Billions of Dollars, New Guidelines, Resources, and Technical Assistance: What’s the Outlook for Justice40?
Throughout the spring and summer, a joint research team from EPIC, Climate XChange, and Beech Hill Research spoke in-depth with state agency staff involved in Justice40-covered programs about their efforts to reach and deliver federal funds to historically underserved communities [1]. We wanted to learn how state staff view—and navigate—federal guidelines around funding linked to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) (otherwise known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL)), the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
Chiefly, we sought to answer this question: What is needed to meet the promise of Justice40?
Since its launch in January of 2021, Justice40 has become a catch-all phrase for a number of Executive Orders designed to revitalize and expand federal efforts tied to Environmental Justice (EJ). Such efforts not only establish the goal of delivering at least “40 percent of the overall benefits” of certain federal investments to disadvantaged communities long marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution, but also include a process to meaningfully involve such communities in the government’s decision-making and spending.
We asked interviewees about federal guidelines tied to equity and EJ elements in their programs; criteria for prioritizing projects or funding; how they define disadvantaged communities (DACs); their approach and capacity for community outreach; and what additional resources at state and local levels might help ensure that underserved communities can access federal funding [2].
We interviewed the following state agency staff:
Roles: Program managers, EJ officers, infrastructure (BIL/IIJA) coordinators.
Programs: Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF), Nonpoint Source Pollution (NPS 319), DOE Grid Resilience, DOT PROTECT, Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG), discretionary grants.
States: IL, MD, ME, MN, PA
Why state agency staff?
Why state agency staff? Our preference with research like this is to learn in-depth from everyone involved in Justice40 efforts—community leaders, advocates, grant-writers, non-profit staff, Tribal Nations, government personnel, legislators, and more—but we decided it was best to go deep with one group. Moreover, state agencies (e.g., departments of environmental protection, conservation, natural resources, or energy—as well as governors’ offices) sit at the crossroads of federal funding for communities and utilities. Their staff administer and award federal formula funds, facilitate competitive grant applications, and coordinate key stakeholder engagement and knowledge sharing. Given those important and wide-ranging roles in the process, we knew state staff would have crucial experience and insights to share.
Note: While EPIC is a national Environmental Finance Center and supports BIL SRF implementation through its technical assistance, research, and policy work, these interviews were conducted independent of this work. Only three of the 16 interviewees work on Water SRFs.
And share they did. If you are among the 16 interviewees who gave of your time for this research—thank you! As we learned, state staff are stretched to capacity managing programs and grants—and with an increased volume of funds (and new funding programs to manage), many simply don’t have bandwidth to provide the type of outreach and applicant assistance they’d like to.
Still, everyone we spoke with was eager to share what their offices were doing to advance equity and EJ, and it became clear that our interviewees were universally committed to reaching low-capacity and historically underserved communities. Unfortunately, we also found that they frequently run up against barriers. One interviewee offered this powerful metaphor:
“We're taking all of the funding and resources that those above us want us to give these communities, and we're sealing it in a can, we're handing them the can, but we're not giving them a can opener. So they have the resources there, but they can't access them.”
Our new report, Delivering on Justice40: Perspectives from State Agency Staff, synthesizes what state staff shared with us, and is intended to be passed on to those in a position to improve the process, including:
Federal Program, Implementation, and Oversight Staff
Technical Assistance (TA) Providers
Policymakers, Legislators, and Advocates
The findings and recommendations detailed in the report cohere around six themes:
Themes that emerged from our interviews are overlapping, but clear enough to place into six groups.
Many working in this space may not be surprised by our findings! The goal of our interviews was not solely to uncover new information, but rather, to systematically catalog the important feedback and experiences we heard. The report gives voice (literally) to many of the barriers state staff face in their efforts to deliver on Justice40 goals—including barriers that many working on federal programs are actively addressing in their capacities as TA providers (to states or communities), advocates, legislators, and community leaders or navigators. For example, one overarching suggestion we heard is to fund “circuit riders”—and funding or application “navigators”—to expand outreach and raise awareness, help lower-capacity communities move through planning and application requirements, and identify key technical resources. In turn, their experiences and feedback could drive changes to federal program design (e.g., extending timelines to allow for relationship-building) or funding (e.g., mechanisms to fund existing local organizations).How to reach historically underserved communities?
