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Following years of encouragement from federal employee unions and some lawmakers, the Office of Personnel Management is set to propose new rules that would standardize the maps relied upon to determine locality pay rates for white- and blue-collar federal employees across the U.S.

Currently, the federal government’s locality pay program is bifurcated based on whether employees are paid according to the General Schedule or the Federal Wage System. While the General Schedule locality pay map is updated on a nearly annual basis, FWS locality pay boundaries are still largely based on a map of domestic military installations drawn after World War II, with changes only coming after a round of military base closures or reorganizations.

As a result, at some federal facilities, blue-collar workers encounter pay inequity either compared with their General Schedule counterparts, and, in some instances, other Federal Wage System employees. The Office of Personnel Management is set to propose new regulations in the Federal Register Tuesday that would finally align the maps for the General Schedule’s locality pay areas and appropriated fund Federal Wage System wage areas. Non-appropriated fund FWS employees would not be impacted by the proposal.

“Investing in America means investing in all Americans to make sure everyone has a fair shot and we leave no one behind,” said President Biden in a statement Monday. “For too long, workers hired under the Federal Wage System were paid less money than their counterparts hired under a different pay system to work in the same area. My administration is working to change that.”

In the filing, OPM reported discovering instances both where one FWS wage area corresponded with multiple General Schedule locality pay areas, as well as where a single General Schedule locality pay area corresponded with more than half a dozen FWS wage areas.

“The difference in GS and FWS pay area boundaries is most noticeable on the East Coast from Maine to Virginia and on the West Coast in California,” OPM wrote. “In some cases, there are as many as six different FWS wage areas coinciding with a single non-[Rest of U.S.] locality pay area for GS employees . . . Not only are there differences in pay between FWS and GS employees working at the same location but also among FWS employees within the same wage area.”

In order to update the FWS map in such a way as to prevent needing to revisit the issue wholesale again in the future, the Federal Prevailing Rate Advisory Committee, which serves as the Federal Wage System’s analog of the General Schedule’s Federal Salary Council, recommended incorporating the Federal Salary Council’s approach to measuring factors such as regional commuting data and so that the two maps evolve similarly moving forward.

When aligning the FWS’ wage area maps with the General Schedule’s locality pay area, some federal workers will see their pay increase. But OPM said that those who are moving into a lower-paying wage area also will be held harmless, retaining their higher locality pay. All told, 15,000 federal workers in blue-collar positions will see their pay increase upon the regulations’ implementation.

“FRPAC identified that around 15,000 FWS employees would be placed on higher wage schedules and around 2,000 employees would be placed on lower wage schedules as a result of these changes in policy,” the proposal states. “Employee who would be placed on a lower wage schedule would, in most cases, be able to retain their current rate of pay under current pay retention rules. Employees under temporary or term appointments and employees appointed after the changes go into effect are not eligible for pay retention.”

Federal employee unions, who have long warned that the inequity at some federal facilities due to the bifurcation of the FWS and GS locality pay systems hurts federal agencies’ ability to compete for blue-collar talent, were quick to laud the administration for taking action.

“It is fundamentally unfair that federal employees working side-by-side, for the same employer, and in the same place, are paid differently when it comes to locality pay,” said Randy Erwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. “This issue affects many NFFE members, and it creates problems with the recruitment and retention of FWS employees. It is time to end these pay inequities once and for all.”

“AFGE has been working for years to fix the inequities in how local pay boundaries are determined for the General Schedule versus the wage grade systems,” said American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley. “In far too many locations, employees working side-by-side in the exact same building are, for the purposes of pay, treated as though they are in different places. This regulation, once finalized, will correct these inconsistencies and ensure all employees are treated equally regardless of which pay system they fall under.”

OPM is soliciting comments on its proposal between now and Dec. 7.

A week after the storm struck the Southeast, power outages and impassable roads are hampering recovery efforts—and so are election-year politics.

