§31-9-24. Regular and emergency appropriations; state grants to political subdivisions.

(a) The funds appropriated by the Legislature in the general appropriation act for the support and maintenance of this article shall be expended solely for the purposes designated in the appropriation act and shall be limited to the amounts provided therein and shall be disbursed, in the same manner as all other state funds are disbursed, by warrant of the Comptroller authorized by the Director of the Emergency Management Agency and approved by the Governor, subject to the terms, conditions, provisions, and limitations of Article 4 of Chapter 4 of Title 41. In addition to any other appropriation, there is hereby appropriated out of any moneys in the State Treasury the sum of $250,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary, for the expenses incident to the operation and enforcement of the provisions of this article during an emergency as described in Section 31-9-8 hereof and the expenditure and disbursement of such funds shall be in the same manner as other funds of the Emergency Management Agency are expended and disbursed.

(b) The State of Alabama is hereby authorized to make grants, as funds may be appropriated for the specific purpose, to any political subdivision of the state in amounts not to exceed the amounts expended, or to be expended, by such political subdivision for personnel and administrative costs of local emergency management and emergency preparedness. The State Office of Emergency Management and Emergency Preparedness shall be the agency responsible for the administration of the grant program authorized by this section. In allocating state grants under this section, the administrative agency shall invoke and apply the same standards, criteria, and measures of eligibility for matching funds as prevail in the administration of the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950, as amended by Public Law 85-606, and no state grant funds authorized by this section shall be allocated to any political subdivision whose emergency management and emergency preparedness program is not eligible for such matching federal grant funds. The amounts of the annual state grants is that amount (50-50) which is appropriated by the local governments for the sole purpose of emergency management emergency preparedness programs at the local level which is programmed in their annual submission to the State Emergency Management Agency. In the event the state appropriation for this grant program in any given fiscal year is insufficient to match all eligible local expenditures for the same purposes in full, the State Office of Emergency Management shall prorate the allocation of available state grants among eligible local programs in the proportion which the eligible local expenditures of a given local program bears to the total eligible local expenditures of all local programs.

(Acts 1955, No. 47, p. 267, §26; Acts 1978, No. 852, p. 1276, §2.)