While a federal funding freeze has been stopped in the courts for now, Maryland’s comptroller said there is still a lot of confusion over the impacts it would have on the state.
“When we think about the funding freeze, it’s hard to envision because it would affect so many different grant programs in the state of Maryland,” said Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman.
Lierman answered questions from Maryland Democratic Rep. Sarah Elfreth during a live discussion on Instagram on how a federal funding freeze would trickle down to impacting state residents. She said it involves a lot of money.
“In FY 2023, we had $23 billion of federal grants come to Maryland that went to 49 different agencies,” Lierman said.
She said that the reliance on these grants ranges from daily services to long-term research.
“That’s everything from paying for foster care kids to paying, to vaccination issues, to paying for the teachers at your schools who teach English as a second language,” Lierman said.
“It really is across the board. It’s the sort of thing where you think about when you wake up in the morning and you take a shower. The loan fund for clean water that comes from the federal government. Maybe you get on the Metro and or the subway or take a bus that was funded by the grant,” she said. “Everything all along the way, there’s a piece of state money and there’s a piece of federal money.”
Lierman said some local organizations are still having issues from when the federal grant freeze was first announced.
“Even though a court stopped it, we’ve been hearing from nonprofits that they still aren’t able to access their money,” she said.
Lierman said they’re encouraging everyone still seeing problems to report them to the state through a special website found here.
“We want to make sure we have that information so that you know when this case gets to court. You know, a full trial, we have information about some of the violations that are occurring,” she said.
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