With the presidential election just a month away, there was a lot more finger-pointing and less camaraderie on display than has been typical during past natural disasters. Several prominent Republicans, most notably former President Donald Trump, accused the Biden administration and Democratic officials of mismanaging key parts of the recovery process.

Trump spread several baseless allegations. He said federal officials and Gov. Roy Cooper, D-N.C., were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas,” although he gave no specific details. He said that Gov. Brian Kemp, R-Ga., could not get Biden on the phone—an accusation that both Kemp and Biden denied. And Trump falsely accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of stealing relief money to spend on immigrants instead. (FEMA set up a website to combat disinformation about the hurricane relief efforts and address false rumors, including that one.)

Meanwhile, Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., decided not to join Biden during the president’s visit to Tallahassee Thursday. Instead, DeSantis held a press conference to announce he would deploy the Florida National Guard to ports “to maintain order and, where possible, resume operations.” Dockworkers walked off the job Tuesday, idling ports along the Gulf and East Coasts.

“It is unacceptable for the Biden-Harris administration to allow supply chain interruptions to hurt people who are reeling from a category 4 hurricane,” DeSantis said on social media. Biden helped broker a deal that reopened the ports just a few hours later.

In Georgia, Kemp complained that FEMA initially only approved 11 counties for federal emergency declarations. “When the first emergency declarations came down, there was only 11 counties in that. A lot of people were outraged, including me, because there was such devastation in up to 90 counties,” Kemp told WRDW.

“So we called the White House. We spoke to the president’s chief of staff, the FEMA administrator and said, ‘Look, you’re sending the signal that you’re not paying attention to some of these rural communities,’” he said.

Almost immediately, FEMA added another 30 counties to the declaration. Biden later told reporters he thought the whole state would eventually be covered.

Kemp is navigating a tough political situation, as the governor of a swing state who has feuded with Trump over the last four years but also wants to help his party win Georgia. The Republican governor told reporters that Biden had called him and asked what Georgia needed for the hurricane recovery. “He offered that if there’s other things we need, just to call him directly, which, I appreciate that,” Kemp said.

But on Friday, Kemp was scheduled to appear with Trump for the first time in four years to tour damage from the storm.

In North Carolina, another swing state, some Republicans have questioned Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s handling of the recovery efforts.

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the embattled Republican candidate to succeed Cooper, suggested the state’s handling of the crisis was inadequate. “The time for politics is over. We are talking about saving people’s lives here,” he wrote on social media. “North Carolina must follow the lead of successful governors like @GovRonDeSantis. Cut the red tape. Stop waiting on federal resources and allow private industry in to assist with rescue and recovery efforts, and repair infrastructure immediately.”

But Robinson, whose standing in North Carolina has fallen since CNN reported that he called himself a “black Nazi” on a porn site, also faced criticism for his official response to the hurricane.

The lieutenant governor was the only statewide elected official who did not vote on Cooper’s request to declare a state of emergency before Helene hit, WRAL reported.

Former Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, called Robinson’s inaction “inexcusable.”

McCrory also criticized Robinson for attacking Cooper so early in the recovery process. “This is not a time for criticism,” he told the television station. “This is a time for working together as a team and asking how you can help. I’m sure there are people who feel stranded out there, but right now is not the time to start throwing arrows.”

Biden visited four states hit hard by the storm this week: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Cooper and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster joined him while he visited their states. McMaster called the federal response “superb.” Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia said he was “incredibly appreciative” of the federal hurricane response so far.

Biden said the federal government would help victims of the hurricane, regardless of their political affiliation. “There are no Democrats, Republicans, only Americans and our job is to help as many people as we can, as quickly as we can, and as thoroughly as we can,” Biden said.

But he did criticize Trump on social media after Politico reported that the former president initially wanted to deny California’s request for a disaster declaration for wildfires because of the state’s Democratic leanings. “You can’t only help those in need if they voted for you,” Biden wrote. “It’s the most basic part of being president, and this guy knows nothing about it.” 

