MSA Delineations Used in FEMA's Grant Programs

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY <SUBAGY>Federal Emergency Management Agency</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID: FEMA-2024-0027]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>MSA Delineations Used in FEMA's Grant Programs</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice and request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Consistent with the Metropolitan Areas Protection and Standardization Act of 2021, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requests public comment on the adoption of updated Metropolitan Statistical Area delineations for use in certain of FEMA's grant programs. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received no later than December 9, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by Docket ID: FEMA-2024-0027, via the Federal eRulemaking Portal: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Edgardo Santos, Risk Methodology Branch Chief, Federal Emergency Management Agency, <E T="03">FEMA-MSA-Process@fema.dhs.gov,</E> (800) 368-6498. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Public Participation</HD> Interested persons are invited to participate in this notice by submitting comments and related materials. We will consider all comments and materials received during the comment period. If you submit a comment, include the Docket ID, indicate the specific section of this document to which each comment applies, and give the reason for each comment. All submissions may be posted, without change, to the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> and will include any personal information you provide. Therefore, submitting this information makes it public. For more about privacy and the docket, visit <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/privacy-notice.</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. FEMA Grant Programs and Core Based Statistical Areas</HD> FEMA has the statutory authority to deliver numerous disaster and non-disaster financial assistance programs in support of its mission, and that of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), largely through grants and cooperative agreements. Preparedness grants  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> support our citizens and first responders to ensure we work together as a nation to build, sustain and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from and mitigate terrorism and other high-consequence disasters and emergencies. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  For the purposes of this notice, the relevant grants programs are the Urban Area Security Initiative, the Tribal Homeland Security Grant Program, the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, the Port Security Grant Program, the Transit Security Grant Program, and the Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program. FEMA's authority to administer these programs is provided below. </FTNT> When determining eligibility for the Urban Area Security Initiative, the Tribal Homeland Security Grant Program, the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, the Port Security Grant Program, the Transit Security Grant Program, and the Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program, one factor is the applicant's location with respect to a given set of Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> MSAs are a type of core based statistical area (CBSA). The general concept of a CBSA is that of an area containing a large population nucleus, or urban area, and adjacent communities that have a high degree of integration with that nucleus. CBSAs are composed of entire counties: “central counties” that contain the population nucleus, and “outlying counties” that qualify to join a central county based on demonstrating sufficient commuting ties with the central county or counties of the area. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See, e.g.,</E> 6 U.S.C. 601(5), 604(b). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  For more information, see U.S. Census Bureau, <E T="03">Metropolitan and Micropolitan, About</E> (July 25, 2023), <E T="03">https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/metro-micro/about.html.</E> </FTNT> The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) establishes and maintains these statistical areas to provide a nationally consistent set of delineations for collecting, tabulating, and publishing Federal statistics for geographic areas. OMB establishes standards for defining CBSAs and then applies those standards to U.S. Census Bureau data to delineate individual CBSAs. Every decade, OMB reviews the CBSA standards and, if warranted, revises them, and then applies the new standards to new decennial census data to produce updated CBSA delineations. OMB published the 2020 Standards for Delineating Core Based Statistical Areas on July 16, 2021, <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> and published revised CBSA delineations on July 21, 2023. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  86 FR 37770 (July 16, 2021). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  OMB Bulletin No. 23-01 (July 21, 2023), <E T="03">https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/OMB-Bulletin-23-01.pdf.</E> </FTNT> Between censuses, OMB releases annual updates, which make minor changes to the delineations (or no changes, if warranted by the data) and five-year updates that address broader revisions that generally include more changes to the delineations. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  For more information, see 86 FR at 37775. </FTNT> Under the Homeland Security Grant Program, <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> the FEMA Administrator designates high-risk urban areas to receive Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grants. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> To determine which areas should receive assistance each fiscal year, the Administrator is directed to assess the relative threat, vulnerability, and consequences from acts of terrorism faced by each “eligible metropolitan area.”  <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> The HSA defines “Eligible Metropolitan Area” to mean any of the 100 most populous metropolitan statistical areas  <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> and defines “Metropolitan Statistical Area” to mean a metropolitan statistical area, as defined by OMB. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  Homeland Security Act of 2002, as amended, Public Law 107-296, Title XX, 6 U.S.C. 321a, 603, 604, 605, 607, 608, 609; section 702 of the Security and Accountability For Every Port Act of 2006, Public Law 109-347, 6 U.S.C. 470. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  Section 2003 of the HSA, 6 U.S.C. 604(b)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  6 U.S.C. 604(b)(2)(A). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  6 U.S.C. 601(5). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>  6 U.S.C. 601(8). </FTNT> Before the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2024 (FY24 DHS Appropriations Act), <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP)  <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> functioned as a “carve-out” of UASI, so eligibility for NSGP was tied to the MSA delineations in the same way as UASI. Pursuant to the FY24 DHS Appropriations Act, fiscal year 2024 NSGP awards are authorized under 6 U.S.C. 609a. <SU>14</SU> <FTREF/> Currently, as a matter of policy, FEMA ties eligibility for assistance under the program to the MSA framework. The fiscal year 2024 NSGP Notice Funding Opportunity (NOFO) states that eligible nonprofit subapplicants may be eligible for assistance specifically because of their location with respect to an MSA. <SU>15</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>  Public Law 118-47, Div. C. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>13</SU>  Section 2009 of the HSA, 6 U.S.C. 609a. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>14</SU>  Public Law 118-47, Div. C, Title III. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>15</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> DHS NOFO Fiscal Year 2024 Nonprofit Security Grant Program (Apr. 16, 2024), <E T="03">https://www.fema.gov/grants/preparedness/nonprofit-security/fy-24-nofo.</E> </FTNT> Under the Tribal Homeland Security Grant Program (THSGP), <SU>16</SU> <FTREF/> the FEMA Administrator may make awards “to directly eligible tribes” under the State Homeland Security Grant Program. <SU>17</SU> <FTREF/> The definition of a “directly eligible tribe” provides four area-based criteria, one of which must be met in order for a Tribal Nation to be eligible for assistance under THSGP. <SU>18</SU> <FTREF/> One of those four criteria is that the Tribal Nation is located within or contiguous to 1 of the 50 most populous metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. <SU>19</SU> <FTREF/> Thus, although many Tribal Nations that are eligible for THSGP will be eligible through one of the other criteria, some Tribal Nations will be eligible for THSGP assistance specifically because of their location with respect to an MSA. <FTNT> <SU>16</SU>  Section 2005 of the HSA, 6 U.S.C. 606. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>17</SU>  6 U.S.C. 606(a). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>18</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 6 U.S.C. 601(4)(A)(iii). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>19</SU>  6 U.S.C. 601(4)(A)(iii)(III). </FTNT> FEMA's Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program (RCPGP), <SU>20</SU> <FTREF/> as a matter of policy, ties eligibility for assistance under the program to the MSA framework. The fiscal year 2023 RCPGP NOFO states that eligible applicants must be either a State or Territory that contains one or more of the 100 most populous MSAs or be a local government located within one of the 100 most populous MSAs. <SU>21</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>20</SU>  Consolida ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━