Laura Barron-Lopez:
There is a growing consensus among emergency management experts and former FEMA officials that conditions could be needed, as well as changing the federal relief system, that that is also warranted.
But they say that the conditions have to be focused on infrastructure and recovery, like what kind of materials are used to make homes more resistant to fires and floods. There should be no vegetation near buildings. Wider lanes are needed for evacuation, asphalt that’s resistant to heat. Essentially, how you build, where you build, and the materials you build with is what conditions should be used.
And experts I spoke to like Jesse Keenan, who’s the director of climate change and urbanism at Tulane University, said opening the door to conditions that have nothing to do with recovery like voter I.D. could also end up hurting red states.
Jesse Keenan, Director of Climate Change and Urbanism, Tulane University: At the end of the day, in this country, red states and counties have many more presidential declarations than Democratic and blue states and counties. And this weaponization, this anti-California bias in your policymaking is only going to come back to hurt you when you begin to apply this to Texas, to Louisiana, to Mississippi.