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PEMA, State Fire Commissioner outline 2025–26 budget requests to expand mitigation, training and grants
Summary
Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency Director Randy Padfield and State Fire Commissioner Thomas Cook told the House Appropriations Committee their 2025–26 requests aim to broaden mitigation authority, sustain readiness and fund new fire service grants and cancer-screening proposals.
Randy Padfield, director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, and Thomas Cook, state fire commissioner, told the House Appropriations Committee on Friday that the agencies’ 2025–26 budget requests are intended to preserve readiness, expand hazard mitigation and support the state’s volunteer and career fire services.
Padfield told the committee that PEMA’s mission spans preparedness, mitigation, response, recovery and 9‑1‑1 support and stressed the agency’s small size relative to its responsibilities. “PEMA is a small agency tasked with a large mission space that encompasses many components ranging from preparedness, mitigation efforts to response, recovery, and 9‑1‑1 services,” he said. He cited the agency’s work last year on Tropical Storm Debbie, a lake‑effect snow event in Erie, an influenza outbreak, a medical jet crash in Philadelphia and a recent industrial fire in Montgomery County as examples of its workload.
Why it matters: The budgets will shape state support…
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