PRESS RELEASE — May 10, 2019

AUSTIN — Today Texas Land Commissioner applauded U.S. Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV), John Cornyn (R-TX), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Kamala Harris (D-CA) for introducing the Bipartisan Disaster Recovery Funding Act. According to the official press release, "The bill directs the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to release $16 billion in long-awaited disaster relief funding within 60 days to nine states and two U.S. territories including West Virginia, Texas and Puerto Rico." This includes $4.383 billion in mitigation funds for major declared disaster events in Texas during 2015, 2016, and 2017.

"We have entered in to the final month before the 2019 hurricane season with a renewed sense of urgency," said Commissioner Bush. "The more than $4 billion appropriated to Texas for mitigation has yet to be released and until we get the rules needed to draft a state action plan, we cannot move forward. I applaud John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and their colleagues in the U.S. Senate, for pushing forward with bold action to help protect our coastal communities from the next storm. We owe it to our local leaders, whose communities are today faced with flooding due to recent rains, to do everything we can to turn dollars into construction as soon as possible."

The GLO is currently awaiting mandatory guidance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in order to begin drafting the state action plan, which must be approved by HUD before the GLO can access the funds for mitigation projects. Cmr. Bush sent President Donald J. Trump a letter on January 30, 2019, requesting help getting mitigation rules approved by HUD and OMB. He previously sent a letter to Director Mick Mulvaney calling January 02, 2019, for rule approval for mitigation funding. Additionally, on Feb 05, 2019, Commissioner Bush applauded a letter authored by Governor Greg Abbott, Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and the Houston Congressional Delegation, led by Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07) and Congressman Pete Olson (TX-22), urging acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought to approve rules from Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for more than $4 billion in Community Development Block Grants for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funding for Texas.

Feb. 9 marked one year since these funds were appropriated by Congress specifically for mitigation. For a complete timeline of funding for Texas' Hurricane Harvey long-term recovery effort, please visit http://recovery.texas.gov/local-government/programs/harvey-mitigation-funding/index.html

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