Rural counties with little land they can tax may soon have an easier path to federal disaster help. Congressman Eli Crane, the Republican who represents Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District, including Prescott and much of Yavapai County, has introduced a bill that would cut one of FEMA’s key damage benchmarks in half for those counties. AZ Free News reported on the proposal this week.
What the Bill Would Do
The Rural Disaster Fairness Act of 2026 (H.R. 10754) would apply to counties anywhere in the country where less than 15% of the land is subject to county property taxes. For qualifying counties, the Federal Emergency Management Agency would have to lower its county per capita damage indicator by 50%.
That indicator is one of the measures FEMA uses to gauge how hard a disaster has hit a local community when it reviews a state’s request for federal help. Because the benchmark is tied to population, sparsely populated counties with large amounts of untaxed land can find it harder to show the level of local impact the formula expects.
Why It Matters in the West
Crane’s office argues that counties surrounded by federal land have a smaller property tax base, which leaves less money for roads, emergency response, wildfire mitigation, and recovery. Much of Arizona is national forest, Bureau of Land Management land, state trust land, or tribal land, so the issue is familiar to many rural communities here.
“The federal government owns vast swaths of land out West, which limits the tax base for rural counties,” Crane said. “My legislation would reform FEMA’s evaluation process to take into account how much land these jurisdictions are able to tax.”
On X, Crane wrote that cutting the threshold in half “would help rural communities qualify for federal aid” and said he hopes his colleagues will support the change.
How FEMA Decides on Disaster Aid Today
Under FEMA’s current regulations, the agency looks at several factors before recommending whether the president should approve a governor’s request for a major disaster declaration. For the Public Assistance Program, which helps pay to repair public infrastructure, those factors include:
- Estimated cost of assistance and localized damage.
- Insurance coverage and hazard mitigation already in place.
- Recent disasters and help available through other federal programs.
The rules already recognize that heavy damage concentrated in one county, community, or tribal area can justify federal help even when a statewide damage measure is not met. Damage to critical facilities is one of the circumstances FEMA weighs.
Under the Stafford Act’s declaration process, a governor must first determine that a disaster is beyond what the state and local governments can handle on their own. The president then decides whether to issue a major disaster declaration.
Building on an Earlier Law
Crane’s bill would amend Section 1232 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018. That provision already told FEMA to give more weight to severe local impacts and to multiple recent disasters when it evaluates requests. The new proposal would go a step further by tying the county damage benchmark to how much land a county can actually tax.
What Comes Next
The bill has been introduced in the House and would need to pass both chambers of Congress and be signed by the president before it takes effect. It is not yet clear which Arizona counties would meet the 15% test, since that depends on how county taxable land is measured under the final language.
For Northern Arizona communities that know wildfire, flooding, and post-fire debris flows all too well, the outcome could shape how quickly help arrives after the next disaster. Bridge News will follow the bill as it moves through Congress. Read the original story from AZ Free News.
