"In the week after floods tore through Texas Hill Country, most survivors were unable to get through to a federal aid hotline because the Department of Homeland Security let funding lapse, according to publicly available contract records and internal FEMA call center logs obtained by NPR.
The call center staffing meltdown appears to have happened because of an administrative bottleneck created by the Trump administration. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem personally signs off on all funding requests for more than $100,000, according to House testimony by FEMA acting administrator David Richardson earlier this month. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Under previous administrations, the FEMA administrator was able to personally sign off on large expenditures, according to Deanne Criswell, who led the agency under the Biden administration.
The FEMA call center staffing agreements with private vendors cost millions of dollars each month. Usually, FEMA renews such funding before it lapses, Criswell says."
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