{"id":7415,"date":"2025-11-13T22:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T22:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/11\/13\/vermont-officials-likely-to-appeal-trumps-rejection-of-fema-aid-for-2025-floods-vtdigger\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T22:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T22:43:10","slug":"vermont-officials-likely-to-appeal-trumps-rejection-of-fema-aid-for-2025-floods-vtdigger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/11\/13\/vermont-officials-likely-to-appeal-trumps-rejection-of-fema-aid-for-2025-floods-vtdigger\/","title":{"rendered":"Vermont officials likely to appeal Trump\u2019s rejection of FEMA aid for 2025 floods – VTDigger"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Darrell Degreenia\u2019s driveway is seen in Sutton on Friday, July 11, 2025, after being damaged by flood waters from the Calendar Brook. Photo by Glenn Russell\/VTDigger<\/p>\n

” data-medium-file=”https:\/\/vtdigger.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/NEK-flooding-1-20250711-300×200.jpg” data-large-file=”https:\/\/vtdigger.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/NEK-flooding-1-20250711-1200×798.jpg” src=”https:\/\/vtdigger.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/NEK-flooding-1-20250711-1200×798.jpg” alt=”A man walks past a road damaged by erosion, with large sections of asphalt and soil washed away, exposing rocks and muddy water.” >

A driveway is seen in Sutton on July 11, 2025, after being damaged by flood waters from the Calendar Brook. Photo by Glenn Russell\/VTDigger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MONTPELIER \u2014 Vermont officials are building a case to appeal President Donald Trump\u2019s rejection<\/a> of a state request for federal disaster aid that would help a number of Caledonia and Essex county towns foot the bills from major flooding this past July<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gov. Phil Scott made the request for a major disaster declaration<\/a> in August. If approved, it would have unlocked Federal Emergency Management Agency funding to help municipalities cover the costs of repairing critical infrastructure and starting new projects to halt the risk of future flooding, among other possible expenses.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s application cited about $1.8 million in damages, which is more than the $1.2 million threshold states need to meet to qualify for a federal disaster declaration.<\/p>\n

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July\u2019s flooding marked the third year in a row that Vermont communities suffered damage from major storms. The state successfully obtained disaster declarations from the White House after flooding in 2023 and 2024. Both those years, it also applied for \u2014 and received \u2014 funding for individual assistance from FEMA. For 2025, Gov. Scott did not request individual assistance, which has different damage cost requirements.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Doug Farnham, Vermont\u2019s chief recovery officer, told legislators the state has since determined the actual cost of July\u2019s damage could be closer to $4 million, or about twice that earlier estimate. That\u2019s largely due to greater than expected costs for rebuilding infrastructure in the Caledonia County town of Sutton, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sutton was seemingly the hardest hit of any town<\/a> by this summer\u2019s flooding, which came after the town spent millions of dollars recovering from the flooding in the two years before.<\/p>\n

Farnham told the Legislature\u2019s Joint Fiscal Committee that state officials had been working with local leaders on how to bolster the state\u2019s case in an appeal \u2014 \u201cessentially, frame our argument a little bit more strongly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Chief Recovery Officer Douglas Farnham testifies before the House Ways and Means Committee at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Wednesday April 3, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell\/VTDigger<\/p>\n

” data-medium-file=”https:\/\/vtdigger.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/douglas-farnham-2-20240403-300×198.jpg” data-large-file=”https:\/\/vtdigger.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/douglas-farnham-2-20240403-1200×792.jpg” src=”https:\/\/vtdigger.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/douglas-farnham-2-20240403-1200×792.jpg” alt=”Man in a gray suit gesturing while speaking to another person.” >

Chief Recovery Officer Douglas Farnham testifies before the House Ways and Means Committee at the Statehouse in Montpelier on April 3, 2024. File photo by Glenn Russell\/VTDigger<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trump rejected Vermont\u2019s application for FEMA assistance in late October. Vermont has until Nov. 21 to decide whether it will appeal that decision, according to Farnham.<\/p>\n

Gov. Scott, who ultimately has to make that call, told reporters at a press conference later Thursday that he initially was not planning to push back on the White House\u2019s denial, but suggested the information about higher costs had changed his mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are working on something right now to appeal the decision based on the increased dollar amount,\u201d the governor said.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s decision to reject Vermont\u2019s aid request came on the same day he denied similar asks<\/a> from other largely Democratic states including Illinois and Maryland. At the same time, he approved declarations for the largely Republican states of Alaska, Nebraska and North Dakota. He also approved a request from the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

The decision in Maryland was a rejection of an appeal, the same mechanism Vermont is now considering. Trump wrote on social media the same day that he had \u201cwon BIG\u201d in Alaska in the last three presidential elections, according to the Associated Press.<\/p>\n

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called the federal government\u2019s response \u201cnon-political\u201d in a response to VTDigger last month. The spokesperson said the federal government had found that the damage in Vermont \u201cwas not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments to recover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also during Thursday\u2019s Joint Fiscal Committee hearing, legislators questioned Farnham over reporting last month in Grist<\/a> that described shortcomings in how the state used and oversaw a $2.9 million grant to help victims of the state\u2019s 2024 flooding navigate FEMA applications and access other resources.<\/p>\n

The story, which was also published<\/a> in VTDigger, described how that work faced high upfront costs and how a substantial amount of the grant money was used to pay bills from a multinational consulting company, Guidehouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much money was \u2014 maybe, wasted isn\u2019t the right word \u2014 was an unnecessary use of funds before this got figured out?\u201d asked Rep. Robin Scheu, D-Middlebury, who chairs the state budget-writing House Appropriations Committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cZero dollars, representative,\u201d Farnham replied. \u201cIt was all necessary administrative work. It was building the systems, training everyone, putting everything together.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Farnham added that he did not dispute facts in the story but contended that its narrative was \u201cframed as negatively as you could\u201d toward the state.<\/p>\n

Theo Wells-Spackman, VTDigger\u2019s Report for America corps member, contributed reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Chief Recovery Officer Douglas Farnham testifies before the House Ways and Means Committee at the Statehouse in Montpelier on April 3, 2024. File photo by Glenn Russell\/VTDigger Trump rejected Vermont\u2019s application for FEMA assistance in late October. Vermont has until Nov. 21 to decide whether it will appeal that decision, according to Farnham. Gov. Scott, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}