BATON ROUGE - Going into hurricane season, there’s uncertainty about the future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and how the agency will be tasked with responding to natural disasters. 

In January, President Donald Trump proposed “getting rid of FEMA,” giving individual states authority to take the lead in emergencies. While it’s unclear what the final decision will be on FEMA’s fate, state and local leaders say there needs to be a clear path to get help from Louisiana citizens.

FEMA often responds to the destruction after a major natural disaster. At the request of the governor, the president declares events as disasters, typically if the state alone cannot handle repair costs, FEMA can provide temporary housing and money for repairs. Louisiana has made the call many times. 

The Trump administration discussed shifting the response and recovery onto individual states. After a deadly hurricane in North Caroline, President Trump was critical when FEMA denied or left claims pending for various reasons. 

Clay Rives, director of the East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, says the city and state have learned many lessons since Hurricane Katrina, which has prepared the state to help neighboring states. 

“We're probably the best responders in the world,” Rives said. “We do it a lot, and when we're not doing it here, we send our first responders to those impacted areas.”

United States Sen. Bill Cassidy has reservations about eliminating the federal response program, though he agrees the program needs to be reformed in order to effectively help people.

“When Katrina hit Louisiana, it also hit Mississippi, and it affected Alabama,” Cassidy said. “It affected states as far north as Tennessee, and so there needs to be a robust federal role of Americans helping Americans.”

Rives says FEMA responds quickly immediately after weather events to assist people out of dilapidated homes, but the long-term recovery often takes longer due in part to paperwork and red tape. 

"We're dealing with all the federal agencies and directly with FEMA, and that's just time-consuming, and the more time it takes to rebuild, the more it costs," Rives said. 

Without FEMA, Rives says Baton Rouge and Louisiana could have to tap into rainy-day funds. 

"We're all paying our federal tax dollars,” Rives said. “It's going to the federal government, and what we'd like at the emergency management level is when we are impacted by a disaster, that we get some of that back.”