CA Attorney General Bonta Sues Trump Again for Cutting Disaster Prep Program

California Attorney General Rob Bonta last week joined 19 other states suing the Trump Administration for canceling the FEMA grant program intended to help localities protect against natural disasters.

The lawsuit, filed July 16 in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, says the Federal Emergency Management Agency illegally canceled the program without proper congressional permission.

It says that the termination is “contrary to law because Congress has not authorized” FEMA  to “terminate [the program] or substantially reduce FEMA’s mitigation functions and capabilities. In fact, Congress has specifically barred it.  Therefore, the [program] termination violates these statutes and the Separation of Powers.”

Unlike many lawsuits against the Trump Administration that Bonta filed–like one because the President barred a Washington law firm from federal offices–this one actually has something to do with California! According to the complaint, several California communities were slated to receive money from the program, known as  Building Infrastructure and Resilient Communities (BRIC).

Sacramento was awarded $21.36 million in BRIC funds for flood mitigation projects on “five major interchanges, 3.9 miles of a major interstate highway, a runway at an airport, surface streets, 27,000 housing units and more.”

The City of Rancho Palos Verdes was supposed to receive $32.99 million for a project to “reduce geologic landslide movement that threatens most of the City’s residents and infrastructure, including a major arterial roadway that provides community and emergency access, sanitation sewer lines located along this roadway, electric and communication lines, potable water lines, and gas lines.”

And $32.39 million was awarded to Kern County in Central California to “seismically retrofit,” or make earthquake resistant, its hospital.

Bonta told reporters on Wednesday that, “The BRIC program is the nation’s largest, most popular, most cost-effective pre-disaster mitigation program. Shutting it down is illogical, negligent, and yes, it is illegal.”

Bonta said BRIC  “proactively fortifies communities” for potential natural disasters.

“It’s advanced preparation and mitigation to prevent the harms from a disaster before it happens,” he argued. “In doing so, it saves lives, it reduces injuries, it protects property and saves our municipalities, states and nation untold amounts of money.”

In April, FEMA announced it was nixing the Building Infrastructure and Resilient Communities program to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse.”

“The BRIC program was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” the agency said. “It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”

But the lawsuit says that the decision by former acting FEMA director Cameron Hamilton to shut down the program was also illegal because he was not “lawfully”  installed in his position.

The complaint claims that Hamilton, who previously worked at a consulting firm, lacked the required five years experience in emergency management experience for FEMA administrators. And that when  President Joe Biden’s FEMA administrator resigned upon Trump taking office, congressional law required the administrator’s chief assistant to temporarily assume the position.

“Neither Cameron Hamilton nor his successor, David Richardson, were lawfully appointed or qualified to run FEMA, as required by the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and statutory requirements.”

The other states that filed the lawsuit are Arizona,  Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

The FEMA press office did not respond to requests for comment.