ST. LOUIS—The East-West Gateway Council of Governments (EWGCOG) discussed, on Wednesday during their March meeting, the impacts of President Trump’s recent executive orders related to “discretionary programs” already awarded or in the works.

What You Need To Know

  • An executive order has the U.S. department of transportation reviewing federally funded programs that were red flagged for including words like equity, prejudice, and minorities

  • Each identified project is reviewed to identify scope compliance issues, then recommended for no change, modifications, or canceled

  • Local programs that could be at risk of losing or not getting funded included the Brickline Greenway I-64 bridge project, the West Florissant Great Street project, and more

  • The council also discussed staffing cuts to the Federal Highway Administration, the Unified Planning Work Program, the Transportation Improvement Program and the St. Louis Regional Hazard Mitigation Draft Plan

An executive order has the U.S. Department of Transportation reviewing federally funded programs that were red flagged for including words like equity, prejudice, and minorities. The New York Times published a list of words disappearing from documents submitted to the federal government.

One local transportation official brought up an internal memo sent to local departments of transportation outlining the process that would be taken to look through the potentially affected programs.

Their first step would be identifying programs which may include equity, DEI, climate change, EJ, bicycle infrastructure, electric vehicles or its charging infrastructure. Next, the programs will undergo further review will have teams examine each individual project to identify scope compliance issues. Then recommendations would be made for no change, to modify the project’s scope, or cancel the project entirely. Non-compliant projects that were not canceled would need to revise their scope.

The EWGCOF listed some examples of local programs that could be at risk of losing funding or not getting funded. Among the examples that’ve been awarded included the Brickline Greenway I-64 bridge project, the West Florissant Great Street project, a demonstration project from the Alton Great Streets project.

Regional projects that sought federal funding possibly affected include the Illinois Department of Transportation Region-wide Resiliency Improvement Plan and the MetroLink Green Line.

The council also discussed staffing cuts to the Federal Highway Administration, the Unified Planning Work Program, the Transportation Improvement Program and the St. Louis Regional Hazard Mitigation Draft Plan. Most of these programs are proceeding through earlier draft stages with final submissions to be due near the end of summer.