Keep reading as there’s more news to use below, and if you don’t already and would prefer to get this roundup in your inbox, you can subscribe to this newsletter here. We’ll see you next week.

News to Use

Trends, Common Challenges, Cool Ideas, FYIs and Notable Events

Unions

Port union agrees to suspend strike. The International Longshoremen’s Association agreed on Thursday to go back to work. The move followed an improved wage offer from port employers, and extends the current contract through Jan. 15 so that both sides have time to iron out additional issues. The strike, which began on Tuesday and closed down major ports on the East and Gulf Coasts, threatened to weigh on the economy five weeks before national elections. The agreement came after the White House pressed both sides to reach a deal to end the strike, the union’s first full-scale walkout since 1977. Earlier in the day, before the announcement, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had said he would send the Florida National Guard and State Guard to ports in the state impacted by the strikes “to maintain order and, if possible, resume operations.”

Elections

Former county clerk gets 9 years in prison for tampering with voting machines. Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, was sentenced on Thursday to nine years in prison after being found guilty in August of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against former President Donald Trump. “You are no hero, you abused your position and you are a charlatan,” Judge Matthew D. Barrett scolded her from the bench, adding, “You cannot help but lie as easy as you breathe.” The sentence was the first to be handed down against a local election official found liable for security breaches of voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems.

Artificial Intelligence

Why the governor vetoed California’s bold bid to regulate AI. Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., blocked the most ambitious proposal in the nation Sunday aimed at curtailing the growth of artificial intelligence. The first-of-its-kind bill required safety testing of large AI systems, or models, before their release to the public. It also gave the state’s attorney general the right to sue companies over serious harm caused by their technologies. And it mandated a kill switch to turn off AI systems in case of potential biowarfare, mass casualties or property damage. Newsom said that the bill was flawed because it focused too much on regulating the biggest AI systems, known as frontier models, without considering potential risks and harms from the technology. Meanwhile, a new California law allowing any person to sue for damages over election deepfakes was put on pause Wednesday after a federal judge said the law likely violates the First Amendment.

Food waste, legacy admissions, marijuana and gas prices

The California Legislature wraps up session, starts another. It is usually not noteworthy when a state legislature adjourns, but some of the bills passed and signed this week were. What’s more, the session isn’t over quite yet: Newsom has called lawmakers back for a special session focused on gas prices, even though the state Senate isn’t playing along. Notable bills include a first-in-the-nation ban on food labels that say “sell by” or “best before” to reduce both food waste and climate-warming emissions; a ban on legacy admissions (joining a rarefied group of four other states—Colorado, Illinois, Maryland and Virginia); and a bill that will allow cannabis cafes, where patrons can eat food, smoke marijuana, and watch live performances, similar to those in operation in Amsterdam. Meanwhile, Newsom did veto a bill that would have required speeding alerts in new cars. (FUN FACT: The last time the California Legislature overrode a governor’s veto was 1979.)

Racial Justice

Justice Department will launch civil rights review into 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The agency announced Monday a first-ever federal probe of the massacre, an attack by a white mob on a thriving Black district that is considered one of the worst single acts of violence against Black people in U.S. history. The review was launched under a federal cold-case initiative that has led to prosecutions of some Civil Rights Era cases, although the assistant U.S. attorney in charge said the department has “no expectation” there is anyone living who could be prosecuted as a result of the inquiry. The massacre killed as many as 300 Black people; more than 1,200 homes, businesses, schools and churches were destroyed; and thousands were forced into internment camps overseen by the National Guard.

Public Schools

Oklahoma wants Bibles for classrooms. But only ‘Trump Bibles’ fit. Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters isn’t just talking about buying Bibles for schools. Bids opened Monday for a contract to supply the state Department of Education with 55,000 Bibles. According to the bid documents, vendors must meet certain specifications—ones that only Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, endorsed by former President Donald Trump and commonly referred to as the Trump Bible, meet. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiving fees for his endorsement. Former Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson said the request for proposals might violate state law. “It appears to me that this bid is anything but competitive,” he said.

