Local winners and losers of Trump's proposed budget
WINNERS
Immigration enforcement: The proposed budget also ramps up hiring for immigration enforcement and border patrol -- 1,500 more hires -- and provides funding for expanded deportation and detention operations. The budget also would set aside $15 million to implement mandatory nationwide use of the E-Verify system, which allows employers to check job-seekers' work eligibility.
Earlier this month, 248 people were arrested in an immigration sweep across four states, led by Philadelphia immigration agents – the largest such operation in the region in some time.
The president has called for boosting funds for a charter school grant program that helps open new charter schools and expand and replicate successful ones. Trump wants the program to grow from $333 million to $501 million.
"The Keystone Alliance is pleased that President Trump's 2018 budget proposal would increase funding for the Charter Schools Program as well as direct additional funding to initiatives that would allow more students and families to attend the public school of their choice," Executive Director Tim Eller said Thursday. "However, Congress must enact changes to the Charter Schools Program to make it easier for individual public charter schools to access this funding when a state's education agency refuses or fails to apply for this program."
He said that publicly funded charter schools serve as "high-quality alternatives to traditional public schools" for students across the state.
The alliance, which is based in Harrisburg, represents 55 of the state's 163 brick-and-mortar charter schools but not the 14 cyber charters that enroll students from across the state who receive online instruction in their homes. More than 133,000 students are enrolled in charter schools in Pennsylvania. Nearly 65,000 of them are Philadelphia students.
But Thomas J. Gentzel, the executive director and CEO of the National School Boards Association, blasted President Trump's proposal.
"The Administration's proposed $9 billion cut to the education budget is irresponsible, and it would put programs and needed support services provided by schools at risk if it is adopted by Congress," said Gentzel, who was the executive director of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association before taking the helm of the national organization. "The proposal redirects hundreds of millions of dollars from public schools – often, school districts that rely most heavily on federal aid, forcing them to cut vital services or raise local property taxes."
Reigelman said Gov. Wolf is urging the state's congressional delegation "to carefully review the devastating cuts in this proposal and help stop them."
"For a number of years, we have seen a precipitous drop in funding for lead paint remediation. We need to get lead out of kids' houses so they don't get poisoned in the first place -- because once they have it, there is no medical cure," said Colleen McCauley. "So getting lead out of homes is the best way to work towards a permanent solution."
But with significant cuts proposed for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the agency that funds such remediation, McCauley said the extra money "doesn't feel like a win." Reducing funds for HUD puts low-income families at risk, she said -- "we see this as a sort of bait and switch."
Philadelphia's health commissioner, Thomas Farley, said it was too early to tell how the proposed budget will affect the lead poisoning prevention program, which has seen several cuts over the last few years.
"The city, as demonstrated by the ongoing work of the Lead Poisoning Advisory Group, continues to focus on this as a citywide priority," he said. "Any increase in federal funding would be welcome, but the proposed $20 million increase works out to about $50,000 for Philadelphia, if divided proportionally. This amount would not make up for previous cuts or other proposed cuts to public health funding."
LOSERS
Transportation projects in the region: Trump's first foray into the Department of Transportation's budget proposed a $16.2 billion discretionary budget, $2.4 billion, or 13 percent less than 2017's Department of Transportation budget.
If passed, the budget could be the death knell of two of the region's highest profile transit projects, Seymour said, the light rail extension to King of Prussia and a rail line connecting Camden to Gloucester County. Those projects would likely depend on the Federal Transit Administration's New Starts Capital Investment Program, he said, and the budget proposal would limit that money to projects with existing full funding grant agreements.
The King of Prussia project, five miles of track connecting the Norristown High Speed Line to the King of Prussia mall and business district, could cost upward of $1.1 billion, and the rail service between Camden and Glassboro is anticipated to cost up to $2 billion. It isn't clear how much of those projects would be funded with federal money, but typical would be 30 to 40 percent of the total cost, Seymour said. The budget proposes shifting the funding that had been provided by the FTA to local funding sources.
The budget proposal also calls for an end to Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery discretionary grants, competitive grants that have been a significant transit development tool in the region. The Philadelphia region is of the only places in the country to have TIGER grant applications granted every year. The money has paid for projects like the Schuylkill Banks boardwalk. In 2015 Philadelphia received $10.2 million from the program to improve pedestrian and bicycle access, and Randy LoBasso, of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, said losing the grants could affect efforts to make the city safer for people traveling without cars.
The federal budget proposal would also eliminate funding for Amtrak's long distance train services. Rail service between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh likely wouldn't be affected, as it is primarily funded with state money. The Northeast Corridor, Amtrak's busiest service, which connects Philadelphia with the rest of the East Coast, operates profitably and the budget states the proposal would "allow Amtrak to focus on better managing its state-supported and Northeast Corridor train services," making it unclear how significant the effects could be to Philadelphia's Amtrak service.
Jon Retzlaff, chief policy officer for the Philadelphia-based American Association for Cancer Research, said he was "astonished and dumbfounded" by the depth of the Trump cuts. He said they will reduce the chances that researchers can find funding for their work at a time when cancer researchers are making progress. "It's unfortunate because now is the time to be pressing the accelerator, not utilizing the parking brake," he said.
NIH funding was flat between 2003 and 2013, he said, forcing the department to operate efficiently.
"You have world-renowned institutions in Philadelphia that are reliant on federal funding and so this kind of proposal will set back the tremendous progress that those institutions are making."
He said AACR, which represents 37,000 researchers and patient advocates, will be lobbying lawmakers in September. "I don't think there's ever been a more important time for us to be bringing together the entire medical research community," he said.
