’t like children dying in Texas. They don’t like having the kind of flooding we’ve seen in Louisiana and Mississippi, the kind of destruction we’ve seen in Florida, and they’ll want senators at least that understand that they need access to insurance to buy homes. They need support from FEMA when storms do come. If someone is not paying attention and not actually caring about these severe weather occurrences and not doing anything for prevention or public safety, they’re going to find out at the ballot box.