Will the Trump Administration pull back Transportation Grants?

During the campaign, Candidate Trump talked about pulling back funding from President Biden’s signature accomplishments including the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law). 

This week marks the third anniversary of IIJA and to celebrate it, the Department of Transportation announced multiple grant awards including $172 million in Safe Streets for All awards. This $172 million means now $3 billion of Safe Streets planning and implementation grants have been awarded. Whether or not Congress will try and pull back this funding, or other funding from other grant programs in the new year is yet to be seen, but there are some things we can do to safeguard the funds that have already been awarded.

First, it’s important to understand that just because a grant has been announced, does not mean the funding is safe. For funding to be safe there needs to be a grant agreement or contract signed. When it comes to federal funding, this can take months. For local governments doing this for the first time, it can take even longer. 

Here’s what you can do in the meantime. Talk to your local government about who helped put the grant together, or who is supportive. If there were business interests, local advocacy organizations, etc., work with them to do the following:

1 — Publicize it as much as possible. Contact reporters at your local newspaper and radio station.  Put it out on social media, and on every organizational newsletter you know. 

2 — Say thank you to your Mayor or Tribal leader who applied for the grant. If there was anyone or any agency that wrote a letter of support or co-sponsored the grant, thank them too.  So if your state DOT signed off on the grant (and they almost definitely at least knew about it), make sure to thank the Governor and the DOT Secretary. Not sure? Ask your city or town’s planning department.

Those thank yous can be public and private. When Congress got rid of the requirement for state DOTs to have Safe Routes To School coordinators, one SRTS coordinator made sure every school sent homemade thank-you cards to the Secretary of Transportation. That coordinator kept her job for years! 

3 — Let your US Representative, or your US Representative-elect, know how important this grant is to your community.  Every member of Congress has a local office in your community, take the time to set up a meeting with community leaders to go in and talk to them about why the grant matters to their constituents. Invite them to visit the area the grant will address. Show them the articles in the paper. 

The more you publicize and thank everyone involved, the more they will feel ownership over the project and feel the need to help protect it.