Legal services for low-income Philadelphians: Philadelphia Legal Assistance (PLA) also faces an uncertain future in the wake of the proposed budget. The organization, which provides free legal services to low-income Philadelphians, receives 90% of its funding—$2.7 million—through the federal Legal Services Corporation, which would be eliminated under the new budget.
According to PLA Executive Director Anita Santos-Singh, there are roughly 700,000 Philadelphians who are eligible for PLA assistance. Last year, the PLA received requests for aid from 32,000 people. "Of those," Santos-Singh said, "we were able to provide assistance to 5,500."
Federal loans and grants that finance water systems: At the Department of Agriculture, Trump would kill the Water and Wastewater loan and grant program, for "a savings of $498 million from the 2017 annualized CR level." Water systems in rural communities should look for "private sector financing" aided by EPA state grants, such as the $20 million EPA Water Infrastructure program.
Locally, shares of American Water Works, of Voorhees, and Aqua America, of Bryn Mawr, two of the nation's largest for-profit water and sewer system owners, traded modestly lower Thursday morning.
Manufacturing assistance centers: Despite Trump's proposals to bring back U.S. manufacturing, the budget would kill federal funding for the Commerce Department's Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, which pays half the cost of manufacturing assistance centers -- which help businesses develop and sell products -- in Pennsylvania and other states, to save $124 million a year.
While Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris and other Trump manufacturing advisers have recommended more government aid to training and retraining skilled factory workers, Trump's budget summary "decreases Federal support for job training and employment service formula grants, shifting more responsibility for funding these services to States, localities, and employers" -- though it also encourages states to "expand apprenticeship, an evidence-based approach to preparing workers for jobs," without detailing how.
Maud Lyon, president of the Great Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, says that since 2012, 98 Philadelphia organizations have received a total of $7.7 million from the NEA, and that the potential loss for the future would go beyond the obvious direct disappearance of funding.
Money from the NEA, NEH and IMLS often acts as seed funding for arts programs -- which they can leverage into funding from other sources, Lyon said. And federal funding helps under-served audiences access the arts, she said.
Local groups that receive NEA funding span all genres and sizes. The Philadelphia Orchestra was recently awarded a $75,000 NEA grant to support the work it does at Broad Street Ministry for a weekly songwriting/improvisation and listening class for guests, particularly for those experiencing trauma, and an additional $75,000 for various community concerts. The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society receives $15,000 annually.
NEA spokeswoman Victoria Hutter said the agency was in wait-and-see mode about its survival. "We don't know, and really can't speculate," she said. "This is the first step in a long process. We are continuing to do our work, and continue to process grants and commence panels and to carry on." Any multi-year grants would be honored, she said.
Armstrong said the company was in the midst of reviewing the administration's budget proposal, which would cut the program entirely. The provisional budget called LIHEAP a "lower-impact program" and "unable to demonstrate strong performance outcomes."
The bankrupt: Under President Trump's proposed federal budget, it will cost more for Americans to go broke.
The proposal calls on the Justice Department to more than double bankruptcy-filing fee collections, to $289 million next year from around $140 million last year, "to ensure that those that use the bankruptcy court system pay for its oversight."
Some states choose to use part of their federal community development block grant funding to supplement Meals on Wheels, but that money is not a big piece of the meal program's budget, said Jenny Bertolette, vice president of communications for Meals on Wheels America.
If Trump's proposed budget "came to be, we're hearing from our local programs that this would affect some of them," Bertolette said.
(A bigger concern — and an unknown — is whether the Older Americans Act funding will be slashed. It provides about 35 percent of Meals on Wheels' annual $1.4 billion in federal funding. The Department of Health and Human Services, which administers grants under the OAA, has been targeted for cuts by the Trump administration. The OAA provides almost half of the $64 million that Pennsylvania spends on Meals on Wheels, according to the national program.)
Local emergency-preparedness efforts: Trump's budget outline proposes $667 million in cuts to state and local grants, including two programs the region relies on heavily to prepare itself in the event of an emergency, Samantha Phillips, director of emergency management in Philadelphia said.
In recent years the grant money from those programs also allowed the city's OEM to grow its staff in time for two major events in Philadelphia -- the papal visit and the Democratic National Convention -- and to upgrade its central hub known as the emergency operations center in 2012.
It paid for training for the Philadelphia bomb squad and surrounding county bomb squads. It allowed the creation of a five-county "major incidents response team" and supported search and rescue and special operations for the fire department. The money also paid for stockpiling prophylaxis, antibiotics and other preventative medicines, to curb the spread of disease in case of a bio-attack.
The proposal would slash funding to the Homeland Security Grant Program and a pre-disaster mitigation program, which combined last year gave $14 million to the region for training, equipment and advancements in emergency response technologies, Phillips said.
Philadelphia received about 40 percent of that funding with the remainder going to Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware and Chester counties.
Phillips called the cuts -- if they go through -- "catastrophic" for the region. The homeland security grant money is allocated based on a city's risk factors. Philadelphia is the fifth largest city but seventh on the list in terms of risk.
"These cuts are really scary because without a doubt any cut is going to be a cut to us," Phillips said. "I think the question is, how bad would that cut be?"
( Staff writers Jonathan Tamari, Jonathan Lai, Bob Fernandez, Alfred Lubrano, Jason Nark, David Murrell, Joseph DiStefano, Frank Kummer, Barbara Laker, Wendy Ruderman, Peter Dobrin, Jason Laughlin, Marie McCullough, Julia Terruso, Martha Woodall, and Stacey Burling contributed to this report.)