Kansas City, Mo. – In his 28 years working for the federal government, Shea Giagnorio provided nurseries for the children of American soldiers, training for employees and supervision for security network programs.
The public service was taken from Germany to Alaska to Kansas City, Missouri, where he moved last year for a very sought after promotion.
But when he informed a federal building of the center to work one day last month, his access card did not work. After a co -worker let her into the building, she checked her email: her entire office had been allowed to go in the last mass dismissal ordered by the administration of President Donald Trump.
The 46 -year -old single mother has canceled her apartment lease contract, she is selling her new furniture and may have to get her daughter from the university. She wonders what will happen to populations at risk that her team helped serve in the administration for children and families, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States.
“Not only me, but all the lives of these people are the other way around,” Giagnorio said.
The impact of the cuts by the appointed of Trump and the Efficiency Department of the Government of Elon Musk can be found everywhere in the metropolitan area of Kansas City, which for a long time has been an important center for federal agencies to approximately 1,000 miles of Washington, the DC money once promised to the region of public health, environment and thousands of local jobs are in Jeopardy.
With almost 30,000 workers, the federal government is the largest employer in the region. An economic researcher at Kansas City said he believes that the region could lose 6,000 well -paid federal jobs, which in turn would eliminate thousands of others in the service industries.
An IRS worker said that thousands of his coworkers fear that they will lose their jobs, even when they put reimbursements of overtime processing taxes in a building so full that they fight to find desks. Under pressure, hundreds more agreed last week to retire early or take a purchase.
“It is a kick in the stomach to the people who are doing everything possible to comply with what is required,” said Shannon Ellis, representative of IRS customer service for a long time and president of the union that represents local workers.
For Thursday, at least 238 Kansas City workers had received purchase offers and expected to leave the agency in the coming weeks. Ellis said that many of those same workers had been told that they were essential and had to work overtime during the tax season, about seven days a week.
A revocation of the United States Department of Agriculture interrupted the plan of a historically black neighborhood to expand its program cultivating fresh products in a food desert. A nearby pantry reduced its monthly assignment of groceries for those in need after federal cuts left short food banks.
The urban farmer Rosie Warren grew 2,500 pounds of fruits and vegetables last year in community gardens to help feed the Ivanhoe neighborhood, where many black families concentrated under housing segregation policies of much of the twentieth century.
Warren reaped vegetables, potatoes and watermelons as part of an effort to address food insecurity and health concerns in a neighborhood challenged by blight, crime and poverty. The past fall was ecstatic when the USDA granted the Council of the neighborhood a three -year subsidy and $ 130,000 to expand the gardens and farmers market that serve the area.
In February, the Council received a notice that ended the subsidy. The USDA had determined the Prize “no longer made the priorities of the agency with respect to programs and activities of diversity, equity and inclusion”.
“What do you do if you do not admit to provide access to food to the people who do not have it? Wouldn’t they facilitate their work?” She said. “I think it’s absurd. It makes no sense.”
The withdrawal of federal funds for new laboratory equipment and vaccines means that the city can be less prepared for the next pandemic.
The Kansas City Health Laboratory needs an improvement very well, with teams dating from when the building was opened in the 1990s.
A basement space is damaged by water and is rarely used. Another has such inappropriate equipment that the city has to send samples to a state laboratory at 150 miles away, causing inefficiencies, agonizing waiting for results and delayed response times.
But financing for laboratory improvements was abruptly eliminated last month as part of the cancellation of federal subsidies of $ 11.4 billion of the Trump administration.
An HHS spokesman said that the agency’s reduction, including job reduction and consolidation divisions, would save money and make the organization more efficient. As for the $ 11.4 billion in subsidy fund cuts, the spokesman said: “The HHS will no longer waste billions of dollars of taxpayers who respond to a non -existent pandemic that Americans moved years ago.”
The IRS has offered a similar justification for its reduction of personnel, saying that it is making process improvements that will finally serve the public more efficiently.
Musk said last year that Trump’s budget cuts would cause a “temporary difficulty” that would soon put the economy in a stronger position.
A local economic researcher said it was not clear how deep that difficulty in Kansas City will be, even if only growth will slow down or cause population losses.
“It is a great burden that is placed in a narrow group of people,” said Frank Lenk, director of the Office of Economic Development of the Regional Mid-America Council, a non-profit organization of the city’s governments and the county in the region of the city of Kansas. “It will definitely eliminate part of the vapor of the local economy.”
Trump has accredited Dege with helping to end with “the flagrant waste of taxpayers’ dollars,” saving billions to help improve the nation’s finances.
The White House did not answer the questions about Kansas City. But Trump recently said he would invite Kansas City chiefs to the White House to compensate for a celebration of the 2020 Super Bowl victory that was canceled during the pandemic.
