On average, GAO found, FEMA takes seven to nine months to decide whether to fund a project.

“There’s a lot of waiting going on,” said Chad Berginnis, executive director and CEO of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. He says members of his group told him this summer that their states were still waiting for funding awards and obligations from the 2022 and 2023 funding rounds, some of them for "very big" projects.

While the BRIC program has amassed about $4.8 billion in federal appropriations to distribute for resilience projects and programs, only about half has been dispersed during the first three grant application rounds since the program was established in 2020.

As of March 2025, 700 grant requests from local communities—considered sub-applications to state grants—remained in limbo. Communities told GAO that these review timeframes could extend project timelines and increase costs.

FEMA also did not approve or reject any grant applications while the BRIC program was cancelled from April 2025 until March 2026, when a federal court order reinstated it. Shortly after, the agency announced a $1 billion funding opportunity for new applicants.

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FEMA “did not communicate key information internally and externally until March 2026 when it announced it was restarting BRIC,” the report authors said. During the hiatus, it "did not clarify which subgrants would be terminated."

Officials and stakeholders said the lack of actionable information from FEMA officials created challenges and delayed mitigation efforts. "In some cases, projects were cancelled," GAO noted, adding that officials in one state said their community had already expended significant time, effort and resources on their application, and the project was “unlikely … to continue without BRIC funds.”

Chris Currie, GAO director of Homeland Security and Justice and the report lead author, told ENR, “It puts the community in a real conundrum. Participants say we don't have $20 million to front the rest of the project right now because we were expecting to receive money. So, do we put [the project] on hold? Do we wait?”

One seismic upgrade project in Mesa County, Calif., had received state approval to begin construction in April 2024, but the bulk of required project funding to advance work was held up because the application still awaited approval when the BRIC program shut down in 2025, the Kern Valley Sun reported.

Shortly after BRIC program reinstatement this year, FEMA announced a new $1-billion notice of funding opportunity that closed July 23.

The cumulative impact of these developments has created confusion among various stakeholders, says Brett Mattson, National Association of Counties' senior legislative director for justice and public safety.

“That 11-month break we went through with the program being cancelled, then brought back, and new money going out the door, obviously has delayed a lot of these projects,” he told ENR. “I think we're still trying to pick up the pieces in terms of what that means moving forward and how FEMA is going to operate, and I don't think it's immediately clear to us how [program operations] are going to unfold over the next couple of months or years.”

Mattson added he is hopeful that with the BRIC program in operation again, the backlog of projects awaiting funding decisions can be reduced.

The GAO report makes a number of recommendations, most related to increased transparency and communication with stakeholders, and FEMA officials say they will adopt most of them.

If Congress adopts the FEMA Act, which passed the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in 2025 but has not yet been introduced in the Senate, the agency would be forced to streamline its review processes, said National Association of Counties executive Mattson.

GAO official Currie said FEMA was put in a tough position, between the program’s cancellation and DOGE-related staff cuts. “Ultimately we may never know who made the decision to cut the program,” he noted, adding that he has spoken with agency officials and believes they are sincere about adopting recommendations. “I think they are committed to helping states build resilience because they understand how important that it is for disaster prevention,” Currie said.

Even so, the agency lost more than a year when billions of dollars could already have been put to work for pre-disaster mitigation, he said.

“I think there's also a fair amount of skepticism out there,” said the floodplain association’s Berginnis, who noted he has heard that in some states, fewer communities applied during the latest call for funding.

“Basically, you're waiting on funding for a program that was canceled and then restarted, but no money coming through, why spend the time and effort to do an application?" he said.