Missouri communities affected by disasters could be receiving more federal funds to help with recovery. Governor Jay Nixon signed a disaster recovery supplemental budget bill for Fiscal Year 2015 today. House Bill 16 provides additional appropriation authority to the State Emergency Management Agency to reimburse communities thru federal funds for local recovery and hazard mitigation projects.
According to a news release from the governor’s office, SEMA has already received requests for reimbursement for more than 200 projects totaling $36.5 million since it exhausted the current appropriation amount in January.
Nixon said, “from the new high school in Joplin to repairing roads and bridges damaged by floods in Phelps and Pulaski Counties, these federal disaster funds are urgently needed to reimburse local communities across the state.”
The bill also includes $8.5 million so SEMA and other state agencies have sufficient funding to respond to anymore disasters or emergencies that could occur in FY 15.
The bill will allow reimbursement for projects such as safe rooms, road and bridge repair, debris removal and construction of critical infrastructure like schools and hospitals.
View a full list of recovery and rebuilding projectshere.
According to the news release, “federal funding for these projects had been delayed because, beginning in Fiscal Year 2014, the General Assembly removed the ‘estimated’ designation from disaster appropriations, which effectively capped the amount of federal disaster funds available to reimburse local communities for recovery projects.”
