Lalo Lopez arrived in Cincinnati from Salt Lake City in early March, part of an AmeriCorps contingent providing free tax preparation to lower-income filers.
On tax day, just after the Trump administration canceled roughly $400 million in AmeriCorps grants and put much of its staff on leave, Lopez was suddenly out of work.
“You’re going to have to leave immediately,” Lopez and the 10 other members of his AmeriCorps tax prep team were told. “It was a lot to take in.”
Lopez, at 26, is among hundreds of younger people feeling the sting of federal government cost-cutting in Greater Cincinnati.
They include teens hired to paint murals. And middle-schoolers signed up for college-prep classes. And college students interested in the environment, science and arts. And families seeking free music and donated food for their kids.
“For all the negativity that has been directed toward the young people of our country,” Cincinnati City Council member Meeka Owens said, reacting to the ongoing contraction of federal funding, “these are the standard bearers.”
Funding cuts, added Trump critic and U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman, are having a “devastating impact” on millions of individuals, including younger ones.
ArtWorks lost funds for Avondale project
ArtWorks got word in early May that it lost a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Administrators had worked to land dollars from the NEA Our Town program for five years, completing an exhaustive application and chasing required matching dollars from donors.
They’d even made the first 10 hires of 30 jobs tied to their Our Town project, scheduled to start this summer.
“It was such a big deal for our community,” ArtWorks CEO and Artistic Director Colleen Houston said.
Now Houston and colleagues are looking for other jobs for the six teens (and four adults) who were supposed to work on a mural and sculptures planned to recognize Avondale’s spot on the evolving Crown Trail system.
The project is on indefinite hold and “threatens years of planning, design and community collaboration,” Houston said. “Local funders aren’t likely to fill that gap.”
Breakthrough lost funds for summer college-ready program
Breakthrough Cincinnati provides a free, five-week summer program to inspire more than 200 local middle-school students to attend college.
But it pays 60-plus teaching fellows to handle the actual instruction.
That will be harder for Breakthrough this year, after losing a $380,000 AmeriCorps grant.
“There was no warning, no transition period, no wind down, just immediate termination,” Executive Director Rhonda Starghill said.
Breakthrough won the two-year grant last year – equivalent to about 25% of its $1.2 million annual budget – but had yet to spend much of it.
With fellows arriving June 16 and students two weeks later, the organization will not cancel this year’s program. But the future is uncertain.
“We will have to figure out what Breakthrough will look like in a post-AmeriCorps world,” Starghill said.
Kentucky Symphony Orchestra lost dollars for family-friendly concerts
The Kentucky Symphony Orchestra checked on its $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant in February and learned it was still in place.
That changed earlier this month, when the Northern Kentucky music group was told its grant was rescinded “to be used for new priorities,” Executive Director James R. Cassidy said.
The funds were earmarked for three free summer concerts in Covington’s Devou Park and three more in Fort Thomas’ Tower Park. “We’re out there bringing families together,” Cassidy said.
He appealed the decision, saying concerts enhance health, one of the stated NEA priorities going forward. “We don’t think that’s going to make a difference, but it’s worth a shot,” he said.
The orchestra is counting on its newest funding source – its Annual Rare Bourbon Raffle – to cover the grant loss.
Mill Creek lost support for educational efforts
Mill Creek Alliance lost its two AmeriCorps employees partway through its 10-month assignments.
One was providing environmental education to middle- and high-school students. “We take them to the creek,” Executive Director Dave Schmitt said. “Along the way, we teach them a little bit.”
The other AmeriCorps member talked about Mill Creek’s stream restoration work with school and community groups.
With schools soon out for the summer, “the biggest impact is going forward,” Schmitt said of losing the two. “It really is going to be much more difficult to have the same number of programs.”
Mill Creek is also out $22,000 it spent to support its AmeriCorps members, Schmitt said. “We paid our part up front and we’re not even going to get a prorated amount back.”
Like other groups that are losing federal dollars, he’ll be contacting donors, asking them to “help us out a little more.” He expects he won’t be the only one. “We’re all fishing from the same pond,” he said.
Larger agencies also cutting programs aimed at young
Agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH – both targets of budget slashing – are among the larger employers of some 14,000 Greater Cincinnati federal workers.
But their permanent staffs are not the only ones feeling the pain.
At EPA, interns have long been “the lifeblood of the agency,” said Cindy Sonich-Mullin, who retired in 2019 as Cincinnati director of the national risk management research lab. She started her own 43-year career at the agency as a Miami University intern.
The EPA has boosted younger people, too, with scientists who support university research, serve as adjunct faculty and recruit at campus job fairs.
This week, the agency said goodbye to some 50 college students or recent grads working as lab technicians and in other jobs. They were supported by a National Student Services Contract that was not renewed.
Permanent staff bid them farewell with a “clap out” of the EPA building in Corryville, applauding as they exited the giant site at Martin Luther King Drive and Vine Street.
EPA borrowed the idea from NIOSH, which clapped out some of its departing staff earlier this spring.
With the hollowing out of its ranks, that agency no longer has staff to run its programs for young people. Those included its Safe, Skilled, Ready Workforce program, which trained younger workers on workplace safety, and Youth@Work/Talking Safety, a school curriculum used in every U.S. state. Most recently, NIOSH had been planning to address stress at work in Youth@Work in response to growing teen mental health pressures.
Ohio agencies employed about 1,000 who lost AmeriCorps jobs
U.S. Rep. Landsman, a Democrat from Cincinnati’s Mount Washington neighborhood, said more than 20 organizations in Hamilton and Warren counties would be hurt by planned cuts in the Emergency Food and Shelter Program of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Groups in Butler, Warren and Hamilton counties – largely focused on helping children and their families remain housed and fed – got close to half a million dollars from that FEMA program in fiscal year 2024. Another $153,000 went to similar agencies in Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties in Northern Kentucky.
At City Hall, council member Owens noted that Ohio agencies employed about 1,000 of the 32,000 young people across the country who lost AmeriCorps jobs. Among the impacted Cincinnati nonprofits were Lighthouse, with a focus on homelessness and juvenile justice; Heartfelt Tidbits, which serves refugee and immigrant families; and Catholic Charities of Southwestern Ohio, which provided a range of services to 22,000 people in 11 counties last year.
United Way of Greater Cincinnati was also impacted. It employed Lalo Lopez and his AmeriCorps compatriots, who helped file 751 tax returns, at no cost, for local taxpayers who claimed more than $600,000 in refunds.
A month out, Lopez is recovering from his early exit from AmeriCorps. He bought a used car with a cash advance on his credit card and is heading to Vermont to work at a summer camp.
He remains dismayed at the turn of events.
“I was very disappointed,” he said. “This is what people voted for?”
Lose your job in federal government?
Federal workers who have lost jobs (or fear they will soon) can get help assembling a new resume from Workforce Council of Southwest Ohio and OhioMeansJobs Cincinnati-Hamilton County. They’ll have a free in-person workshop at 10 a.m. May 20 and an online option at 9:30 a.m. May 22.