How to reach historically underserved communities? Sections 3 and 4 of this report (“Reaching and Funding Underserved Communities”) include states staff ideas linked to how circuit riders and funding navigators can connect the dots between community needs, federal and state funding, and TA providers. A key recommendation on this score was to rapidly expand and fund local actors filling these roles—and the report describes several models for doing so.
Empowering (and funding) local stakeholders doing this important work has the advantage of building on the existing relationships, trust, and community priorities necessary for effective communication, coordination, and engagement around Justice40 programs.
“For communities, you have to rely on partner organizations that have relationships. It’s about building a network of regional support for communities, ideally working with existing entities with relationships.”
“Local community leaders have ideas for projects but don’t have technical capacity to make it happen—it’s so much more than grant-writing assistance.”
How to expand state capacity? The departments within which our interviewees work were at various stages of “staffing up”—though staff don’t foresee that hiring could (or should) fill all of the gaps we identify. While they’re used to utilizing intra-state resources and hiring consultants, at the time of our interviews, there was low awareness of national TA providers offering strategic or technical services [3] to states.
“One thing that’s hard to do from a capacity standpoint is how to even let people help us. We know there’s a technical assistance source, and we vaguely know what they’ve done for other states, but how exactly can we coordinate or leverage that resource? I don’t feel I have time for that.”
In terms of providing assistance to states, several interviewees recommended that consultants and TA providers better package and illustrate the outputs or work they’ve done in other states, such that capacity-constrained administrators could more easily execute historically burdensome contracting processes. Some state staff also expressed hope that their legislators might find ways to ease contracting and procurement procedures for third party services.“The type of technical assistance that communities need isn’t going to be fixed with a few tools and some consultants here and there.”
Supporting low-capacity communities and applicants. The question of how best to empower low-capacity communities in need was at the very heart of our discussions. More important than their own needs, staff made clear that they want to find resources—and end-to-end support—for lower-capacity applicants and communities.
“The type of technical assistance that communities need isn’t going to be fixed with a few tools and some consultants here and there.”
“The bigger challenge is putting together a capital project—it takes years of work to prepare an application for a capital project like a combined sewer overflow.”
The term “technical assistance” (TA), in this context, has become a catch-all for a range of services—and when state staff spoke of the assistance their applicants (or themselves) need, several terms were used interchangeably. The report distinguishes and explains terms TA providers can use to better describe or package their support. For instance, EPIC’s Funding Navigator is one of several programs that provide technical assistance on water infrastructure projects to these communities—which could be small towns as well as municipalities or neighborhoods with fewer established ties to state government.
Who’s at risk of missing out on this historic funding opportunity? We asked this question of everyone—no matter which criteria, maps, or EJ screening tools state staff used in determining key communities or applicant eligibility. Universally, interviewees were committed to finding and reaching historically under-served—and often under-funded—communities. Yet few staff we spoke with could articulate a clear mode or reference point (including personal, pragmatic approaches) for prioritizing communities via a specific map or screening tool. Nearly all interviewees were concerned about smaller, lower-capacity communities being able to find the people and resources they need to plan and apply for funds. Some even mentioned Limited English Proficiency, and accessible language resources, as priorities for outreach and assistance.
A Few Resources…
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September 2023 White House Technical Assistance guide for BIL/IIJA and IRA funding - Direct assistance or funding for Planning and Project Development, Applying for Funding, Financial Planning, Project Delivery, Federal Compliance (BIL/IRA), in addition to state programs and matching funds.
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EPIC’s Water Funding Navigator program - Direct TA to help overburdened, underserved communities benefit from government investments in safe and climate-resilient drinking water, lead service line replacement, water resource management, wastewater treatment, and stormwater management.
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EPA Environmental Finance Centers (EFCs) — A network of 12 regional and 4 national partnerships that potential applicants can contact to develop and submit environmental and infrastructure proposals.
“EPA people have big grand ideas, but these communities and organizations are literally three people who meet up on the weekends.”
“Low-capacity communities don’t have money to develop a watershed plan, to manage a grant, nor to cover expenses while waiting for reimbursement.”
Section 5 of the report details more about EJ and Disadvantaged Communities (DAC) criteria and screening tools, which states generally use in accordance with federal or state requirements (e.g., in scoring criteria among projects, or in applications that come to state agencies). At the time of our interviews, it was also clear that such tools were not used as proactively as many advocates would like to see when it comes to targeting outreach, technical, or grant assistance to communities in need.
