Suing to ‘keep the lights on’ and four more stories

 

THE SATURDAY SEND

Welcome back to the Saturday Send, a weekly digest of stories from CommonWealth Beacon that you may have missed.  In this week's roundup: Jennifer Smith talks to anti-discrimination housing organizations as they grapple with federal funding cuts that imperil their work.  Plus: Frozen funds for farmers, what’s driving an MBTA lawsuit, the latest on the voc-tech admissions saga, and the extension of a pandemic-era policy.  Check out those stories below, and, as always, thanks for reading. - The CommonWealth Beacon team

Anti-discrimination housing orgs sue to ‘quite literally keep the lights on’ by Jennifer Smith When the nondescript email landed in Maureen St. Cyr’s inbox, she didn’t know it would be taking more than half her housing nonprofit’s funding with it. “The amount that we lost overnight was 52 percent of our annual budget,” said St. Cyr, executive director of the Holyoke nonprofit, focused but harried after almost a month of scrambling. “So we’ve had to take some pretty drastic immediate steps to ensure the continuation of service for our current clients, including closing our new intake so that new people who are reaching out to us for legal assistance or advice know we aren’t able to serve them at this time.”  The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, directed its slash-and-burn approach toward the federal Department Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in February, terminating at least 78 grants across 66 institutions in 33 states, amounting to tens of millions of dollars according to court filings.  A termination notice sent to each program cut the grants off immediately and midstream, at the direction of the president and DOGE – the brainchild of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man.   The groups targeted were nonprofit fair housing organizations, the “backbone” of anti-discrimination Fair Housing Law enforcement within their regions, according to a class action lawsuit brought by groups in Massachusetts, Ohio, Idaho, and Texas. These organizations offer services like eviction defense, housing search assistance, systemic investigations of housing discrimination, and education and outreach about fair housing rights and obligations.  Pulling grants out from under them, they say, will be devastating.   “These awards are necessary to keep employees paid and clients served,” the group wrote in its emergency motion. Often, they wrote, the awards “are needed to quite literally keep the lights on.”  The rationale for the cuts offered in each case? Only that the grant “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.”  READ MORE

