Lead: Karina French
Counselors: Clint Andrews, Elisabeth Gilmore, Carolyn Kousky

Climate-driven disasters can have adverse effects on city finances, but the extent of fiscal impact is shaped by local government decisions. Little is known about how city government staff have navigated these fiscal risks historically, or their strategies and capacity for managing future risks. In this project led by Karina French, researchers analyze these dynamics across 10 US cities in the mid-Atlantic region, relying on expert interviews with 22 municipal staff in both budget and resilience roles. As the empirical literature shows, federal funding has played a central role in cities’ fiscal recovery and planning for future disasters. Their research documents several dynamics that help explain the constraints and tradeoffs cities face, including the practical limitations of local reserves and the external and internal incentives that drive city decision making. These mechanisms can help contextualize the implications of federal disaster policy choices and motivate further empirical study of the impact of local government choices on risk.