If you use federal or state screening tools in your work, please take a minute to tell us which tools you use, and for what purpose! EJ and Community Screening Tools Survey.
What forms of communication work well? Across our interviews, it was clear that state staff value personal connections they’ve made—including with federal program officers, regional EPA staff, other state personnel, and community-based organizations.
“EPA Region 5 has been really helpful with providing guidance so far—we talk almost weekly.”
One corresponding—and in our conversations, overarching—recommendation is to “make connections, not communications” by reducing written communications and prioritizing personal instructions and collaborative events. [3] This includes making points-of-contact visible and accessible. (Section 1 of the report talks more about communication from federal program staff and the appreciation state staff have for regional EPA efforts.) State staff also appreciate having clear directions and templates, and we learned that even the perception that more detailed guidance is forthcoming from federal personnel can delay making and updating plans.
Getting away from “waterfall”-style communications. The concept of “waterfall” paradigms of work processes (and technology development) in government was a constant subtext throughout our interviews. Discussed extensively by Jennifer Pahlka in her book, “Recoding America,” we see the waterfall approach—with its rigid and dysfunctional forms of hierarchies—as a key problem in the context of Justice40 program and benefit delivery. Critical changes that can help state staff (and many other actors) get away from the waterfall paradigm include: rapid program design, deployment, and application cycles within federal programs, and clear mechanisms for asking questions and collaborating between state and federal personnel. State staff seemed comfortable asking clarifying questions (e.g., of federal or regional staff) but rarely provide program design feedback or request tools or resources. From what we heard, federal agency staff appear eager to make each new funding opportunity more accessible than the last—but need user research, and constant state and local feedback loops; all approaches that are rightly at odds with out-moded waterfall practices.
Who can drive change? State staff we interviewed do not expect federal agencies to solve every problem, and they are highly empathetic to capacity constraints across all levels of government and among community-based organizations.
“This comes from a place of empathy—we understand federal agencies are also under the gun to get money out the door.”
This report contains detailed recommendations for three key audiences: (1) federal program and oversight staff, (2) technical assistance providers (governmental and NGOs), and (3) advocates, policy makers, and legislators. By design, these recommendations are from the perspective of state staff. Other stakeholders and applicants may have different perspectives and we’ve tried to be cognizant of how these vantage points may compliment, overlap, or conflict. Still, we believe they will be useful to the broader, shared goals that unite the diverse stakeholders who make up today’s Justice40 landscape.
Additionally, EPIC and Climate XChange recognize that efforts to address many of the experiences shared by state staff are already underway across federal programs, among outreach partners and TA providers, and vis-a-vis pending policy. The findings and recommendations we provide serve as a snapshot from one node of a complex network of stakeholders—at one point in time—and we welcome updates or examples from your work on these important issues.
What’s Next?
We’ve wrapped up interviews with state staff for this research—but we welcome questions, feedback, and opportunities for future collaboration.
Mark your calendars! Climate XChange is hosting a webinar and discussion on October 19th at 2:00pm EDT, where the researchers behind this report will share findings and open discussion for participants to share their experiences and connect with others working in this space.
Please contact Kristen Soares (kristen@climate-xchange.org), Jessie Mahr (jessie@policyinnovation.org), or Amanda Dwelley (amanda@beechhillresearch.com) with any questions or feedback related to this report. If you think these findings or the state staff perspective might be useful to share or seed discussion in a smaller group, we are happy to set up a call with your team or partners!
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Notes
1. The term “communities” in the report reflects colloquial use and among interviewees in reference to local geographic areas, such as municipalities or neighborhoods within larger cities and towns. Justice40 interim guidance allows “communities” to be defined geographically or non-geographically as groups sharing similar characteristics (e.g., a linguistic community).
2. Executive Order 14008 uses the phrase “disadvantaged communities,” and this term has been used in other federal and state programs to prioritize funding for environmental justice. Some community members and advocates prefer alternative terminology that we discuss in the report.
3. At the time of our interviews there was limited information on the BIL Environmental Finance Centers (EFCs), and few interviewees mentioned them, although EFCs are now up and running, providing community outreach, engagement, technical experts, and proposal and application support.
4. The irony of recommending streamlined written communications in a 28-page report is not lost on us; we’re in the midst of meeting one-on-one, or in small groups, with NGOs, TA providers, and federal partners, and we plan to post summary slides following the October 19th webinar.