Marijuana

As America’s marijuana use grows, so do the harms. As marijuana legalization has accelerated across the country, reports The New York Times, doctors are contending with the effects of an explosion in the use of the drug and its intensity. Tens of millions of Americans use the drug, for medical or recreational purposes—most of them without problems. But with more people consuming more potent cannabis more often, a growing number, mostly chronic users, are enduring serious health consequences. The accumulating harm from the $33 billion industry is broader and more severe than previously reported. And gaps in state regulations, limited public health messaging and federal restraints on research have left many consumers, government officials and even medical practitioners in the dark about such outcomes.

Finance

Louisiana governor plans to call third special session to overhaul the state’s tax system. Gov. Jeff Landry says that he plans to call the legislature into a special session in November, marking the third such gathering this year, with the hopes of overhauling the state’s current tax system that the Republican said is failing residents. Landry detailed his proposed tax plan during a news conference on Tuesday, with a focus on reducing the income tax and charging sales tax for more items and services. Louisiana is the latest state in the Deep South to discuss tax changes, as Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves continues to push for his state to phase out the income tax and as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed measures earlier this year to significantly cut income taxes.

Criminal Justice

Life tenure is a rarity on state supreme courts. Imposing term limits on the U.S. Supreme Court would be transformational, but far from radical. More than two-thirds of Americans believe the justices should serve for a fixed number of years rather than hold their positions for life. Indeed, the federal high court is a stark outlier when compared to state supreme courts. While the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices enjoy lifetime appointments, 339 out of the 344 state supreme court justices serve a limited term subject to reselection, face a mandatory retirement age, or both. That represents 99% of state justices across 49 states, with only the five justices on the Rhode Island Supreme Court serving a life term. Since 1970, state justices have served an average of 13 years, half as long as the average of 26 years on the bench for U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Agriculture

Iowa AG leads continued fight against Massachusetts animal confinement law. Iowa and 21 other pork-production states are pushing for an appeal of a federal district court ruling that upheld a 2016 ballot measure in Massachusetts to prohibit the sale of pork, poultry and veal from livestock that were “confined in a cruel manner.” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird headed an amici curiae, or an informational brief in support of one side of a case. The 2016 measure at issue, known as Question 3, has been challenged multiple times by hog farmers and pork coalitions. The law is similar to California’s Proposition 12, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 2023, in that both restrict the sale of meat from certain animals raised in a confining manner. A federal judge dismissed all of the claims against the Massachusetts law, which is being appealed.

Picture of the Week

Not going to lie, City of Boise’s first TikTok is pretty good pic.twitter.com/YrrIb6oOY7

— Sally Krutzig (@sallykrutzig) October 2, 2024

The city of Boise is on TikTok, and the topic of its first post this week? A fatberg. That’s right, in the video the city’s social media manager, Elizabeth Kidd, dresses up in the “scariest costume” she can think of to get everyone at city hall in the Halloween spirit. Kidd used the post as a PSA on fatbergs, a giant clump made up of hardened fat, oil, wet wipes and other waste items that can obstruct sewer systems. It’s a growing problem for urban sewer systems that New York City has dedicated an entire webpage to and that has garnered headlines around the world. In London a few years back, the city made global news when they had to unblock a section of the sewer system clogged by “a stomach-churning, 130-ton mass of sanitary products and cooking fat.”

Government in Numbers

1,450

The number of bison that stampeded down the hills of Custer State Park for the 59th annual Governor’s Buffalo Roundup. 

It may be Fat Bear Week in Katmai National Park, but nearly 2,500 miles away in South Dakota, more than 20,000 spectators gathered to watch another treasured annual tradition. The slightly less-known event is also a celebration of a big, strong, brown animal. Cowboys and cowgirls rounded up a herd of more than 1,500 bison last weekend as part of an annual effort to maintain the health of the species, which has rebounded from near-extinction. Each year, Custer State Park holds one of the nation’s few bison roundups to check their health and vaccinate calves.

