Legislation creating a fund to help counties and municipalities impacted by natural disasters passed its House committee.

House Bill 3819, authored by Rep. Lonnie Sims, R-Jenks, would create the Oklahoma Disaster Mitigation and Recovery Matching Fund.

­This fund would be appropriated $5 million to aid counties and communities impacted by natural disasters or at risk for future loss in their application for recovery and mitigation project financing.

Sims, who chairs the House County and Municipal Government Committee, has worked on  legislation related to the Arkansas River flooding in May 2019. The record flooding led to the evacuation of hundreds of people and elevated awareness of the stress on Tulsa County’s 70-year-old levee system.

Sims said that while studying the historic flooding of 2019, he realized Oklahoma didn’t just have a flooding problem, but a natural disaster problem. In that same year, the state was also hit by tornados, wildfires and other extreme weather events. The natural disasters resulted in many federal, state and local disaster declarations opening the door to a number of financial aid opportunities to fund recovery and future mitigation projects.

Many available grants require a local matching component, ranging from 10% to 30%, relative to the total amount of the application. A $1 million dollar grant with a 10% local match requirement would mean the local community must fund $100,000 to qualify.

“Over half our communities simply can’t cover the match and we leave millions in aid on the table every year because of it,” Sims said.

HB 3819 would give communities a vehicle to apply for and receive the local matching dollars.

“My hope here is to turn $5 million into $50 million year after year, and a little bit of mitigation investment will go a long way over time to really set the state up to where we can combat these disasters in the future,” Sims told the committee.