Windstorms, floods and blizzards often roll through Montana, leaving millions of dollars of damage in their wake.
"When we look at emergency work, it's like standing up your emergency operations center, paying for overtime, sandbagging operations, search and rescue, law enforcement – there's a lot of categories," Jake Ganieany with the state’s Disaster and Emergency Services department explains.
The state has around $16 million in funds set aside to help.
"That is not an unlimited budget," Ganieany says. "Obviously, $16 million between two years, one biennium, can go pretty quickly when we're talking millions of dollars in critical infrastructure."
Local governments apply for Public Assistance grants managed by FEMA. These grants reimburse them for their recovery work. But forecasting when they'll get those funds can be difficult. A National Association of Counties report says some local governments have waited years for updates on projects and cash flow.
That’s why federal lawmakers recently passed a bill establishing a new FEMA Public Assistance Dashboard. The online dashboard will give live updates on reimbursement requests. Ganieany says it will improve transparency around federal funds.