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The lynchpin of Donald Trump’s “plan to dismantle the deep state” is to assert authority to dismiss senior civil servants at will: “First, I will immediately re-issue my 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. And I will wield that power very aggressively.”

Trump’s diagnosis is correct in part but his reform proposal badly misses the target. He is correct that, instead of a “merit system,” federal civil service has become a kind of anti-merit system:

• Federal employees are largely unaccountable: 99% of federal employees are rated “fully successful.” Poor performers are practically impossible to fire, even when caught spending their days surfing porn sites.
• Many federal employees also are unmanageable: Supervisors must collectively bargain with “union reps” rudimentary management choices—who does what, even who sits at what desk. 
• Federal officials can subvert lawful directives from political officials by the pretext of following the bureaucratic labyrinth. True believers within agencies simply drag their feet until the next election. There’s an acronym for it: Webehwyg (We-be-wig): “We’ll be here when you’re gone.”

Trump’s proposed Schedule F addresses only one of these flaws, bureaucratic subversion. By giving Trump the authority to fire senior civil servants for almost any reason, Schedule F goes too far while doing too little. The proposed overhaul should aspire to be a “merit system,” not a new spoils system, and must be far bolder to attract the talent needed in 21st century government.

Schedule F goes too far. Trump’s executive order would transfer 50,000 or more senior civil servants into a new Schedule F of “at will” employees.

Schedule F presumes that public employees should do whatever the president wants. But civil servants have dual loyalty— to honor the direction of political leaders within the boundaries of law and ethics. A “merit system” requires a culture of professionalism, in which civil servants are accountable for performance but also protected from partisan retribution.

Schedule F would instead create an ethos of fear, inducing senior civil servants to act like toadies—to follow any presidential dictate even if contrary to fact or science. This is not an abstract fear with Trump, as demonstrated in the “Sharpiegate” incident when he pressured weather officials to affirm his inaccurate assertion that Hurricane Dorian would impact Alabama, and when he tried to get FDA officials to reauthorize the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid.

Schedule F also allows the president to hire senior civil service staff without regard to qualifications. Giving serious public responsibilities to inept political hacks, not their partisanship, was considered the principal defect of the 19th century spoils system. It’s hard to see how a new version of the spoils system is in the public interest. 

Schedule F does too little. Schedule F does nothing to empower senior civil servants to manage the employees below them. Elaborate legal procedures require a supervisor, for example, to prove in a grievance proceeding that Mr. X doesn’t try hard, or is unresponsive to citizen needs. How does a supervisor prove a bad attitude or poor judgment? Personnel judgments can be readily reviewed by other co-workers, but they are judgments, not objective facts. The near-impossibility of proving ineffectiveness is why there’s near-zero accountability.

The main harm of no accountability is not a mass of poor performers, but a dispirited public culture. Mutual trust is difficult when everyone knows performance doesn’t matter.

“We note deep disaffection within the public service,” the 2003 Volcker Commission concluded. “They resent the protections provided to those poor performers among them who impede their own work and drag down the reputation of all government workers.”

Nor does Schedule F remove the chokehold of public union collective bargaining agreements, which require even minor managerial choices—such as training for a software upgrade—to be separately negotiated.   

Modernizing civil service by executive order. Like obsolete infrastructure, America’s civil service framework should be largely scrapped. Designed to accommodate clerks processing forms, and then amended in the 1960s to appease federal unions, the civil service system is a rusty industrial age machine disconnected from performance and repellant to highly qualified people. The imperative to overhaul civil service was first sounded in 1989 by Paul Volcker, but numerous reform proposals have gone nowhere because of congressional indifference and union opposition.  

Trump’s Schedule F, although ham-fisted, points the way to a bolder approach—to start remaking civil service by executive order. By asserting the constitutional powers of the executive, the president can disavow rigid congressional and union controls, and provoke a constitutional challenge to be decided by the Supreme Court. This dispute will also likely catapult civil service reform from a back closet to the top of Congress’s agenda.

