Texas General Land Office Adjusts Hurricane Relief Requirements Ahead Of Federal Review

The Texas General Land Office (GLO) has modified its action plan for distributing $4.3 billion in Hurricane Harvey federal relief funds to competitive grant applicants seeking assistance for flood recovery and mitigation.

Amid concerns about eligibility requirements for smaller cities and organizations, the GLO lowered the minimum dollar amount for Hurricane Harvey State Mitigation Competition applications to $3 million from $5 million.

Competition applicants may submit a maximum of three applications individually and up to three in partnership with other entities.

In the draft plan for the three-state mitigation competitions, an entity could not be awarded a second application before every eligible entity had received the first award.

This is changed to set a minimum score for applications receiving the first award before anyone receives a second award.

Councils of governments (COGs) are now eligible to apply for the Resilient Communities Program.

The GLO made the changes in response to 4,080 public comments from almost 900 individuals.

Its cap of $100 million per project remains as the agency prepares to present its revised action plan to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on February 3 for review and action within 60 days.

This article was originally published by Strategic Partnerships Inc.