LA County Sought $455M For Fire Recovery — Less Than $1.4M Has Arrived

LOS ANGELES, CA — The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Tuesday directed its attorneys and CEO to prepare a report on the status of pending applications for hundreds of millions in federal dollars for Palisades and Eaton fire recovery projects, and possible legal steps the county can take to free up the money.

According to a motion by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, the county — following a disaster declaration by then-President Joe Biden in January 2025 — has applied to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for reimbursement of more than $455 million for 190 fire-recovery projects.

"To date, less than $1.4 million has been released," according to Horvath's motion. "Twenty-two months after the fires, the majority of these projects remain `pending obligation,' meaning they have cleared FEMA's initial technical and oversight reviews and are awaiting final obligation of federal funds to the state, which would allow the county to recover costs for completed work."

Similarly, the county also applied for about $347 million through the federal Hazard Mitigation Grant Program designed to protect communities from similar disasters in the future.

"These requests include projects such as fire hardening of homes and public facilities, undergrounding of power lines, and upgrading water system capacity and resiliency," according to the motion. "Yet, to date, no HMGP funding has been awarded to the county for this disaster. In the case of both FEMA Public Assistance and Hazard Mitigation Grants, funds have been appropriated by Congress and are available to the county based on formula allocations, pending the administration's approval."

Horvath's motion contends the Trump administration was prioritizing disaster-relief funding to historically Republican states and jurisdictions

"FEMA data from disasters in 2024 and 2025 underscore this point," the motion states. "$2.5 billion has been obligated to North Carolina, $1.6 billion to Georgia, $1.6 billion to Florida, $637 million to Tennessee, $556 million to South Carolina, and $520 million to Texas — in fact hardly any funding has been allocated to any state that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election."

The motion directs county attorneys and the CEO to report back to the board next week in closed session about the status of the pending federal funding applications and "potential legal recourse for the county to access these funds owed to Los Angeles County and its fire survivors."

Last week, Fortune magazine reported that a recent study found the current Trump administration has approved 90% of disaster-funding requests from states in which the governor and U.S. senators were all Republicans, but only 23% from all-Democrat states. A separate analysis by the Urban Institute found that 84% of funding requests were approved for states Trump won the in 2024 election, but only 42% were approved for states he lost.

A White House spokesperson this summer issued a statement to The Associated Press denying that funding approvals were predicated on politics, insisting "there is no politicization to the president's decisions on disaster relief." Abigail Jackson told the AP the Trump administration conducts more extensive reviews of disaster declaration and funding requests that previous presidents, "ensuring American tax dollars are used appropriately and efficiently by the states to supplement — not substitute — their obligation to respond to and recover from disasters."

But Trump himself has made public statements tying the release of federal disaster funding to politics. During the recent lead-up to the midterm elections, he made comments suggesting the federal government would withhold storm-recovery funds from North Carolina if a Democrat won a U.S. Senate race. Trump later claimed the remarks were a joke.

City News Service