Vermont to appeal Trump’s rejection of disaster aid – Valley News

MONTPELIER — Vermont officials are building a case to appeal President Donald Trump’s rejection of a state request for federal disaster aid that would help a number of Caledonia and Essex county towns foot the bills from major flooding this past July.

Gov. Phil Scott made the request for a major disaster declaration in August. If approved, it would have unlocked Federal Emergency Management Agency funding to help municipalities cover the costs of repairing critical infrastructure and starting new projects to halt the risk of future flooding, among other possible expenses.

The state’s application cited about $1.8 million in damages, which is more than the $1.2 million threshold states need to meet to qualify for a federal disaster declaration.

July’s flooding marked the third year in a row that Vermont communities suffered damage from major storms. The state successfully obtained disaster declarations from the White House after flooding in 2023 and 2024. Both those years, it also applied for — and received — funding for individual assistance from FEMA. For 2025, Gov. Scott did not request individual assistance, which has different damage cost requirements.

On Thursday, Doug Farnham, Vermont’s chief recovery officer, told legislators the state has since determined the actual cost of July’s damage could be closer to $4 million, or about twice that earlier estimate. That’s largely due to greater than expected costs for rebuilding infrastructure in the Caledonia County town of Sutton, he said.

Sutton was seemingly the hardest hit of any town by this summer’s flooding, which came after the town spent millions of dollars recovering from the flooding in the two years before.

Farnham told the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Committee that state officials had been working with local leaders on how to bolster the state’s case in an appeal — “essentially, frame our argument a little bit more strongly,” he said.

Trump rejected Vermont’s application for FEMA assistance in late October. Vermont has until Nov. 21 to decide whether it will appeal that decision, according to Farnham.

Gov. Scott, who ultimately has to make that call, told reporters at a press conference later Thursday that he initially was not planning to push back on the White House’s denial, but suggested the information about higher costs had changed his mind.

“We are working on something right now to appeal the decision based on the increased dollar amount,” the governor said.

Trump’s decision to reject Vermont’s aid request came on the same day he denied similar asks from other largely Democratic states including Illinois and Maryland. At the same time, he approved declarations for the largely Republican states of Alaska, Nebraska and North Dakota. He also approved a request from the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota.

The decision in Maryland was a rejection of an appeal, the same mechanism Vermont is now considering. Trump wrote on social media the same day that he had “won BIG” in Alaska in the last three presidential elections, according to the Associated Press.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called the federal government’s response “non-political” in a response to VTDigger last month. The spokesperson said the federal government had found that the damage in Vermont “was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments to recover.”

Also during Thursday’s Joint Fiscal Committee hearing, legislators questioned Farnham over reporting last month in Grist that described shortcomings in how the state used and oversaw a $2.9 million grant to help victims of the state’s 2024 flooding navigate FEMA applications and access other resources.

The story, which was also published in VTDigger, described how that work faced high upfront costs and how a substantial amount of the grant money was used to pay bills from a multinational consulting company, Guidehouse.

“How much money was — maybe, wasted isn’t the right word — was an unnecessary use of funds before this got figured out?” asked Rep. Robin Scheu, D-Middlebury, who chairs the state budget-writing House Appropriations Committee.

“Zero dollars, representative,” Farnham replied. “It was all necessary administrative work. It was building the systems, training everyone, putting everything together.”

Farnham added that he did not dispute facts in the story but contended that its narrative was “framed as negatively as you could” toward the state.

This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.