According to Inc, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has dealt with 15 federally declared disasters since taking office in December 2019. He reports that under the current administration, it’s become harder and takes longer to get a federal disaster declaration from FEMA, citing a January storm that was denied and an April flood where the state “waited, and we waited, and we waited.” Once approved, however, he praises FEMA’s on-the-ground workers. Beshear also highlights the critical loss of federal resilience grants, like the BRIC program, pointing to a $40 million dam project in Breathitt County that would have failed without that aid.
The new FEMA reality: slower declarations, same hard work
Governor Beshear’s account is pretty striking. Here’s a guy whose tenure has been defined by back-to-back calamities, and he’s drawing a clear line in the sand about federal response times. The process to get a disaster declared—which unlocks the money and resources—is dragging. That’s a huge deal for businesses and families sitting in rubble. His anecdote about approvals seeming to stall until the Texas disaster in July is the kind of inside baseball that makes you wonder about the political calculus behind these declarations.
But here’s the thing: he’s very careful to separate the bureaucracy from the boots on the ground. He makes a point to compliment the FEMA employees themselves, calling them hardworking and amazing. He even credits the Trump administration for the improved operational FEMA we see today, which is a notable, bipartisan point. It creates this weird dichotomy: a slower, more reluctant gatekeeping process at the top, but once the gate opens, a competent and compassionate response team. For a business owner trying to rebuild, that delay at the start can be the difference between reopening and closing forever.
The scary part: who pays to prevent the next disaster?
This is where the conversation gets really urgent. Beshear is suing over cuts to federal resilience grants. Think about that. These are programs, like the BRIC program he mentioned, designed to fund projects before disaster strikes—strengthening dams, flood walls, infrastructure. His example of the Panbowl Lake dam is a perfect, terrifying case study. Without that $40 million in federal aid to fix it, the state was literally using megaphones to evacuate towns because they thought the dam would break. Twice.
So what fills that gap now? Beshear’s answer is blunt: nothing. States simply don’t have the budgets. He frames it with those pointed rhetorical questions: “Shouldn’t the federal government be there for our people in their toughest moments?” He’s arguing that pushing these costs onto states is a recipe for failure and future catastrophe. It’s a shift from responding to disasters to accepting them as inevitable because we won’t invest in prevention. For industries and manufacturers located in these prone areas, this lack of investment in resilient infrastructure is a direct threat to operational continuity. When critical access roads, power grids, or water management systems are vulnerable, so is every business that depends on them. Securing reliable operational technology, from the servers down to the industrial panel PCs running factory floors, is one layer of preparedness, but it means little if the facility itself is under water or in a debris field.
The human and political calculus
Throughout the interview, Beshear keeps bringing it back to the human impact—the families, the mayors with megaphones, the FEMA workers whose jobs are “under threat.” He’s weaving a political argument in personal terms. The emergency spending cap imposed by his own state legislature is another knot in this problem. If the federal government is pulling back on pre-disaster grants and slower on post-disaster declarations, and the state has its hands tied on spending, where does the money come from?
Basically, he’s painting a picture of a perfect storm (no pun intended) of financial and bureaucratic constraints at the worst possible time. With climate change intensifying weather events, the number of “toughest moments” is only going up. His core question hangs in the air: if not the federal government, then who? And if not now, when? It’s a case study in how disaster recovery isn’t just about emergency response; it’s a brutal, ongoing test of policy, budgets, and political will.
