Insuring Public Buildings, Contents, Vehicles, and Equipment Against Disasters

In the United States, federal, state, and local governments share responsibility for managing disaster risk. Whether the current allocation of risk between these different levels of government is appropriate is much debated. In the study reported here, the authors contributed to this debate by improving the understanding of state and local financial risk management practices and the role that the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's) Public Assistance (PA) program plays in these decisions. They found that a significant portion of state and local governments that are eligible for PA purchase some type of insurance for their buildings, contents, vehicles, and equipment (BCVE) but that the insurance share across all PA projects is low, meaning that FEMA is paying for a substantial portion of the repairs. However, the insurance share varies by the attributes of the incident causing the damage and of the public entity. Regarding the role that the PA program plays in these decisions, the predominant view of experts consulted for the study was that the potential for FEMA assistance reduces state and local governments' purchase of insurance. Finally, this report discusses several approaches for increasing insurance coverage for state and local governments and the trade-offs associated with them. These approaches include encouraging credit rating agencies to evaluate communities' financial preparedness for disasters; requiring communities to analyze their risks in order to increase their awareness of them; requiring communities to cover a substantial first layer of loss; and eliminating PA for BCVE.