Elon Musk and DOGE may have hit the city of Garnett to the tune of some $300,000 in overpaid FEMA funds for repairs at the Cedar Valley Reservoir. City commissioners questioned City Manager, Travis Wilson on why bills and payables for the month were about $334,000 higher than usual. That was due to a FEMA error that overpaid the city for damages to the Cedar Valley Reservoir spillway in 2018 and 2019. Recognition of the error, and the city’s repayment, comes as President Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency claims to be sweeping up billions in wasteful federal spending.
The spillway at the lake was damaged during back-to-back floods in the fall of 2018 and the early spring and summer of 2019. City leaders managed to obtain $4 million in federal funding to repair the affected area. A FEMA audit in March resulted in a notice that the city had been overpaid, and Wilson told commissioners he confirmed those numbers with other personnel the city had worked with at the time the grants were approved. It was unclear whether or not the audit that discovered the error was part of FEMA’s attention by DOGE, but DOGE targeted FEMA in early February
