'Chaos, panic and disorder': Maryland environmental groups among those still impacted by federal funding freeze
Published in News & Features
The solar panels are sitting on top of the barn at Butterbee Farm in Harford County.
But it’s not clear who will pay for them.
Up until last week, Laura Beth Resnick, the farm owner, expected to receive about $40,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which she would then pay the solar energy company. There was a signed contract and everything.
But on Tuesday, Resnick received an email from the agency, saying her funding had been rejected, because of an expansive freeze on federal funding put in place by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Resnick is hopeful the situation will resolve thanks to that signed contract. It’s not clear whether she’ll need legal representation to get there. But regardless, the small flower farm is tightening its finances, Resnick said. Plans to pay employees a stipend to buy new work clothes and waterproof boots were paused.
Even if everything is resolved in the coming days, the incident has shaken her faith in the federal government.
“I don’t know if I will feel comfortable getting another grant from the government that is a cost-sharing program,” Resnick said. “Knowing this could happen — it’s so stressful.”
Though federal judges in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. have blocked the funding freeze, some environmental groups and businesses told The Baltimore Sun they were still unable to access U.S. Treasury accounts with promised funds, hurling their future operations into question, and bringing staff layoffs and other cost-cutting measures into the picture.
Across the state and the nation, nonprofits and businesses that were on the hook to receive thousands or millions in federal funds, including from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, are reeling from Trump’s executive actions. Maryland projects to plant trees, construct electric vehicle chargers and install solar panels were among the projects thrown into jeopardy by Trump’s decisions.
“The media is talking about it as if, ‘OK, mission accomplished,’” said Edwin Luevanos, CEO and co-founder of Citizen Energy. “And I’m like: I haven’t gotten any of my questions answered.”
Citizen Energy was awarded a combined $9 million in grants from the federal government to install electric vehicle chargers and solar panels in low-income Maryland communities, and educate residents about them.
To administer the new programs, Luevanos hired four new staff members, bringing his team to 11 people. Now, he’s worried he will have to lay some of them off.
Luevanos doesn’t know if he’ll have to stop the projects entirely, or whether he could somehow remove elements related to “diversity, equity and inclusion," another Trump target.
Luevanos knew his work could come under a microscope with Trump returning to office. But he figured that funds already allocated to his business, which has offices in Washington, D.C., and Bethesda, were most likely safe.
“I think they’re going to lose at the end of the day,” he said. “But this is a big disruption, especially to a small business that is just trying to do something good for the community.”
Citizen Energy’s project was going to be funded by a $15 million allotment to the Maryland Clean Energy Center, for EV charging and education throughout the state.
The Clean Energy Center is also concerned with about $62.5 million in federal funds it was supposed to receive and then disperse for solar panel installations, through the Solar for All Program, said Katherine Magruder, the Center’s executive director.
“Chaos, panic and disorder,” Magruder said. “It’s not the wheels of government moving smoothly.”
Upon hearing of Trump’s federal funding freeze, some organizations rushed to their U.S. Treasury accounts to withdraw any funds they could.
The Annapolis-based Chesapeake Bay Trust did so on Tuesday, said director Jana Davis.
By Thursday, the nonprofit was unable to access any of its Treasury accounts, including funding streams from agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency.
“We are pretty careful and analytical about risk, so it was something that we had in our minds was a possibility,” said Jana Davis, the Trust’s director. “But we also didn’t think this was the most likely outcome.”
Tuesday, the Bay Trust learned its accounts were accessible again — at least for now.
But before that notification, worries abounded. The nonprofit was wondering if it would have to dip into other pots to pay the approximately $5 million it had promised to federal grantees. That included money from sales of its well-known Chesapeake Bay license plates, or the dollars it receives from Marylanders who donate to the Chesapeake Bay and Endangered Species Fund on their tax returns each year.
Organizations planning to receive funding from the Bay Trust were also thrust into chaos.
The 6th Branch, an environmental nonprofit founded by military veterans, was planning to use federal grant money from the Bay Trust to clean up a vacant lot in the East Baltimore Midway neighborhood, plant trees and install a community garden. A second grant program was for tree planting and cleaning throughout East Baltimore.
But Tuesday, before the Bay Trust got access to its accounts again, the nonprofit was planning for an emergency Saturday meeting to rework its entire budget, minus the Bay Trust funding.
“It just creates confusion, chaos and diverts from the mission,” said Stephen Pfaffenhauser, chair of the board of directors at The 6th Branch.
Masica Jordan Alston, founder and president of Apexx Adams Transportation and Clean Energy, was planning to receive federal funds to install EV chargers at churches in Maryland, including low-income areas in Baltimore, allowing those churches to turn a profit.
Federal money was also going to go to large workforce training programs at Apexx, focused on renewable energy, cybersecurity and electric vehicle charging. Some of it would have helped individuals released from prison find new jobs.
“When you freeze funding for initiatives like that, I don’t think the people who are freezing them have considered the domino effect,” Jordan Alston said.
Now, she is wondering if she may have to extricate “DEI” wording from her grant proposals in order to save them. But it’s not clear how she might do that.
“I can’t be un-Black. That doesn’t happen. I can’t not be a woman. It doesn’t happen,” she said. “I am who I am.”
Regardless of the Trump administration’s executive actions, car companies seem to be moving forward with plans to build electric cars and plug-in hybrids, Jordan Alston said.
“These vehicles are still being produced,” Jordan Alston said. “Who’s going to charge them though?”
For Luevanos, the meddling from the Trump administration is “personal.” His parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico. It’s why he wanted to target his work on electric vehicles to immigrant, largely Latino, communities in the Washington, D.C., suburbs.
And with a slew of funding available from President Joe Biden’s administration, Luevanos built his business around federal grants, which paid the bills, but didn’t result in much of any profit.
He was expecting to receive between $30 million and $50 million in new funding from the federal government to install EV chargers and complete educational programming in Maryland, Colorado, California and Washington, D.C. Now, that seems unlikely.
But in April, using grant funding from the state of Maryland, he hopes to throw a large event at a church in Riverdale focused on electric vehicles and renewable energy.
“We’re really trying to make a statement nationally,” he said. “If the federal government stops this, we believe in this, and we think it’s important.”
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