The Constitution in Article II provides that “the executive Power shall be vested in a President.” Numerous rulings by the Supreme Court have limited Congress’s ability to impinge on “executive power” regarding personnel judgments. Under these rulings, a president could disavow key aspects of civil service law, including refusing to comply with:

• the detailed disciplinary procedures that make it impractical to terminate, discipline, or even give an honest job performance evaluation;
• collective bargaining powers that preempt managerial authority; and
• the mechanistic hiring procedures that drive away good candidates.  

In the place of these statutory provisions, a president by executive order could provide a framework aimed at implementing the goals of a merit system—generally, empowering officials to take responsibility and empowering other officials to hold them accountable. Protecting against unfair personnel decisions can be achieved by giving oversight authority to an independent group or committee, not by legal trials.

Congress will continue to kick the can down the road until forced to act. Remaking civil service by executive order could prod Congress into a long overdue modernization of the operating machinery of government. 

The decision to wait until after the 2025 filing season to switch to a new processing engine for individual tax account administration will cost the IRS up to $70 million, according to a September watchdog report. 

The current system, called the Individual Master File, dates to the 1960s. The IRS has long been trying to modernize it, and that effort is “one of the most complex modernization programs in the federal government,” the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration writes in the report. 

The agency has been testing a new processing engine since April to potentially cut over to before the coming filing season, but IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel told Nextgov/FCW last month that the agency was holding off “out of an abundance of caution.” The new goal is to switch to the new processing engine as the system of record next summer.

The report states that a six-month delay from a January go-live for the new system, referenced throughout the report, could cost up to $70 million.

“It’s important to take the time to get this transition right… particularly during filing season,” the IRS told Nextgov/FCW in a statement, calling the IMF “a critical system vital to the health of the nation’s tax administration work as well as serving individual taxpayers.” 

The new TIGTA report gives some insight into the leadup to that choice, detailing the type of testing and defect remediation processes used by the IRS, as well as the risks introduced by moving to parallel processing — or running both the old and new system simultaneously — when the IRS did. 

To meet the previously planned January go-live, the IRS had planned to run parallel operations with the old and new systems between April and December of 2024. 

But in order to do so, the team first had to run a certain number of cycles on the new system without defects, and the IRS realized in August 2023 that they were at risk of not being able to finish the work and meet that requirement to start parallel operations in April because of problems addressing code and data format defects.

The agency attempted to remediate as many defects as possible to be able to still meet the January 2025 go-live date and did start parallel operations in April 2024.

TIGTA says that this “introduced additional complexity and risk, e.g., challenges in proving operational readiness in parallel operations while defects are still being mitigated.”

Another risk: the fact that the planned timeline for parallel operations wouldn’t cover the peak of a tax filing season. 

That’s one issue the IRS itself has also pointed to in its decision to push the switchover to after the coming filing season.

Also, multiple modernization efforts at the agency are happening at the same time, as the IRS looks to spend the tens of billions it got via the Inflation Reduction Act, Werfel told Nextgov/FCW previously.

“What I didn’t want to have happen is if we have some kind of launch failure with IMF — what would happen is you surge all the resources there and then you lose momentum,” Werfel said. “Because we have multiple modernizations going all at once, we have to make some of these trade-offs.”

At the time, Werfel also pointed out that the agency can still tap into the better data generated by the new processing engine, even without formally switching to it as the system of record. 

As for the cost, the decision to switch to the new system after the 2025 tax season “helps the agency meet a robust set of production, functional and operational readiness criteria before the agency transitions over to the modernized system,” the IRS told Nextgov/FCW. 

“This will ensure a smooth path forward — for the good of taxpayers and the tax system,” they said. “The IRS is being very careful to ensure this happens in a way that’s seamless to taxpayers and the tax professional system.”

