Policy change may save city millions
FEMA will count volunteer work in local fund match
Federal officials have agreed to count volunteer work hours and donated materials toward the local match required for disaster recovery grants to repair streets, buildings, utilities, parks and other public facilities — a national policy change, initiated in Houston, that could save local governments tens of millions of dollars.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency agreed to expand its acceptance of volunteer hours and donated supplies after months of discussions with leaders of Houston’s Hurricane Harvey recovery effort. The change is retroactive to Aug. 23, 2017 — two days before the official declaration of Harvey as a major disaster.
Typically, local governments must match 25 percent of the federal government’s contributions during a disaster and its aftermath, and can count volunteer hours and donated materials toward that match only in the removal of storm debris and imme-
diate emergency response efforts, such as sheltering victims. For Harvey, the Trump administration agreed to drop the local match to 10 percent.
Even with the change, Mayor Sylvester Turner said, Houston will still be responsible for a projected local match of $250 million.
“For the first time in FEMA’s history, they are allowing this volunteer program on permanent repairs to be used as a part of that 10 percent local match, and they’re not only allowing it for the city of Houston — for our region — but it’s a national initiative that they would allow in all other disasters now going forward,” Turner said. “That’s a monumental shift, because most local governments are hard-pressed to come up with that 10 percent match.”
Marvin Odum, the former Shell CEO who serves as the city’s recovery czar, first floated the idea when the scope of damage to Houston’s facilities became clear.
“We were sitting around in early December as we were starting to break down this recovery and saying, ‘OK, if we have $3 billion worth of repairs, where is $300 million going to come from?’ There wasn’t any answer,” Odum said. “That’s where it started. It’s great that it’s available to everybody.” Officials have not determined how much of the city’s estimated $250 million match could be offset with donations. Officials with the city and Harris County — which also would benefit from the new policy, as would every other disaster zone designated since last August — have been meeting with FEMA officials to work out a system for documenting the new types of donated time and materials.
Gloria Moreno, a city finance department official who has been working on the implementation of the new policy, said four subcommittees were assigned to different aspects of the process.
“It’s definitely a work in progress,” Moreno said. “Even from the FEMA side, they are still dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s.”
A June 25 memo from the FEMA assistant administrator for recovery, Keith Turi, sets out certain conditions. For example, the donated time or material must come from a private entity or person and, as with FEMA’s existing volunteer and donation rules, the applicant or volunteer organization must track the work performed or material donated, including specific locations and hours. The fair market value of the donated time or material will be used to determine how much of the local match it can offset.
“After a disaster, volunteers and donations play a critical role in a community’s recovery,” said FEMA spokesperson Jenny Burke. “After Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, volunteers went above and beyond to help those affected by the hurricane. In order to ensure those types of contributions are valued, FEMA announced (the) amended policy.”
The city has sought grants for about 350 projects related to facilities or infrastructure affected by Harvey, with a total estimated repair cost of $2.5 billion. Projects potentially eligible for use of the expanded local-match policy include repairs to City Hall and its annex, municipal courtrooms, libraries and parks.
“You could have a contract which repaired the municipal courts building. Well, you could have a volunteer group come in and do the painting and you could count it, and market rate what that painting job would have cost,” Odum said. “An engineering firm could contribute some design services. A legal firm could donate their resources to negotiate the contract.”
Odum said he hopes to find volunteer jobs for everyday citizens — things like painting or minor repairs to community centers in parks — but said the most robust outreach will be to the engineers, lawyers and contractors whose expensive expertise would, if donated, have the biggest impact.
“They get the feel-good of what they donate, but they double its impact by also saving the city that much more money because we get to count it twice: We get it for free and we get to count it against the match that we would otherwise pay,” Odum said.
And, of course, for every donated dollar, FEMA also saves 90 cents, Odum said.
The chief complication still to be addressed surrounds local, state and federal procurement rules, Odum said, as vendors in some instances would not be allowed to use charitable contributions to undercut competitors’ bids.
“We have to recognize there’s a risk here that somebody could structure their pro bono element in a way that could preference their bid, and that’s a minefield,” Odum said. “I think it can be done.”
FEMA has the authority to enact this change without congressional action, but he said legislative changes would be necessary to fulfill the more comprehensive goal of, for instance, counting hours volunteers spend mucking and gutting neighbors’ homes toward the city’s local match on repairing its flooded buildings.