Southern California Set to Receive an Additional $300M+ in Fire Relief Reimbursement
L.A. City and Couty agencies will recieve over $300 million in payments to cover the cost of the devistating Palisades, Hurst and Eaton fires.
The City of L.A. will receive over $110 million in funds to reimburse the cost of local law enforcement, debris removal and support construction costs in the affected area. The fires were reported to cause around $250 billion in economic damages to the region.
The rest of the $308 million is set to reimburse L.A. County, which will total around $191 million. This chunk of funding is primarily being allocated towards a hazard mitigation program, and will cost an estimated $142 million. The funding can only be used for government-sponsored projects that are expected to be reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. For now, the state is solely funding the reimbursements through a cash advance.
An investigation conducted by NBC4 reported that the $2.5 billion package signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom remained mostly untouched, as only $605 million in funds were sent to the respective local agencies. The deadline to spend the $2.5 billion in emergency funds expired June 30 of this past month.
Councilwoman Traci Park, who represents the Palisades, sent a letter to the California Governor’s office requesting that the deadline be extended beyond the date, and that “potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of the $2.5 billion” is unspent, and could be used to rehabilitate the community in the Palisades.
Newsom’s initial statement on the fund claimed there would be “no strings attached.” Now, as the federal government withholds approval for the rest of the funding, projects to rehabilitate the area are extremely limited.
Today, California Representatives have called for the Trump administration to approve the rest of the $2.5 billion in funding to reimburse fire-related expenditures. Norma Torres (CA-35), Judy Chu (CA-28), Brad Sherman (CA-32), and California Democratic Congressional Delegation Chair Zoe Lofgren (CA-18) sent a letter to congressional leaders urging that until the wildfire relief package is approved, no additional funding packages can move forward.
“Despite the scale of the devastation, the Administration has not taken a single step to submit a supplemental disaster funding request to Congress,” the statement read. “This inaction is on top of the Trump Administration delaying or denying FEMA emergency aid, with FEMA’s own data showing that the Trump Administration is making it harder to access disaster aid and moving more slowly than previous Administrations to help disaster-hit communities.”
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