Venable partner Bill Sloan was quoted in a May 23, 2017, Law360 article on proposed budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in President Donald Trump's proposed 2018 budget. Under the proposal, the EPA faces a 31 percent cut in funding with programs aimed at climate change initiatives, scientific research, and enforcement hit the hardest. The proposed budget also calls for a $482 million reduction in "categorical grants" to states that provide money to implement various water, air, waste, pesticides and toxic substances programs.
According to Sloan, cuts to the grants program could impair states from issuing federally mandated permits leading to higher permitting fees and longer permitting delays. "The budget itself doesn’t target permitting programs, but what it does do is significantly slash the budget of the agency and takes away the funding that goes to the state governments that administer these environmental statutes," he said. "It's taking a fairly blunt approach."