Many of 2024’s biggest public finance stories were, in fact, stories about natural disasters. Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused hundreds of casualties and an estimated $50 billion in damage. The Thompson Fire in northern California led to the evacuations of 13,000 people. Memorial Day tornadoes killed dozens of people in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The long-term public finance implications of these and other catastrophes—property damage, infrastructure replacement, lost tax collections, damaged credit quality, and so forth—are staggering.
Our bureaucratic term for the body of work that follows these disasters is “management, recovery, and rebuilding.” That work is financed by the federal government, managed by state governments, and executed by local governments with the help of nonprofits and other community resources. What does this mean for local public finance professionals? Practically speaking, it means that once a disaster happens, you’ll need to stand up a billion-dollar organization in a week. As recovery resources flow in, we depend on local finance professionals to build the budgeting, financial reporting, procurement, and other systems needed to manage them.
- Publication date: December 2024
- Author: Justin Marlowe