Local Emergency Management Funding: An Evaluation of County Budgets

Abstract

Local emergency management offices are shouldering an increasingly large share of the responsibility for implementing homeland security policies, in addition to traditional emergency preparedness and response functions. One of the concerns about this devolution of responsibilities is the supposed lack of available funding at the local level. City and county budgets are constrained by anti-property tax revolts and the paradoxical rising expectations of citizens for more and better services. Emergency management offices compete in this milieu for attention from policy makers and adequate funding. Despite the importance of local funding, there is little understanding of how funding decisions are made. Utilizing a nationwide survey of county emergency management officers, this study helps provide some insights by evaluating the impact of subject threat assessments, past disaster experience, emergency management activity, community resources and location factors affecting the variance of emergency management local funding.