President Trump’s proposed budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies could evolve quickly into a fight over state funding.
Despite the Trump administration’s talk of renewed cooperation with the states, the president’s budget blueprint released last month not only cuts the EPA’s budget but also slices away at money meant for the states.
“Much to our chagrin and total shock was not only did they cut EPA, but they cut funding to state and local governmental agencies,” said Bill Becker, longtime director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, representing state air pollution regulators.
If the administration’s plan was to “delegate authority” away from Washington and to the states, the thinking was that they should have “empowered state and local governments to do the jobs,” Becker said. But that wasn’t the case.
Instead, “they cut our budgets, our funding, by over 30 percent,” he said.
Other state groups representing clean water regulators and utilities see the cuts as a barrier to jobs and the economy and are urging lawmakers to oppose the reductions in the appropriations process in which Congress approves a budget for fiscal 2018.
The Environmental Council of the States, representing state air, land and water regulators, said the cuts to states were more more significant than expected. While the EPA’s overall budget would decrease by 31 percent, the state grant programs would be cut by 44.5 percent from the agency’s fiscal 2017 budget, according to the group.
Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt have said repeatedly that they want to keep the nation’s air and water supplies clean without imposing expensive regulations that drive up costs and harm the economy. They also have said repeatedly that they want to accomplish that goal by striking a new relationship with the states through what Pruitt calls cooperative federalism.
“Frankly, language in the president’s budget blueprint that ‘EPA would primarily support states and tribes in their important role protecting air, land, and water in the 21st century’ is wholly inconsistent with the categorical grant cuts,” said Alexandra Dunn, executive director and general counsel of the Environmental Council of the States.
Democratic senators led by Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin vowed to reverse some of the targeted cuts, such as those to the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay cleanup program, which works with the District of Columbia and six states that rely on the bay for farming, agriculture, fishing and their water supply.
“As a region, we are urging appropriators to quickly reject the president’s budget before the absurdity of his proposed cuts causes ripples of uncertainty and fear across the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed economy,” Cardin said last month.
Trump is looking to cut similar programs aimed at cleaning up the Great Lakes, which senators in Michigan and other states oppose. On top of that, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been circulating letters to appropriators, asking for their help in maintaining adequate funding levels for state revolving funds for building water infrastructure.
But the cuts extend well beyond the EPA. The Agriculture Department’s land conservation grant program is also targeted.
Water utilities and other groups say the agriculture cuts are even more serious than the EPA’s given the reductions the grant program received in the 2014 farm bill, a coalition of dozens of state and local agencies and nongovernmental organizations said in a letter to Congress.
“Opening up the farm bill to further cut these programs should be off the table in the [fiscal] 2018 appropriations bill,” read the letter sent to House and Senate appropriators.
“Funding for these programs is more important now than ever, as ripple effects from the recent downturn in the farm economy are being felt across rural America,” the letter added. “Conservation support for healthy soil, clean water and overall farm viability is absolutely essential as farmers struggle to stay afloat.”
The Agriculture Department said recently that farming income fell for a third consecutive year. The grants would help farmers maintain their land until the market improved. Much of the problem stems from an oversupply of grain, which has driven down prices.
But trying to stop the cuts may prove more difficult than some lawmakers have suggested, Becker said.
The “pushback” from opponents of the cuts “is ‘that’s merely the Trump administration’s budget, Congress is going to fix it,'” Becker said. But there are several problems with that thinking.
“One is, Congress is of the same party of the president. So, it’s not as if the president’s budget is dead on arrival,” he said. “Secondly, even if Congress makes a significant change, and we certainly hope so, we don’t think they are going to restore all of the cuts. And you’re going to see successful programs, like state air grants, competing against other successful programs, like reducing diesel emissions.”
The air grants and diesel emission reduction programs provide matching funds to states to help them cut air pollution and meet air pollution standards imposed by the federal government.
It will be impossible for Congress to choose what is the best from a list of programs that have received strong bipartisan support, Becker said. “It is wrong for two successful programs, or many successful programs, to be competing amongst themselves,” he said. Even if Congress somehow reduces the cuts, “it’s still devastating.”
“If we have less funding to conduct the work that Congress and EPA expects of state and local governmental agencies, there will predictably be more people that die prematurely and more people who get sick because we won’t have the people or the tools, or the infrastructure, to do the job necessary to protect public health,” Becker said.
The air agencies are holding their annual spring meeting May 1-3, which Becker has invited Pruitt to attend. Becker said he has not received a response.
Another issue that Becker wants to raise with the administration is the fact that state agencies could be subject to fines and punitive action by the EPA if they cannot do their jobs because of the budget cuts. The budget cuts don’t change the law, which makes states subject to enforcement.
Many states, which must balance their budgets, are facing tough budget choices this year because of waning revenues and lagging growth. So, making the politically unpalatable choice of raising taxes to support robust environmental programs is not likely to happen if Trump’s proposal is approved by Congress.
