450 Community & Regional Development:Eliminate Fire Grants
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2016591
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2017603
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2018617
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2019631
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2020645
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2021659
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2022675
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2023692
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2024709
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2025725
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2016-20203087
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2016-20256547
Sources
Savings are expressed as budget authority, as reported on page 179 of “Analytical Perspectives, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2015, Table 29-1. Federal Programs by Agency and Account.” Fire grant outlays are included in FEMA Total State and Local Programs and are assumed, based on FY 2013 funding levels, to represent 26 percent of the total state and local program costs. Budget authority is not provided for 2025, but is assumed to increase at the same rate as the geometric mean of the previous nine years.
×Technical Notes on Scoring
CBO Baseline
Unless otherwise noted, calculations for savings for each recommendation relies on the most recent Congressional Budget Office baseline, as found in “An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014 to 2024,” published August 27, 2014, has been used.
Savings “Totals”
While totals for the five and 10 year savings are provided by section and for the complete set of recommendations, there are two reasons they should not be viewed as representing total savings for The Budget Book.
First, as noted in the introduction, The Heritage Foundation would recommend that the savings realized in the Function 050 Defense section would stay within the Department of Defense to strengthen the nation’s defense capabilities.
Second, the numbers cannot be deemed to represent the realized savings if every single recommendation were adopted because policy changes made in one program can impact spending levels in other programs. Thus, the numbers in the table do not reflect any potential interactions between the various policy changes affecting spending or savings.
×Heritage Recommendation:
Eliminate the fire grant program administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This proposal saves $591 million in 2016, and $6.5 billion over 10 years.
Rationale:
Fire grants encompass a number of programs. The Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) program subsidizes the routine activities of local fire departments and emergency management organizations. The Fire Prevention and Safety (FP&S) grants fund projects to improve the safety of firefighters and protect the public from fire and related hazards, while the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grants are intended to increase staffing levels by funding the salaries of career firefighters and paying for recruitment activities for volunteer fire departments.
The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis evaluated the effectiveness of fire grants by matching fire grant award data to the National Fire Incident Reporting System, an incident-based database of fire-related emergencies reported by fire departments. Using panel data from 1999 to 2006 for more than 10,000 fire departments, the evaluation assessed the impact of fire grants on four different measures of fire casualties: (1) firefighter deaths, (2) firefighter injuries, (3) civilian deaths, and (4) civilian injuries.
The Heritage Foundation evaluation compared fire departments that received grants to fire departments that did not receive grants. In addition, the evaluation compared the impact of the grants before and after grant-funded fire departments received federal assistance.
Fire grants appear to be ineffective at reducing fire casualties. AFG, FP&S, and SAFER grants failed to reduce firefighter deaths, firefighter injuries, civilian deaths, or civilian injuries. Without receiving fire grants, comparison fire departments were just as successful at preventing fire casualties as grant-funded fire departments.
Contributing Expert
Emily Goff advances conservative solutions to transportation and infrastructure challenges as policy analyst in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Emily GoffPolicy Analyst, Transportation and Infrastructure
Additional Reading
- David B. Muhlhausen, “Do DHS Fire Grants Reduce Fire Casualties” Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. 09-05, September 23, 2009.
- David B. Muhlhausen, “Fire Grants: Do Not Reauthorize an Ineffective Program,” Heritage Foundation Issue Brief No. 3788, November 29, 2012.