WASHINGTON — The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will no longer administer a grant program that has so far provided millions of dollars to local television and radio stations to upgrade the equipment they use to send out emergency alerts.
The change comes after Republican lawmakers voted last month to defund the corporation, following a request from President Donald Trump to zero out more than $1.1 billion in previously approved spending for the organization.
Congress originally formed the Next Generation Warning System grant program in fiscal 2022 and provided the Federal Emergency Management Agency about $40 million during its first year.
FEMA then gave that money to CPB to reimburse stations for infrastructure and other improvements meant to get emergency alerts sent through the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System to more Americans.
That appears on track to change in the months ahead.
FEMA officials wrote in a notice of funding opportunity for the current fiscal year that the grants will now go directly to state and tribal governments that can then award funding to public broadcasting stations that make improvements to their emergency alert systems.
Democrats and some Republicans have raised concerns that without funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, local stations wouldn’t be able to raise enough funding to remain in operation, potentially leading to holes in the country’s emergency alert system.
‘Rescission consequences’ for local public media
CPB, which plans to cease operations later this year, announced this week that it would no longer be able to administer the grant funding Congress approved during fiscal 2023 and 2024. The corporation had yet to determine which applicants would receive the funding lawmakers provided for those two years.
“CPB has been fully invested in the NGWS program and its mission to protect the American public,” CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison wrote in a statement. “This is one more example of rescission consequences impacting local public media stations and the communities they serve—in this case, weakening the capacity of local public media stations to support the safety and preparedness of their communities.”
That could potentially leave much of the $136 million in grant funding approved by Congress in limbo.
CPB wrote in a statement that “FEMA should assume responsibility for disbursing the funds as Congress intended, or most of the FY 2022 funding—and all funds from FY 2023 and FY 2024—will go undistributed.
“As a result, critical emergency alerting equipment will not be purchased, leaving communities, especially those in rural and disaster-prone areas, without the upgrades Congress intended.”
A FEMA official, speaking on background, couldn’t say definitively how the agency would handle funding for those three fiscal years.
The White House and Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to requests for comment from States Newsroom on Wednesday about the grant program.
Projects funded so far include:
- Mid-South Public Communications Foundation in Cordova, Tennessee, which received $1.657 million to “replace a transmitter and two emergency generators to ensure the rural agricultural communities in Tennessee, Mississippi, and eastern Arkansas receive timely emergency communications.”
- Blue Ridge PBS in Roanoke, Virginia, which received $1.122 million to “replace critical broadcast infrastructure that will strengthen their signal in the mountainous region to reach more rural communities with targeted emergency alerts.”
- Louisiana Public Broadcasting, which received nearly $2 million to “install transmitters and antennas for KLTL-TV in Lake Charles and KLTM-TV in Monroe and update alerting equipment to enable statewide delivery of alerts and warning messages.”
Congress votes to end public media funds
Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, released a written statement this week calling CPB’s inability to administer the grant program for FEMA “yet another devastating result of the rescission of public media funding.”
She also called on FEMA “to establish a new process for delivering this funding to public broadcasters” and urged “Congress to restore essential direct funding to local stations throughout this country whose communities depend on them for lifesaving public safety services, proven educational resources and essential community connections.”
Trump sent Congress a rescissions request in early June, proposing lawmakers eliminate previously approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and several foreign aid accounts.
The House voted mostly along party lines to approve the full $9.4 billion proposal later that month. GOP senators, except Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, approved a similar bill in July after removing spending cuts to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. The House voted to clear the revised legislation a few days later, sending the bill to Trump for his signature.
More about this story from Kentucky
Public radio stations on both ends of Kentucky were included in the first round of grants for the Next Generation Warning System, according to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting:
- WEKU-FM at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond was awarded $382,056 to upgrade and replace infrastructure to ensure emergency alerts can be sent to vulnerable rural and underserved communities, said CPB.
- WKMS-FM at Murray State University was awarded $270,377 to upgrade aging equipment at two transmitter sites, enabling the station to broadcast in HD and improve its emergency messaging infrastructure.
U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey of Louisville, Kentucky’s lone Democrat in Congress, released a statement saying, “Donald Trump’s budget makes all Kentuckians less safe. By defunding life-saving emergency alerts, Donald Trump and House Republicans once again sold out rural Americans so that their billionaire donors can pay even less in taxes. I won’t stop fighting back against their draconian agenda.”
This article is republished under a Creative Commons license from Kentucky Lantern, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter.
Jennifer Shutt covers the nation’s capital as a senior reporter for States Newsroom. Her coverage areas include congressional policy, politics and legal challenges with a focus on health care, unemployment, housing and aid to families.
