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Federal funding cuts could severely hurt service providers in Northern California

Assemblymember Wendy Carillo speaks to the crowd gathered for the Child Care Providers United Rally at the state Capitol in Sacramento on June 15, 2023.
Julie A Hotz
/
CalMatters
Assemblymember Wendy Carillo speaks to the crowd gathered for the Child Care Providers United Rally at the state Capitol in Sacramento on June 15, 2023.

Local service providers worry that the Trump administration’s goals to cut federal spending could have major impacts on countless services in rural communities.

Leaders from various organizations in California's north coast met with Democratic Representative Jared Huffman for a virtual roundtable Monday. They discussed how much they rely on federal funding for just about everything.

Some of the more obvious targets for cuts are housing, healthcare and food assistance programs. But even wildfire prevention and recovery programs could face cuts. Jill Demers is executive director for the Humboldt Resource Conservation District, which manages fuels reduction projects.

“We’ve been told that it’s in our best interest to reduce spending right now while looking forward," she said.

Most organizations said they could only last a couple months at most if they lost federal funding.

Kerry Venegas from Changing Tides Family Services in Humboldt County said cuts to programs like child care assistance would have major impacts.

“In our county alone that’s over 1,500 kids, almost 1,000 families immediately would have a cessation," she said.

The efforts by the White House to eliminate any diversity and inclusion funding could hurt assistance programs that help the most vulnerable.

Representative Huffman noted that one order called for freezing any funding for so-called “Marxist” programs.

“If we are trying to redistribute resources to help people at the lower end economically, it’s not hard to imagine some political appointee from DOGE or somewhere else saying, ‘That feels kinda Marxist, kinda Socialist,’” Huffman said.

Huffman said that rural communities will be impacted the most by cuts to federal funding.

He said he’ll be taking what he’s heard from constituents to Washington to show how these efforts are doing more harm than good.

Roman Battaglia is a regional reporter for Jefferson Public Radio. After graduating from Oregon State University, Roman came to JPR as part of the Charles Snowden Program for Excellence in Journalism in 2019. He then joined Delaware Public Media as a Report For America fellow before returning to the JPR newsroom.