National Heritage Areas across the state of Michigan are bracing for the worst as the Trump administration pushes forward with federal grant freezes.
This includes MotorCities National Heritage Area. Spanning over 10,000 square miles of southeast and central Michigan, the MotorCities NHA links the world's largest collection of automotive sites and museums, with a mission of telling the unique geographical story about how this state region put the world on wheels.
There are 62 NHAs across the country, which altogether were approved to receive $29 million in federal funding this year. Despite judicial rulings that have unfrozen some grants, officials at MotorCities NHA say that they have yet to receive their awaited federal funds promised by previous administrations.
Shawn Pomaville-Size is the Executive Director of MotorCities NHA. She said that her team has no knowledge of when or how long the review process will take or when the money will be available.
“People have to put the brakes on and figure out how to cope. And it's extraordinarily challenging both economically and emotionally,” she said.
As the funds are withheld, the future of MotorCities NHA is at stake. Pomaville-Size said that if the funding freezing persists, they could shut down by August. She said this would mean that the state of Michigan would lose an $490 million economic tourism impact, $40 million of tax revenue, and the 5,000 jobs that MotorCities NHA generates.
Beyond that, Pomaville-Size said that the federal funding freezes have led to MotorCities NHA having to implement a freeze of their own. Because they aren’t receiving federal money, their team hasn’t been able to award $75,000 of grants they’ve promised newer community museums and heritage sites around the state.
As a system of the National Parks Service, there is also uncertainty about how MotorCities NHA may be impacted as their partners at NPS face job instability. MotorCities NHA staff are not federal employees, so they were not impacted in the mass firings and partial restoration of NPS jobs in the past week. Yet, further mass layoffs and funding cuts could directly impact NHAs across the country in their collaborations with NPS staff, and their missions to deliver educational programming.
“[Our] money flows through the National Park Service,” said Pomaville-Size. “So if there are further NPS layoffs, which they are predicting, it could end up impacting us because we do have staff that we work with at NPS.”
In the meantime, the MotorCities National Heritage Area continues to raise funds from other sources to combat a potential August shutdown.
