Troubling Federal Budget
New York’s commitment to parks, historic sites and recreation in the state budget contrasts with the budget news at the federal level. The Administration has outlined plans to slash environmental agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by 31 percent, the Department of Agriculture by 20 percent, and the Department of the Interior (DOI) by 12 percent.
EPA reductions would result in more than 3,200 employees (20 percent of the workforce) eliminated. The proposal cuts funds for programs that are critical to New Yorkers, such as Energy Star, Superfund sites, air-quality monitoring, and cleanup of the Great Lakes.
The proposed nearly $2 billion in DOI cuts are important because they affect funding for public land management and protection. The proposal decreases funding for DOI offices that purchase public lands by $120 million and eliminates money for National Heritage Areas. New York’s National Heritage areas include the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, the Champlain Valley National Heritage Area, the Hudson River Valley Heritage Area, and the Niagara Falls National Heritage Area. The proposed cuts to the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) would virtually eliminate funding to protect national parks, battlefields, and other national lands.
LWCF has helped protect some of New York’s most cherished places, with approximately $319 million coming into the state to protect places such as Sterling Forest, the Gateway National Recreation Area and the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site.
Parks & Trails New York works with a national LWCF coalition to fight these cuts. Coalition members across the country worked to get their congressional representatives to sign on to a letter to the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies. The letter asks that funding for LWCF continue in FY18. The letter was signed by 205 Congressional Representatives, including every New York State Representative. This shows strong bipartisan support contrary to the budget proposal.
Corporation for National and Community Service
Additional proposed cuts include elimination of the Corporation for National and Community Service, (CNCS). Through Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and other programs, CNCS engages millions of Americans in results-driven service each year at 50,000 locations across the country. CNCS strengthens communities by engaging 325,000 trained, skilled members in sustained service at schools, food banks, homeless shelters, veteran’s homes, and youth centers. In New York State there are 3,879 local service sites, 22,785 Senior Corps and AmeriCorps members, and $143.4 million in CNCS, and local funding.
CNCS overseas AmeriCorps and a similar program called Senior Corps aimed at older volunteers and the Volunteer Generation Fund. CNCS also provides grants to states to administer their own service commissions, which in turn provide grants to local organizations.
AmeriCorps consists of three main programs: AmeriCorps State and National, whose members serve with national and local nonprofit and community groups; AmeriCorps VISTA, through which members serve full time fighting poverty; and AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps), a team-based residential program for young adults 18-24 who carry out projects in public safety, the environment, youth development, and disaster relief and preparedness.
AmeriCorps enrolls more than 80,000 men and women in intensive service each year at more than 21,000 locations including nonprofits, schools, public agencies, and community and faith-based groups across the country. AmeriCorps members regularly help mobilize and organize millions of part-time volunteer members in the communities they serve as well. Total funding for CNCS is just over $1 billion per year, or just .03% of total federal spending.
It also proposed abolishing the Community Development Block Grant program, which provides roughly $3 billion nationwide for targeted projects related to affordable housing, anti-poverty programs, and infrastructure development.
Transportation
One of the most significant cuts comes with the President’s proposal to discontinue the TIGER transportation grant program introduced by President Obama. TIGER is unique among transportation grant programs for several reasons.– First, it is a competitive grant program that drops the formulaic decision making process that other grants use to award projects based almost entirely on geographic distribution and ensures that through a nationally-competitive process TIGER monies go to the most innovative projects. This process has also placed TIGER among the most efficient Federal grant programs, with almost all awarded funding spent within the grant periods. Second, TIGER strongly favors multi-modal projects that take into account a larger view of the needs of all transportation users. Since 2009, the TIGER program has funded more than $100 million in trail and active transportation projects in New York State, including $10.6 million for multi-use trail projects in Auburn and the Bronx and more than $90 million for complete streets projects across the state from burying Rochester’s Inner Loop Expressway to New York City’s transformative Vision Zero program. Third, TIGER grants are multi-jurisdictional, which is a more accurate reflection of the nature of large-scale transportation projects.
These draconian cuts to park, trail, and active transportation funding programs are firing up advocacy groups across the country and inspiring the formation of new coalitions, including one led by the League of American Bicyclists and Bike NY. This coalition is notable because the League’s federal policy coordinator, who had been instrumental in helping PTNY pressure NYSDOT to repurpose tens of millions of dollars for trail and complete streets projects last fall, would have otherwise been eliminated had the new administration not been so hostile towards bicyclists’ and pedestrians’ interests.