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Oregon Emergency Management details 911 modernization, grant awards and disaster funding
Summary
Oregon Department of Emergency Management officials briefed the Senate committee Jan. 21 on priorities including NextGen 911 modernization, federal grants (EMPG, BRIC, HMGP), mitigation funding and an open deadline for a recent presidential disaster declaration.
Aaron McMahon, director of the Oregon Department of Emergency Management, and Patience Whittingham, deputy director, told the Senate committee Jan. 21 that OEM’s priorities for the session include modernizing 911 systems, administering federal grant programs and continuing regional coordination for response and recovery.
Whittingham said OEM oversees the state 911 program, which manages routing for 41 public safety answering points and handles more than 2,200,000 emergency calls and 3,700,000 administrative calls annually. She said the program administers about $80,000,000 in annual 911 tax revenue and is preparing GIS data and statewide equipment upgrades in support of a NextGen 911 core services acquisition slated to begin in 2025.
On grants, Whittingham described the state preparedness and incident response equipment (SPIRE) awards (about $3,000,000 to 27 jurisdictions so far, with additional rounds and up to $20,000,000 in equipment anticipated), the Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG), which requires a 50% local match and supported jurisdictions across counties, cities and tribes, and mitigation grants including BRIC, Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) and NHERP. OEM reported obligating roughly $38,000,000 in FEMA hazard-mitigation funds for projects in Oregon and that it secured more than $120,000,000 in mitigation-focused federal funding across FY22–24.
Whittingham said the public assistance team is managing an estimated 952 subrecipients and more than 3,800 projects across 10 open disasters with a combined estimated cost of over $2,800,000,000, and that the January 2025 presidential disaster declaration opened another round of mitigation funding. She noted the deadline for eligible entities to apply under that declaration is Jan. 30, 2025.
Director McMahon and Whittingham also described regionally based coordination staff, emergency support functions and state recovery functions, and noted OEM became an independent agency on July 1, 2022. Committee members asked for data and timelines; McMahon and Whittingham offered to provide further details and said OEM will release an updated state recovery plan in the summer.
