FEMA should take new name, states should bear costs, DHS head Noem says

By Nathan Layne

(Reuters) -The Federal Emergency Management Agency should be renamed as the agency is reformed to increase the burden on states to respond to natural disasters, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a meeting on reforming FEMA on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump created the FEMA Review Council on January 24 to propose ways of overhauling the disaster relief agency, which he has said should be downsized or even abolished. Following its first meeting on Tuesday, the council will have 180 days to submit a report detailing its suggested reforms, according to Trump's executive order.

The move to shake up FEMA, which coordinates the federal response to disasters and works with states to prepare for them, comes as it sheds staff and reshuffles leadership. The moves have raised concerns about its readiness for the start to hurricane season on June 1.

Noem said Trump wanted states to take the primary role in preparing for and responding to disasters, and that the federal government would supplement that effort with funds.

"If we do what the president has tasked us to do, I believe this agency needs to be renamed," Noem said. "Our goal is that states should manage their emergencies and we come in and support them."

DHS is the parent agency of FEMA.

The agency has lost 2,000 full-time staff, or roughly one third of its total, to terminations and voluntary incentives as part of an effort by Trump to slash the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler, Ross Colvin and Aurora Ellis)