By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Federal disaster funding takes a while to get to the states, counties and townships that need it, even after the damage threshold is met and a disaster is declared.
"You send in all your paperwork saying, yes, I do want this funding or I do need this reimbursement and you show your expenses," said Reno County Emergency Management Director Adam Weishaar. "From there, they'll assign a program delivery manager to you to go through all of your damages, all your reimbursements you are requesting and say those are applicable or not applicable. It goes to the state for approval and then it goes to the federal goverment for approval."
The money then flows back down from the federal government to the states and then to either the counties or townships depending on how the specific disaster is structured.
"For an event that doesn't have a whole bunch of counties tied to it, we usually tell people funding is about a year out, maybe a year and a half," Weishaar said. "That would be for an event such as a fire or a tornado where its just one county, you've got your program delivery manager assigned and the state is really not inundated."
When the state is overwhelmed with requests, which happens in large events, it can take years to get that money.
"For something such as flooding that was widespread all the way across the state, we still haven't seen money from 2018 that the county had damages from," Weishaar said. "We've gotten with the program delivery manager and everything else. We have all our paperwork submitted. At this point, we're just waiting on the state and federal government to work their processes. For the large events, I'm going to say, on a good day, maybe two years, it could be as long as three years. Then, once you throw COVID into the mix, really everyone in the U.S. is going to be asking for this funding, I think it's going to be quite some time before we see any sort of reimbursement."
Weishaar is not concerned at this point that the money won't be there, just that it will take a really long time to get it.