CPB filed a federal lawsuit Thursday demanding that the Federal Emergency Management Agency lift its pause on congressionally approved funding for the Next Generation Warning System.
According to the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, FEMA’s hold on about $38 million in grants first awarded by the Department of Homeland Security through Congress in fiscal year 2022 is “unlawful.” The NGWS program received additional money in FY23 and FY24 and has in total been awarded $136 million. CPB has so far approved NGWS grants for 42 stations, which are reimbursed after spending their own funds on projects.
“FEMA has not identified any reason for this ‘hold,’ and the adverse effects of FEMA’s failure to process submissions under the NGWS Grant severely and negatively impacts the ability of federal, state, and local authorities to issue real-time emergency alerts,” the lawsuit says. “FEMA’s hold on these funds is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, in violation of law, and undermines the emergency alert system relied upon throughout the nation by millions of people whose only access to emergency information is through publicly-issued alerts by public broadcasting stations.”
The lawsuit says FEMA’s actions have prevented CPB from reimbursing stations in the program. “Indeed, FEMA did not even attempt to explain its unilateral conduct before the imposition of the ‘hold,’ … nor has it attempted to date to explain the basis for its action,” the lawsuit says.
FEMA paused the funding Feb. 18, and CPB subsequently told stations to stop NGWS-related work as it sought to regain access to the funding.
In a separate statement, Kathy Merritt, CPB’s chief of station and system strategies, said, “To protect public media stations from financial harm, CPB has no recourse other than to bring legal action against FEMA under the Administrative Procedure Act. We seek to have FEMA honor the contract, and immediately lift the hold, providing reimbursement to stations that have incurred costs for equipment and related services, as well as to CPB for its administrative expenses.”
President Trump has authorized the Department of Government Efficiency to cut staff at FEMA and other federal agencies. In November, Elon Musk, head of DOGE, co-wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal calling for cuts to CPB. Representatives for FEMA, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, have not responded to Current’s requests for comment.
The funding holdup has caused stations like KBRW in Utqiaġvik, Alaska, which serves an Inupiat Eskimo population at the northernmost tip of the state, to be owed about $65,000 in NGWS money. KBRW is the only broadcast entity serving the nearly 95,000–square-mile North Slope Borough of Alaska, where the majority of its 12,000 people have limited or no internet access.
In total, the lawsuit says stations are owed $1.88 million of incurred expenses that still need to be reimbursed. Some stations told Current they dodged a financial bullet by not having started their work yet.
America’s Public Television Stations CEO Kate Riley said in a statement Friday, “FEMA’s stoppage of payments creates dangerous financial risk and jeopardizes stations’ ability to provide public safety services to their communities and risks their overall station operations. Without the federal investment in their Next Generation Warning System, local public stations would be unable to provide these lifesaving services to their local communities.”
Riley added that public media stations sometimes serve as their state’s primary Emergency Alert Service hub for severe weather and AMBER alerts. Stations also partner on the Wireless Emergency Alert system and the PBS Warning, Alerts and Response Network.
CPB’s lawsuit says FEMA’s actions have given the corporation additional challenges. CPB has at least five employees whose salaries are wholly or partially funded through the FEMA grant, so the hold has forced CPB to either use other funds to pay the workers, furlough them or terminate their employment.
The hold also puts CPB at legal risk, the lawsuit says. “Even if FEMA were to direct CPB to cancel existing contracts — which it is unclear that it has the legal authority to do — CPB could still be contractually required to pay stations for equipment already purchased, but yet could not legally make those payments. This is because CPB receives appropriated funds, and it cannot use funds appropriated by Congress for one purpose to pay obligations for a different purpose. Put simply, only NGWS Grant funds can be used to pay NGWS Grant obligations.”
Update: This article has been updated with a statement from America’s Public Television Stations CEO Kate Riley.
