Illinois Attorney General Secures Preliminary Injunction Protecting Disasters Funding

Strategic Insights -

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has secured a preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, temporarily barring the Trump administration from misspending funds budgeted to protect communities from natural disasters. This order comes after Raoul and a coalition of attorneys general sued the Trump administration for attempting to illegally shut down the bipartisan Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, which provides communities across the nation with resources to fortify their infrastructure against disasters. The BRIC program has been a crucial component of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) pre-disaster mitigation efforts, saving an average of $6 in post-disaster costs for every dollar spent on mitigation.

Key Takeaways:

  • Attorney General Kwame Raoul secured a preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, temporarily barring the Trump administration from misspending funds budgeted to protect communities from natural disasters.
  • The injunction blocks the administration from spending BRIC funding on expenses other than the BRIC program while the case plays out in court.
  • The BRIC program provides communities across the nation with resources to fortify their infrastructure against disasters, such as constructing evacuation shelters and flood walls, safeguarding utility grids against wildfires, and protecting wastewater and drinking water infrastructure.
  • The program is the core of FEMA's pre-disaster mitigation efforts, with a recent study concluding that every dollar FEMA spends on mitigation saves an average of $6 in post-disaster costs.
  • The BRIC program has been a crucial component in Illinois, with funding used for disaster mitigation projects such as relocating a vulnerable wastewater treatment plant out of a FEMA-recognized floodway and reducing the risk of flooding in the Des Plaines River Valley.
  • The lawsuit was joined by attorneys general of 18 states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, and New Jersey, as well as the governor of Pennsylvania.

Statistics:

  • 30 years of experience: The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program has been providing communities across the nation with resources to fortify their infrastructure against natural disasters for the past 30 years.
  • 6:1 Return on investment: A recent study concluded that every dollar FEMA spends on mitigation saves an average of $6 in post-disaster costs.
  • $35 million in damage: A 1986 event that caused $35 million in damage to the Des Plaines River Valley community and forced 15,000 evacuations.
  • 15,000 evacuations: The number of evacuations that occurred in the Des Plaines River Valley community during a 1986 flooding event.

Sources:

  • The office of the Illinois Attorney General
  • The U.S. District Court for Massachusetts
  • A recent study on the effectiveness of FEMA's mitigation efforts
  • The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
  • The village of DePue, Illinois
  • The State of Illinois
  • The attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin
  • The governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania