Sen. Durbin Introduces Fairness in Federal Disaster Declarations Act to Change FEMA Aid Rules
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FEMA employees would face a major operational shift. Within 120 days of enactment, the agency would need to rewrite its disaster evaluation rules to incorporate specific weighted criteria. Staff would also need to revisit any denied disaster declarations going back to January 2012—potentially hundreds of cases—creating a significant workload increase. This is a structural change to how FEMA personnel do their jobs.
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. (text: CR S652-653)
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Introduced in Senate
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Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth reintroduced the Fairness in Federal Disaster Declarations Act to reform FEMA's formula. The bill assigns a 40% weight to localized impacts for public aid and gives equal 20% weights to damage concentration, trauma, and special populations for individual aid.
While the Trump administration's FEMA Review Council proposes raising damage thresholds to reduce federal spending, a bipartisan reform bill in Congress takes the opposite approach, requiring FEMA to give extra consideration to poor and rural communities through a more equitable formula.
This legislative update covers S. 3895, which mandates new criteria for FEMA disaster assistance. The bill forces the use of a weighted formula where localized impact is the primary factor for public assistance, while individual aid is balanced between trauma, damage density, and special populations.
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Document Type
Congressional Bill
Official Title
Fairness in Federal Disaster Declarations Act of 2026
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