The Trump administration has canceled $400 million in nationwide grants for AmeriCorps, including nearly $2.4 million for Vermont programs that support trail work, workforce development and farm jobs.
Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark criticized the decision as an illegal overreach of executive authority. She and attorneys general in 23 other states sued on Tuesday to stop the cuts, which could end programs that proponents say provide public benefit at a low cost.
The grant terminations are the latest in a barrage of cost-cutting moves the country’s chief executive has taken to trim the federal government.
In Vermont, the affected AmeriCorps grants pay for roughly 200 service members, who collectively worked with thousands of young people and volunteers last year and maintained more than 100 miles of public trails.
The terminated grants had already been awarded to partner organizations and, in many cases, are paying stipends to AmeriCorps members currently on the job.
Many of them are young adults who work tough jobs for modest pay. Vermont Youth Conservation Corps, for instance, hosts more than 80 participants using its $517,000 grant. They run a farm program that grows and provides weekly vegetables at no cost to 480 households who have food insecurity or diet-related illness. They also work on conservation crews to remove invasive species and hazardous trees, build public hiking trails, and maintain outhouses at state parks.
Service members in Vermont Youth Conservation Corps crews often live in tents and receive stipends of $500 to $665 per week, plus a small educational award, according to executive director Leah Mital. They come from all over the country to work in Vermont.
“These are people who are really committing of themselves and working hard for public benefit,” Mital said. “They could make more working at a Starbucks or a bagel bakery.”
Mital and other grantees around the country learned on Friday evening that their grants had been terminated immediately. In anticipation of a legal battle at the state level, Mital is looking for ways to keep her participants employed for now. Sending them home, she said, could risk losing the workforce for the season, even if a judge later restores the funding.
AmeriCorps is administered in Vermont through a state office called SerVermont. The office lists four other organizations, in addition to Vermont Youth Conservation Corps, that run AmeriCorps programs in the state: Williston-based nonprofit ReSOURCE; the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation; Lyndon Economic Opportunity AmeriCorps Program at Vermont State University; and the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board.
ReSOURCE executive director Tom Longstreth said his organization is losing a $254,000 grant that pays for work readiness training for youth and adults with disabilities.
“We are still evaluating and assessing legality and whether it is possible to fight the action,” he wrote in an email on Tuesday.
The nonprofit receives a second AmeriCorps grant to support its yearlong construction training program, called YouthBuild; Longstreth said that grant remains intact.
Clark and the other attorneys general contend that the executive branch doesn’t have the authority under the Administrative Procedures Act to cancel the AmeriCorps grants without Congressional approval. Besides, Clark said, the program is an effective one.
“This is an excellent service that our taxpayers are investing in, and we reap the benefits,” she said.
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