Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush recently released a report capturing lessons learned from the Texas General Land Office’s (GLO) response to Hurricane Harvey, as well as 18 recommendations to improve both response and resiliency in future natural disasters.
The report, which focuses primarily on issues relating to housing and mitigation, includes several recommendations of interest to counties, including expanding the Texas Water Development Board’s statutory authority to cover flood control and control over drainage districts; establishing a permanent disaster recovery training center for local government officials focused on recovery, disaster fortification and resilience; and establishing a Regional Building Code District with standard-setting authority in the high-risk hurricane region of Southeast Texas.
Additional recommendations include providing state funding for the salary costs of building code enforcement in this new district, as well as state funding for city and county recovery managers; establishing a large reserve account initially funded by federal funds (and later funded by state, city and county resources) to accelerate the existing housing buyback program for homes which repeatedly flood; encouraging Congress to grant “notwithstanding authority” to those high disaster risk states which have demonstrated certain competency in disaster response and recovery following a major disaster, which would allow the waiver of most federal procedural regulations and expedite contracting and program management; among numerous other recommendations.