The report also includes recommendations for the tax agency. One asks for more details like outcomes and key results in the IRS plans for Inflation Reduction Act resources. TIGTA and other watchdogs have issued similar recommendations in the past. The IRS agreed with both recommendations.

The federal government has thousands of employees from throughout the country deployed to the Southeast in response to Hurricane Helene, but the full extent of its efforts extend beyond just those personnel. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has more than 1,500 employees deployed to the region and is coordinating a response that includes more than 5,000 deployed federal workers. 

It had shipped more than 9 million meals, 11 million gallons of water, 150 generators and 260,000 tarps. It has provided survivors with more than $20 million in immediate aid. 

Steve Reaves, a long-time FEMA employee based in Fort Worth, Texas, said the deployed agency staff represent only the tip of the iceberg in the agency’s response. 

“The whole workforce is contributing right now,” said Reaves. “It’s all hands on deck.”

Reaves, who represents his colleagues as president of the American Federation of Government Employees FEMA council, said his colleagues in Fort Worth have been working 14-16 hour shifts to get supplies and necessities out the door. FEMA is relocating employees not just to storm-affected regions but also to supplement efforts like those in Fort Worth; Reaves’ team just received some personnel from Hawaii to help relieve overworked staff. 

The shelves there are currently empty as everything has shipped out, but restocking efforts are soon to begin.  

“Every warehouse in FEMA looks real similar,” Reaves said. 

Despite the long and difficult hours, Reaves said he and his colleagues are mission-driven to continue pushing forward. 

“This is the beauty of working with these people every day,” he said. “They absolutely love helping people.” 

Many of FEMA’s reservists—and some of the generator mechanics that Reaves works with—are deployed in Helene response, where they are encountering unique challenges. The mountainous terrain is making it difficult for search and rescue teams to get to where they need to go and the area is ripe with dirt roads that are taxing to navigate even in good conditions. 

“They love the job,” Reaves said. “That’s what is pushing them through these long hours.” 

The emergency response agency has long struggled with insufficient staffing which has been exacerbated by the ever-growing demands of a more intense and frequent disaster season. It had made headway in its recruiting efforts, however, and before Helene hit Reaves thought the workforce was in “an OK state.”

Still, he said, Helene’s widespread damage in areas that never expected to feel the consequences of such a disaster demonstrates that Congress has a long way to go to plus up the agency to its modern needs. Already, Reaves said, his team is preparing for storms currently over the ocean that forecasters have warned could reach U.S. soil as hurricanes. 

In the meantime, FEMA is fighting battles on multiple fronts. As it struggles to get the right provisions where they are needed in the Southeast, it is also countering incorrect information that has pervaded some communities. The agency has created a guide to combat false narratives that have taken shape online and in conservative circles, launching a “rumor response” page on its website. 

FEMA clarified, for example, that it has sufficient funds to meet immediate response and assistance needs. The Biden administration has made clear that it will require Congress to replenish the Disaster Relief Fund in the coming weeks or months, but FEMA is facing no cash shortage in the immediate term. The agency also noted it is not accepting cash donations directly or commandeering donated goods, noting only non-governmental volunteer organizations take and handle such contributions. 

Federal staff do not conduct vehicle stops or handle road closures, FEMA said, and “government employees will never solicit money” as part of disaster response.   

FEMA also sought to knock down what has become a talking point from former President Trump and others, namely that the agency is running out of money because it coordinated efforts to house an influx of migrants arriving at the Southwest border. Congress directed money from Customs and Border Protection for those efforts, which is run by a FEMA program unrelated to disaster relief. 

At the peak of FEMA’s deployments to the Southwest, just 250 agency personnel were working at the border. As of March of this year, that number was down to 50 employees and the FEMA administrator has noted most of those deployments are reimbursed by other agencies.

FEMA also noted that a rumor spread by Fox News and others that the agency is only offering $750 to disaster-impacted residents is not true. That amount is provided quickly to individuals to help pay for immediate needs, but they remain eligible for temporary housing and significantly more money for home repair and other costs.