Life isn’t fair, and neither is FEMA, according to Illinois lawmakers who are miffed at being passed over for public disaster assistance.

Illinois Senators Dick Durbin, a Democrat, and Mark Kirk, a Republican, said Monday that when it comes to distributing disaster funds, the Federal Emergency Management Agency discriminates against more populated states. They want to see the process changed.

“The thinking is that large states have the resources to absorb the recovery costs,” Durbin said in a statement. “Well, that’s just not the case in Illinois, and it’s certainly not the case for these communities. Senator Kirk and I agree, it is time to fix the metrics FEMA uses to determine which communities deserve disaster assistance.”

The senators’ ire stems from being turned down for public disaster funds after a November tornado cut a swath of destruction across nine Illinois counties. Although the counties were declared disaster areas and grants were given to individuals, local governments were on their own when it came to recovering disaster related costs, according to a NPR report. Durbin’s statement also references February storms in Southwestern Illinois.

At the heart of the issue is a population-based formula used by FEMA to determine whether or not states can recover without federal funding. The formula assigns an amount per resident—this year that amount is $1.39—that the state should be able to pay on its own before needing assistance, according to NPR. Smaller states would therefore have lower thresholds to receive funding.

“Tomorrow, I say to my colleagues, it could be your state,” Durbin told NPR. “You could find out that a devastating natural disaster does not qualify for federal disaster assistance simply because of the population of your state.”

Durbin and Kirk introduced the Fairness in Federal Disaster Declarations Act to counter what they see as discrimination. The Act would require FEMA to take into consideration local economic factors including the local assessable tax base, the median income as it compares to that of the state, and the poverty rate as it compares to that of the state, according to Durbin’s statement.

Without doubt, communities like those in Illinois are distressed by the practice, but is the practice truly unfair? Don’t states with a larger population, and by extension a larger taxbase, have more capacity to recover without federal help?

In Illinois, that seems to be the case. After FEMA turned down two applications for relief funds, the state came up with $45 million to help the affected governments. The scenario lends support to the argument, debated in the most recent presidential election, that states don’t plan well enough for disasters because they feel assured the federal government will be there to bail them out.

Even if that’s so, FEMA’s methods for determining what qualifies as a disaster and what amount of assistance will be granted is indeed perplexing. State governors have long been flummoxed by what they see as the whims of disaster declarations. But given the increased instances of extreme weather and the tenuous state of federal funding, perhaps the tack of another Illinois lawmaker is a better one to take.

In early April, State Sen. Dave Koehler introduced a measure requiring the state emergency management agency to grant relief funds to communities when FEMA won’t. It passed the senate unanimously. Although it has yet to be funded, it could possibly bring a little more peace of mind to affected communities than by taking on the vagaries of FEMA.

“We’re trying to use the experience of Nov. 17 to look ahead and see if we can’t give a little more comfort to communities,” Koehler told the Peoria Journal Star.