County Spotlight: Emergency response shifting increasingly to states, local jurisdictions

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, May 27, 2026

Much of the work of a county commissioner happens outside the walls of the courthouse, as a wide variety of statewide and national advisory bodies include county representation. Individual commissioners from all jurisdictions need to participate in order to fill and perform these roles and I have learned over time how vital it is to have a “county” voice at the table.

One of these statewide roles that I play is representing all Washington counties on the Emergency Management Council, an advisory body to the governor and the Washington Military Department on matters relating to state and local emergency management.

In April I attended a joint planning meeting between the Emergency Management Council and a partner group called the Emergency Management Advisory Group. The goal of this all-day session in Yakima was to develop a shared vision for the future of Emergency Management in Washington, to develop timelines and strategies for pursuing this future vision, and to identify next steps in order to get there.

The context for this work is clear. At least for now, FEMA still exists but the nature of the federal/state partnership has been fundamentally changed. FEMA’s approach, when working with local officials on disaster response and recovery, used to be “How can we help you?” It is now “How are you going to help us?” This approach spans everything from leaning on local jurisdictions for office space and technology to expecting significantly more local resource be applied to supporting response and recovery efforts.

Generally speaking, federal funding over the decades has kept pace with an expanding body of emergency response needs but this is no longer the case as the federal investment in 2025 is about a third of what it was 20 years ago in real dollars. This means that states and local jurisdictions now bear significantly increased responsibility for all aspects of emergency management, including response and recovery.

It is heartening to sit with a room full of emergency management professionals, first responders and public works experts and truly understand the deep relationships that help to support this work. They are exactly the right people to identify where more effort needs to be spent, highlighting the need for increased cross-jurisdictional support with fewer administrative barriers.

Furthermore, they identified what needs to be created that doesn’t yet exist such as baseline standards and service levels and improved public/private partnerships. Silos, duplicative efforts, territorialism and competition between jurisdictions for limited funding were identified as things to be reduced or eliminated.

One of the benefits of having someone in the room who represents counties is that, unlike all of the subject-matter experts in the room, a county’s representative has a broad view. I was also the only person in the room who is actually tasked with the responsibility of setting the budget for a local emergency management effort. This is a vital and unique perspective which adds value to the end product.

Having a broad view, I was aware that the “Foundational Public Health Services” concept developed as a public health response to Covid offered important parallels with merit for the emergency management realm as well. At heart, it recognized that public health is a core responsibility of local government, that many partners and agencies play a role, that some play a unique role, that a minimum level of service/standards are necessary across the state, and that in order to meet our obligations we needed to develop a long-term, multi-biennium, phased funding approach.

Workshop participants valued this unique perspective and believed that this kind of strategy provides a usable and valuable framework for this vital and strategic effort. There is still much work to be done, but we all left with a sense of purpose and direction. It is far better to channel energy into creative thinking and problem-solving rather than lamenting all that has been lost and I am pleased to report that at least in the emergency management realm, our public servants are doing great work.

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Mark Ozias is Clallam County commissioner for District 1.