The House voted on July 24 to pass a pair of bills that aim to improve public access to fiscal information about the use of federal disaster recovery funds.
The “Post-Disaster Assistance Online Accountability Act,” sponsored by Representatives Mark Meadows (R-NE) and Scott Peters (D-CA), would direct the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to collect quarterly data on both the total amount of disaster recovery funding distributed by federal agencies and basic information about all disaster recovery projects being funded. These data would subsequently be published online by OMB making them accessible to the public. Unfortunately, the bill requires such data to be disaggregated by ZIP code, a geography often considered too large to allow for meaningful analysis.
The second bill, the “Disclosing Aid Spent to Ensure Relief (DISASTER) Act,” also sponsored by Representatives Peters and Meadows, would require OMB to submit an annual report on all disaster-related assistance provided by the federal government. That report would include information on mitigation spending, loans, grants, obligations and administrative costs associated with disaster-relief efforts by relevant agencies.
Read the text of the Post-Disaster Assistance Online Accountability Act at: https://bit.ly/30V2IL2
Read the text of the DISASTER Act at: https://bit.ly/2OhRMWh