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planning, training, exercising, infrastructure maintenance, or
equipment purchase-related activities. Post-disaster funds, such
as the Public Assistance Grant Program and the Individual and
Family Grant Program, are used to repair or replace local
infrastructures, reimburse non-profit organizations’ spending
on disaster relief, or providing direct aid to individuals and
families after the issuance of the Presidential Disaster
Declaration (Sylves, 2007). State governments are responsible
for funneling these grants to local governments.
Collaboration across levels of governments and among
local governments can be directly enhanced through the grant
system. On the one hand, as Sylves (2007) argued, the greater
the share of federal and state funding, the more likely that local
governments will follow EM policy guidelines formulated by
state and federal governments (because such compliance to the
guidelines leads to successful funding in the future). On the
other hand, many federal grants work under multi-
jurisdictional projects, which follow a regional EM approach
(McEntire & Dawson, 2007). The assumption behind this
approach is that jurisdictions would share their resources in
times of need. A regional approach encourages local governments
to share resources and information with each other in the
context of EM to achieve collective benefits (Caruson &
MacManus, 2007; McEntire & Dawson, 2007). When local
governments receive higher funding from federal and state
governments, they are more likely to be regulated by grant
criteria which require local governments to behave as regional
partners and implement intergovernmental collaboration.
Federal and state funds can also indirectly enhance
horizontal-intersectoral collaboration through increasing EM
capacity. For example, when local governments receive federal
or state funds, they can use these funds to purchase equipment,
conduct exercises and training, and improve public EM
education, which increases their EM capacity. Once local
governments have higher EM capacity, they become more