In the past two years, the town of Burke has relied on federal funds to recover from floods, but this year, Burke will be cut off from a key source of that funding.
On July 10, rainfall and flooding significantly damaged public infrastructure in Burke and other towns in Caledonia and Essex counties. In August, Gov. Phil Scott submitted a request to President Donald Trump for a major disaster declaration, citing more than $1.8 million in statewide damages, exceeding the $1.2 million threshold that states need to meet to qualify for a declaration.
But Wednesday night, Trump denied the request.
A federal disaster declaration would have unlocked Federal Emergency Management Agency funding to reimburse municipalities for 75% of the costs, including debris removal, road and public building repairs, and staff overtime during and after the storm.
The declaration would have also made available funds from the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which provides 75% reimbursement for projects that reduce the risk of damage to public infrastructure during future disasters.
Other blue states, Illinois and Maryland, were also denied their requests, while states such as Alaska, Nebraska and North Dakota, and the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, were approved for major disaster declarations.
Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland responded to the President’s decision in a press release saying, “FEMA has a responsibility to weigh the merits of each emergency request objectively. Instead, President Trump and his Administration have politicized disaster relief, and our communities are the ones who will pay the price. While we disagree with both this process and outcome, our resolve is unbroken. We will continue to support Marylanders recovering from these storms, even if Washington won’t.”
Eric Forand, Vermont Emergency Management director with the Department of Public Safety, said the letter from FEMA on Wednesday night didn’t provide any specific reasons about why the funds were denied.
“All we know is that there’s a threshold (of damage costs) that we crossed, but in the end, it is the discretion of the president, so we did submit it, and we were denied,” Forand said.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called the federal government’s response “non-political” in a response to VTDigger’s request for comment.
“The law and regulations require FEMA to review each request closely and consider the unique circumstances of disaster-caused damages as well as state and local capacity. This request was determined that the damage from the event was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments to recover,” the spokesperson wrote.
Burke’s town administrator, James Sullivan, said Burke received disaster declarations after the 2023 and 2024 floods.
“We were hoping that we were gonna be able to get that declaration. It’s very hard for a town like ours to pay that kind of money,” he added, explaining that the town had between $400,000 and $500,000 worth of damage to public infrastructure from this year’s flooding.
Now, Sullivan said, the town will work closely with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and the Northeastern Vermont Development Association to explore other options, but if they can’t find any solution, costs could fall on taxpayers.
Forand said state officials are still evaluating different courses of action and haven’t decided whether to appeal the government’s denial of federal funding.
A recent analysis by the The Pew Charitable Trusts shows that without federal assistance after the most significant disasters, many states would see their reserves depleted.
Vermont was among the most vulnerable states to federal funding cuts, according to the analysis. The study looked at the highest amount a state received in a single year for disaster aid, then compared it against the state’s reserves. Vermont received its highest tally of disaster aid — more than $421 million — in 2011, following Tropical Storm Irene, according to Peter Muller, one of the authors of the research. In 2024, the state’s reserves were just slightly more than that, at $465 million.
The only states with higher aid-to-reserve ratios were Louisiana and Mississippi — which received billions of dollars in funding from the federal government following Hurricane Katrina, and were therefore considered outliers in Pew’s analysis.
Muller highlighted that if states have to use those funds for disasters, they would not be able to use them for other unexpected demands.
“The really important thing to keep in mind is: Those reserves for Vermont, and every other state, are often intended for more than one purpose. They’re not just sitting there waiting for disasters,” he said.
— Shaun Robinson contributed reporting
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed an analysis from The Pew Charitable Trusts.
