Proposed FEMA change could leave Wyoming towns in trouble when disasters damage public infrastructure

In an effort to slash spending by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, White House officials are considering drastically raising the threshold for how much damage a natural disaster must cause before local governments will qualify for federal help rebuilding. 

Under the new proposed criteria, Wyoming’s state and local governments wouldn’t have been eligible for federal compensation for public infrastructure losses in recent disasters of note — including last year’s historic wildfires and flooding in 2023 and 2017 — an official with the Wyoming Department of Homeland Security told a state legislative committee Monday. 

Under the current calculation, a disaster has to do more than $1.1 million in damage to public infrastructure before Wyoming can turn to the federal government for help. President Donald Trump’s administration is considering changing that threshold to $4.4 million, according to an internal memo reported on by CNN.

Wyoming, with its wide open spaces, reaches the current threshold much less often than more crowded and urban states, where wildfires, hurricanes and other natural disasters can damage swathes of infrastructure quickly.

The most recent example is last August’s wildfires in northeastern Wyoming. Those fires cost the state tens of millions of dollars to fight, and did tens of millions of dollars more in damage to ranch land and other private property. In the grand scheme of those costs, public infrastructure losses were relatively slight, Ashley Paulsrud, the Wyoming Department of Homeland Security’s finance section chief, told WyoFile. 

The fires burned the power lines and poles of a rural electric company, Paulsrud said, and the price tag for damage extended above $1.1 million, but remained considerably below $2 million. Then-President Joe Biden awarded the federal disaster designation last year, covering the utility’s rebuilding cost.

But Paulsrud worried about what could occur if a wildfire, tornado or any other disaster were to devastate one of Wyoming’s small or medium towns. The disaster could cause immense destruction to towns with limited municipal budgets, while still not doing enough damage to hit the federal government’s proposed new threshold. That might leave the town reliant on the state to cover rebuilding costs. 

The prospect that Wyoming could be shut out of federal relief in such a case is “pretty scary,” Paulsrud told the Joint Judiciary Committee on Monday during its meeting in Torrington. It is just one area in which the Trump administration’s efforts to slash federal spending could cut into her office’s work in Wyoming, Paulsrud said. 

The Wyoming Department of Homeland Security receives 92% of its funding from the federal government, Paulsrud said. It is also the administrator of federal grant programs that fund emergency service personnel for local governments. Many of those funding streams are in doubt, Paulsrud said. Normally at this point in the year, the agency would have insight into its funding for the coming one, she said, but the state has not received word on those grants.

Trump and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem have been critical of FEMA and have promised to dramatically reduce the agency’s funding. So far, the proposals floated publicly indicate they propose to do so by shifting the cost burden for recovering from disasters to the states impacted by them. 

The move to raise the threshold for public assistance funding comes as Trump has rejected providing federal disaster designations to at least three states already during his second term, according to CNN. Trump rejected a request from Washington state for a major disaster declaration in the wake of a destructive winter storm last year. He also rejected requests from Arkansas and Kentucky for the designation in the wake of severe storms and tornadoes that killed more than 40 people across four states and ravaged some towns.

In Wyoming, last year’s wildfire season was particularly severe and drained nearly all of the state’s disaster response coffers. Gov. Mark Gordon used virtually all of the funds available to him for emergencies to respond to the disasters, he told lawmakers ahead of the 2025 legislative session. 

Legislators restored that emergency funding and granted the governor the ability to draw up to $30 million from the state’s rainy day fund if future wildfires draw those accounts down again. They also created both a grant and a loan program to help impacted ranchers recover. Those discussions were contentious during the legislative session, with many lawmakers reluctant to create a grant program that would help property owners and businesses recover from the wildfires.  

Wyoming is one of five western states without a state-funded disaster recovery program to address calamities that do not meet the requirements for federal disaster assistance.

Paulsrud told lawmakers her department may ask for a significant increase in state funding this year, given the possibility Wyoming won’t be able to count on the federal government for future disaster relief. “Most likely our budget ask will be a lot different this year,” she said.