Say Anything Blog

Anyone who has lived in North Dakota, or any other ag-centric state, is probably familiar with the annual declarations of disaster for this drought or that blizzard made by our political leaders.  Usually these declarations are met with eye-rolls from we citizens who understand that this is just government using an excuse to get its hands on more money.  I’m wondering if those declarations, that have become so routine as to almost not even be newsworthy, are starting to look a little more absurd when seen from the perspective of this years’ flooding in the state.

These days declaring disasters, and then raking in all the federal money that comes with such a declaration, has become big business.  It seems like our local officials use any excuse they can glom on to for “disaster” declaration.  As I mentioned before, declaring agriculture disasters has become an annual occurrence here in North Dakota.  Summer a little dry?  We declare a drought and collect federal money.  Summer a little wet?  We declare a flood and collect federal money?

Tornado suck up some wheat land?  It’s like winning the lottery.

I haven’t gone back and actually checked, but I’m not sure there’s been a year in the 19 years I’ve lived here when North Dakota (and probably a lot of other states too) didn’t have some sort of meteorological “disaster” that prompted pleas and demands for federal money.

Which is kind of absurd, if you take a step back and look at it.  We declare disasters, and demand federal aid, not because we actually suffered a true-blue disaster and need the money.  But rather because we can declare a disaster, and we will get federal money for it.  And the quicker we get our disaster declarations in the more likely we’ll beat other states declaring disasters of their own to the jackpot.

I worry that, because we’ve defined disaster declarations down to the point where most of them (though by no means all) are little more than rent-seeking pleadings for bailouts, when the time roles around for real disaster relief we’re left with fewer resources than we would have had.

Would it be easier to convince the federal government that we need some help building some permanent flood infrastructure in Fargo (something even this limited government proponent admits is an appropriate role for government) if we hadn’t been declaring “disasters” a couple of times a year, every year, for the last couple of decades or so?

I think it probably would be.