GREENFIELD — In the wake of consistent federal cuts, the Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG), which relies on the federal government for about half of its funding, faced many tough calls in 2025.
Facing what is described by FRCOG officials as an unprecedented environment of “chaos” and “uncertainty,” those decisions included shutting down programs and the elimination of pools of funding that support its 26 municipalities.
Economic development
According to Executive Director Linda Dunlavy, FRCOG lost the entirety of its economic development funds in 2025 — $70,000 per year over three years, the most major hit. The U.S. Economic Development Administration has awarded this money to FRCOG over the past 19 years, Director of Planning Jessica Atwood said, adding that she is “hopeful” FRCOG will be “reconsidered” for this funding in the future.
“We don’t work with the businesses,” Dunlavy explained at her desk, noting that the Franklin County Community Development Corporation and the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce work with the county’s businesses directly. At FRCOG, “We try to provide support systems that make the region strong economically.”
As an example, Dunlavy said FRCOG has educated businesses moving to Franklin County from Vermont and New Hampshire on Massachusetts’ “more stringent” health and safety codes through tutorials. Without federal funding, FRCOG is looking “internally” for other avenues to fund the “important project,” Dunlavy said.
To maintain economic development planning programs, the organization is considering drawing from the approximately $100,000 it received from the Federal Funds & Infrastructure Office, a state agency Gov. Maura Healey established in 2023 “to ensure the commonwealth of Massachusetts can leverage the historic number of available federal funding opportunities,” the website states.
Hazard mitigation planning
Federal cuts have also left 17 of the county’s 26 municipalities with expired hazard mitigation plans, according to Atwood.
In April 2025, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced that it would end its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program. According to Dunlavy and Atwood, in past years, towns in Franklin County paid FRCOG to help them update their hazard mitigation plans using money from BRIC grants. Without this money to draw from, 17 towns now have expired hazard mitigation plans and three towns’ plans will expire at the end of 2026, putting them at risk of losing access to FEMA funds in a declared emergency, Dunlavy said.
Instead of BRIC grants, the towns must pursue other funding sources to pay consultants to update these plans.
In Erving, the town created a Hazard Mitigation Plan Committee to craft an updated draft. The town voted to budget $25,000 out of the general fund to pay a consultant at FRCOG to help guide them through revisions.
“Hazard mitigation planning is really important because municipalities always need to be able to respond if there’s an emergency,” Erving Town Planner Glenn Johnson-Mussad explained. “We need to be taking a fresh look at each of these different responses and making sure that they still make sense in the current environment.”
Johnson-Mussad said the plans prepare the town for a range of emergencies, from natural disasters to cyber attacks on the local government. In Erving, several bridges remain inoperable due to damage from major storms, and the town has also faced heat waves and droughts, according to the town planner. As climate change worsens, he expects these natural disasters to increase.
“We are very fortunate to be able to self-fund these plans, but these hazards don’t usually know geographic boundaries, so if our neighbors with tighter budgets aren’t able to fund the creation of these plans, it has an impact on all of us,” the town planner said.
He added that Erving shares bridges with neighboring towns and disasters often result in emergency responders being called in from other areas.
“We all need to be prepared together,” Johnson-Mussad said.
Between federal funding cuts impacting grant opportunities and other stressors like hikes in health insurance costs, Dunlavy has noticed heightened financial anxiety in the towns FRCOG serves.
“It just feels like everything’s coming at once — it’s a ripple effect. We’ve lost so much federal funding into Massachusetts, the Massachusetts budget’s in trouble, so there’s going to be cuts to the Massachusetts budget, so what happens to state programming? It’s all a ripple effect going down, and I think that we are worried about that, the municipalities are worried about that,” Dunlavy said.
In addition to federal funds, FRCOG’s programs and services also rely on state funds. According to mass.gov, in fiscal years 2025 and 2026, $1.3 billion of federal funding to Massachusetts was cut, a loss that trickles down to FRCOG and its municipalities as they apply for dwindling state grants.
Narrowing federal grant opportunities
According to Atwood, guidelines for federal grants and their contractual terms have also shifted in the past year, limiting FRCOG’s opportunities to secure federal funding. Atwood and Dunlavy have spotted the language, “You will comply with ICE,” or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in contracts with the federal government.
“Grants that we would have automatically applied for, now, we are very careful to read the language in it to see what it says we can and cannot do,” Dunlavy noted.
FRCOG staff also must watch out for terms like “climate change,” “clean energy” and “equity” when submitting federal grant applications, as including the wording lowers their chances of receiving funding, Atwood and Dunlavy said. Avoiding the terms proves difficult when referencing the titles of organizations or programs like the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) or the Massachusetts Broadband Institute’s Municipal Digital Equity Planning Program.
“We had a really good track record of getting discretionary grants. We don’t feel as confident now in part because of what we do, in part because we live in Massachusetts, and that’s a very blue state, and blue states are being targeted,” Dunlavy said. “All of this just makes it an uncomfortable and stressful work environment.”
‘Swirling of uncertainty’
Dunlavy said FRCOG’s rocky foundation of federal funding has led to a hiring freeze, leaving a planning department position vacant.
“We know we have adequate funding for FY27; we have no idea for FY28,” Dunlavy said. “We generally have a philosophy [that] we don’t hire new staff unless we have a full two years of funding, but we can’t do that now, and so what’s the solution to that? Do you take the risk and hire staff that you potentially have to lay off, or keep with the staff that we have who are remarkably overworked? That’s the struggle.”
Since President Donald Trump started his second term, a “swirling of uncertainty” and panic has pervaded FRCOG’s office as the organization must “promise less” to its towns and act with more caution, the executive director said.
In January, FRCOG received about 36-hour notice that the organization would lose a $375,000 grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to fund its Healthy Youth Partnership program, which works with schools and other community partners in the county to promote young individuals’ health and well-being.
After 24 hours of scrambling for alternative funding, the federal money was restored, Dunlavy remembered.
“I think that’s the hardest part about all of this is it’s so chaotic,” Dunlavy said. “We don’t know what to expect and when to expect it.”
Although Dunlavy said her first year as executive director marked a difficult start with surprise grant cuts, she and Atwood agreed that the “level of unpredictability” is unprecedented.
Until the state budget for fiscal year 2027 is finalized, Dunlavy said FRCOG will not know the full impact of the federal cuts, but she is not hopeful.
“It’s just so much unknown,” Dunlavy stressed. “You feel like the shoe is going to drop, [but] you don’t know when it will drop.”