AmeriCorps cuts hit northern Michigan environmental work

Yahoo

18-05-2025

Nick Panicola helps conduct a waste audit of the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City in July 2024 as part of his position as a MI Healthy Climate Corps member. (Photo: Izzy Ross/IPR News)
Until last month, Nick Panicola was working at two environmental nonprofits in northern Michigan.
His jobs at SEEDS Ecology & Education Centers and Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology ranged from organizing educational events to community composting. That included developing 'a food recycling network in the area, which we just launched a few weeks ago.' He held the positions through AmeriCorps.
Then came a stop work order from the Michigan Community Service Commission at the end of April.
AmeriCorps provides paid community service jobs that span a wide range of fields, from disaster recovery to education, generally through temporary, low-paying positions.
In April, the agency placed most of its staff on leave.
The Trump administration also ended around $400 million dollars in funding for AmeriCorps grants. That was a big chunk of the program's roughly billion-dollar budget, which effectively ended over 32,000 positions.
And almost instantly, those cuts were felt in communities across the country.
In Michigan, more than $15 million in funding was cancelled. That means nearly 700 people across dozens of organizations won't receive the rest of their stipends, education awards and other benefits, according to the state Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, or LEO.
The state was expecting a National Civilian Community Corps team to assist with ice storm recovery. But that program was terminated.
Grants were canceled for MI Healthy Climate Corps, an AmeriCorps program that funded positions — like Panicola's — at local governments and other organizations to further the state's climate goals.
In northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, the program provided staff members to several organizations, including the Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan, Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities, the Marquette County Planning Division, and Northern Michigan University.
At the state's Office of Rural Prosperity, a Climate Corps member worked with rural communities to take advantage of revenue from renewable energy, among other duties, according to Erica Quealy, LEO's deputy communications director.
In an email to IPR, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly wrote that 'Americorps has failed eight consecutive audits and identified over $45 million in improper payments in 2024 alone. President Trump is restoring accountability to the entire Executive Branch.'
The AmeriCorps Office of Inspector General's 2024 audit found that independent auditors found multiple issues but that the agency 'took appropriate actions' to address some of the recommendations from the previous year. AmeriCorps didn't respond to a request for comment on Thursday afternoon.
The agency has also reported that its environmental programs pay for themselves many times over, with high returns on investment.
At the end of April, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel joined other states in a lawsuit challenging the cuts as unlawful. A group of community organizations and grant recipients from across the country filed a separate lawsuit earlier this month.
The White House did not address IPR's questions about how AmeriCorps work should be completed moving forward or the legality of the cuts.
Applications for the third cohort of MI Healthy Climate Corps members were still open on the website of the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, or EGLE, as of Thursday afternoon.
In an email, EGLE spokesperson Jeff Johnston wrote that the initiative supports Michigan's leading clean energy job growth, 'which currently accounts for over 127,000 jobs and is expanding rapidly,' along with areas like public transit and waste reduction.
Johnston said the department was 'disappointed' in the Trump administration's cuts, adding that the department hopes there will be an outcome that allows the program to continue.
In the meantime, those who were told to stop work are waiting — with little information about what's next and bills to pay.
'I think we all have to figure out how we're going to make that work in this time period,' said Panicola, who was in the midst of his term with SEEDS and Crosshatch. 'And I think for a lot of us, that might just be in exiting the program and finding a full time job, hopefully within the same framework of what we cared about and what we were doing before.'