Congress Enacts Legislation Requiring FEMA to Publish an Interactive Dashboard Tracking Reimbursement Requests; Will Improve Transparency, County’s Ability to Track Funding
ECE Poloncarz joined National Association of Counties (“NACo”) Disaster Reform Task Force in Washington, D.C. Last Week in Push for Reform
ERIE COUNTY, NY— The National Association of Counties (“NACo”) is celebrating a major win for counties nationwide as Congress has enacted a new federal law requiring the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) to publish an interactive, publicly accessible dashboard tracking all disaster reimbursement requests. The dashboard must include project-level detail, including cost estimates, applicant identifiers, submission dates, project descriptions and the federal and non-federal cost-share breakdown for every grant.
The new law, Section 313 of the Homeland Security and Further Additional Continuing Appropriations Act of 2026 (H.R.7147), comes just days after NACo's Intergovernmental Disaster Reform Task Force convened nearly twenty county leaders from thirteen states in Washington, D.C., to advocate for disaster reform priorities, including the public dashboard. Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz, the sole Northeastern Representative on the Task Force, was among the leaders convened last week to push for this change.
Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz said, “This reform has been desperately needed and will give counties that have experienced a disaster the ability to better plan relief and recovery efforts. Having disaster relief funding held up in bureaucratic limbo makes response and recovery efforts immeasurably more difficult, especially for communities that are reeling from a disaster and need to get back on their feet. These reforms will bring transparency, predictability and efficiency to the reimbursement process and I thank my colleagues on the Task Force for their work to make this a reality.”
The new law requires FEMA to post reimbursement request data no more than 90 days after receiving it, and within 60 days of a project entering final review at the Department of Homeland Security. In 2025, 680 counties experienced at least one federally declared disaster, underscoring the urgency counties feel around improving the disaster recovery process at every stage.
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