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More than $12 billion in long-term recovery funding for disaster-impacted communities nationwide received tentative approval Tuesday in a bipartisan federal government spending deal.

From that deal, Maui is set to receive an estimated $1.6 billion in new Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funding for housing. Hundreds of millions of dollars in additional aid is also designated to support Maui economic development, small business loans and water infrastructure.

Both chambers of Congress are expected to vote on final passage of the bipartisan government spending package this week. The measure would then go to President Joe Biden for his signature.

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz took to the Senate floor several times over the past few weeks to urge his colleagues to act.

The people of Lahaina, he said, had been waiting for 16 months for more federal help following the deadly and destructive wildfires of August 2023. Some 2,200 structures were destroyed and at least 102 people lost their lives.

“Everybody was feeling a sense of urgency because people have been waiting for too damn long,” he said. “And so it was a tough negotiation. But it’s one of the biggest disaster spending bills in American history.”

Schatz and his Hawaii colleagues — Sen. Mazie Hirono and Reps. Ed Case and Jill Tokuda — have been working on disaster relief for Maui since immediately after the Aug. 8, 2023 fires, which also impacted other parts of Maui and Hawaii County.

Not counting the latest figures, federal support for Maui already totaled around $4 billion. It includes help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration.

It will be clearer later this week on how much additional federal money will go toward Maui jobs, business and infrastructure, and where the money will come from.

In a related development, Biden last week signed the Federal Disaster Tax Relief Act to exempt survivors of the fires on Maui from having to pay federal income tax on settlement money or pay tax on attorney fees. The bill was sponsored by Schatz.

In Maui County’s Hands

In an interview, Schatz said it was unclear when Maui County would get the new money, or exactly how it will be used, as that is up to the county. But he expected local officials to act as soon as possible, and he expressed confidence they were learning what is required to hire staff, issue requests for proposals, manage development and address technical concerns.

To that end, he said, a team from Maui County recently visited officials in South Carolina to understand how communities in that state spent similar allocations under similar circumstances.

“I’ve had extensive conversations with the council and with the mayor, and they understand the need for speed and to not overcomplicate this,” Schatz said. “And one of the pieces of advice that I have heard and I know that the Maui County team has heard is to keep this extremely simple, to not have too many different lines of effort, and to focus on housing at scale.”

Maui County officials didn’t respond to request for comment about the funding on Tuesday.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will have to sign off on Maui’s housing plans. Schatz said his office will closely monitor the county’s progress in rebuilding.

Case told Civil Beat last month that his office would be paying careful attention as well.

In one of his recent Senate floor speeches, Schatz said the media may have moved on from the Lahaina fire story but that people continue to suffer.

“And the truth of it is, is that a lot of a lot of the rest of the world has moved on,” Schatz said Tuesday. “But the victims can’t move on until they have a place to live. And that’s what this money is all about.”