Mass. agriculture chief urges feds to release funds, rehire USDA staff by BHAAMATI BORKHETARIA Staff cuts at the USDA are creating new obstacles for farmers. WITH THE SPRING growing season rapidly approaching even earlier than it normally would, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources sent a letter urging the federal government to release frozen funds for farmers and reinstate staff at the US Department of Agriculture.  Farmers in Massachusetts are preparing for their growing season – which means deciding what crops to grow, how many greenhouses to build, and how much money to spend. The recent funding freezes and large staff cuts at federal government agencies initiated by the Trump administration have created uncertainty across industries. Farmers who depend on federal grants and support from the USDA are particularly vulnerable because they have been facing difficult climate conditions and have less cashflow in the beginning of the growing season.  “It is a critical time for farms as they plan for the season, and there’s already so much uncertainty in terms of climate impacts, market conditions, and potential tariffs which could impact equipment prices,” said Commissioner Ashley Randle, explaining in a phone interview why she chose to send the letter to the newly confirmed secretary of agriculture, Brooke Rollins, earlier this month. “We’re hoping to encourage the federal administration to take a more surgical … approach when they’re looking at programs and potential for impacts if they do terminate a [funding] program or if they reduce staffing.”  In the letter, Randle encouraged Rollins to come to Massachusetts to see the impact of the cutbacks. “Even if funds are ultimately released at the conclusion of your review, the intervening suspension is harming farmers, and I encourage you to resume payments while you are conducting your analysis,” she wrote.  The federal government allocates funding through the state for certain programs to support farmers and directly to farmers in the form of grant programs. There is uncertainty around both of those avenues of funding. As of March 18, the $3.1 million in funding from the USDA for the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure program, which is meant to promote resiliency in the food chain by providing funds for processing, manufacturing, storing, and distribution of agricultural products, is inaccessible to the state. The state receives $450,000 in funding every year through another program called the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program to support crops like cranberries and squash, but the USDA has not announced funding for this year and has made no information available on whether the funding will be made available, according to Randle.  Two programs that hundreds of Massachusetts farmers depended on as a substantial chunk of their revenue have been terminated – the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement, which aided food banks and meal kitchens in purchasing food from local farms, and the Local Food for Schools program, which did the same for schools and other childcare institutions. The state was supposed to receive $6.4 million in funding for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement and $12 million for the Local Food for Schools program. That money would have been funneled into farmers’ pockets and facilitated the distribution of fresh food.  Ang Roell, one of the co-owners of They Keep Bees, said that their bee farm has already lost an entire season of honey production because of the uncertainty around federal funds.   Roell’s bee farm is based in Montague, which is located in the western part of the state, but they practice a migratory farming technique that has them traveling to three different locations – Florida, North Carolina, and Massachusetts to maximize on the spring season. Last fall, their farm lost 60 hives during Hurricane Helene – one of many events exacerbated by climate change that have impacted farmers – and they’ve been counting on $15,000 of funding through a federal program that provides emergency assistance to farmers who suffer losses to livestock, honeybees, or farm-raised fish. That funding hasn’t been made available to them, which means they haven’t been able to rebuild and capitalize on the spring season.   Losing one season means that the farm will lose roughly $40,000 profit.   “Seemingly small losses start to add up when you can’t recover from them,” said Roell. “As a farmer, you’re not making a ton of money early in the season, and we use our early season cash flow to keep us afloat until we can start making money. And now, the federal government has disrupted that on top of the fact that we have these losses from climate change. It just kind of it pushes us further to the edge of risk.”  Roell said that their farm sold about $3,000 worth of honey through the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement. They were also counting on another $15,000 of funding through another federal program meant to promote “climate-smart” farming that doesn’t seem like it will come through.   Meg Bantle is one of the owners of Full Well Farm, a two-acre farm based in Berkshire County that grows tomatoes, spinach, salad greens, turnips, carrots, beets, sweet peppers, cucumbers, and summer squash. The farm’s revenue comes from farmer’s markets and a community-supported agriculture model where people sign up for a subscription to food products from the farm.   Ten percent of the farm’s revenue last year came from the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement. The program’s termination caused Bantle and her co-owner, Laura Tupper, to scramble because they had already planned their growing season with the grant program in mind.   “We’re definitely kind of in a panic mode because in addition to all the uncertainty, we are also just losing revenue streams left and right,” said Bantle. “I’ll just say it’s a mess. Farmers need to have the season planned early in the winter to leave enough time to order seeds, to order supplies, to hire employees, and as this late winter has worn on, we have been weathering so many different changes that it’s made everything extremely difficult.”  Bantle said that the farm has a $21,000 federal grant to weatherproof some of their crops by building more sturdy greenhouses that can withstand wind or protect crops from worsening storms.   Bantle and Tupper are pushing ahead with building the greenhouses even amid the uncertainty about whether the funding will come through.   Staff cuts at the USDA are also creating new obstacles for farmers. In order to get the grant they have been promised, Bantle and Tupper must coordinate with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a USDA agency that provides technical and financial assistance to landowners and agricultural producers to help them manage natural resources sustainably. However, the contact they had at NRCS was let go as part of the staffing cuts.   “We have no one even to tell us what’s going on or give us updates,” said Bantle. The Trump administration made major cuts to the federal workforce with a mass firing of thousands of probationary workers in February across multiple agencies and ordering heads of federal departments to conduct “large-scale reductions in force” by March 13. Nearly 6,000 employees at the USDA were fired since February. The USDA has been ordered by an independent federal board to temporarily reinstate those employees, and on March 13, a federal judge ordered all probationary workers laid off from federal agencies be reinstated until various lawsuits play out. The Trump administration has said that federal agencies are working to bring back the 25,000 people who were fired.  A group of farmers and nonprofit organizations have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that it is illegally withholding USDA grants funded by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Rollins has said that the USDA will begin to unfreeze funds from the IRA, but there is uncertainty as to how many funds will be unfrozen and when.  A federal judge in Rhode Island blocked the Trump administration from freezing federal grants and loans through a temporary restraining order in January after attorneys general in 22 states – including Massachusetts – and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit to block the executive order. The same judge has extended the order in early March, finding the administration had overstepped in trying to stop the federal agencies from disbursing funds appropriated by Congress.  “This is a manufactured disaster that we’re going through right now,” said Roell. “There’s no reason that any of those contracts should have been broken or frozen. Because of the choices of this administration, we’re now facing down a disaster that doesn’t even have to be happening on top of recovering from disasters that are real and tangible and related to climate change.”  READ MORE

MBTA can be sued over assault by bus driver, SJC rules by Jennifer Smith Employers like the MBTA have a responsibility to carefully select the people who will interact with members of the public, according to the Supreme Judicial Court. READ MORE

Voc-tech admissions saga zigzags toward finish line by Michael Jonas The issue first landed in the public square eight years ago, when some elected officials and advocates began sounding the alarm about state regulations that allow vocational high schools to use selective entry criteria. READ MORE

Beacon Hill extends pandemic-era policy of remote access to public meetings by GINTAUTAS DUMCIUS The policy was first established under an executive order from Gov. Charlie Baker as he and other state officials shut down large gatherings of people to prevent the spread of Covid-19. READ MORE

The Codcast: New Episode Coming Sunday at 8pm! Jennifer Smith interviews Ed Augustus, Gov. Maura Healey’s housing chief.  They talk about the impact of tariffs on the housing sector and whether the state can meet its aggressive housing goals.  Missed last week's episode of The Codcast? Jennifer Smith spoke with Ariel Beccia, an instructor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, to discuss the Trump administration’s purges of health-related government data, how these and other data purges ripple through society, and researchers’ efforts to respond.  LISTEN NOW

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