Due to a budget deficit, the California Department of Finance (DOF) ordered a spending freeze across all state agencies for unspent General Fund dollars from 2021, 2022, and 2023. This budget freeze affects the Outdoor Equity Grants Program (OEP), which many Parks Now Coalition members have benefited from in years past and even had applied to for this year. As we wait for the DOF to determine what will come of these funds in June, we urge the DOF, at minimum, to ensure that the $50 million available for Round 2 of the Outdoor Equity Grants Program (including the $25 M appropriated for FY 2022-23 and the $25 M appropriated for FY 2023-24) is awarded as scheduled this summer and not delayed by or lost to the General Fund freeze.
Dear Speaker Rivas, Senate Pro Tempore McGuire, Assemblymember Gabriel, Assemblymember Bennett, Senator Wiener, and Senator Becker:
On behalf of the Parks Now Coalition and its undersigned members, we urge you to ensure that the $50 million for Round 2 of the Outdoor Equity Grants Program, including the $25 million appropriated to the Department of Parks and Recreation (State Parks) in the FY 2022-23 State Budget and the $25 million appropriated in FY 2023-24 State Budget, is maintained, and awarded this year as planned. These are dollars that State Parks began soliciting proposals for in 2023. Many organizations developed projects and submitted proposals for this funding in December.
Parks Now is a coalition of California-based organizations committed to public health and social and environmental justice, and we believe that access to parks, the coast, and public lands is fundamental to healthy, vibrant communities. It’s our mission to encourage meaningful action towards investing in and improving parks and access to the outdoors, especially for California’s increasingly diverse, urban, and young population.
Our members were disappointed when the Governor’s January Budget Proposal proposed zeroing out the $25 million committed to State Parks for the Outdoor Equity Grants Program in the upcoming 2024-25 fiscal year, but we understood that the state’s worsening budget situation necessitated cuts to funding committed in 2023 for future years, for many important programs. We believe, however, that there is a significant difference between cutting committed funding for a program before an agency or department initiates the solicitation process and collects proposals for it, and after that process has concluded. In the latter case, applicants to the program already have invested time and resources in developing a project and crafting and submitting a proposal for funding. Project development and application process are heavy lifts for the often small, community-based organizations that seek Outdoor Equity Grants Program funding and were told that awards would go out this summer.
The Outdoor Equity Grants Program—which is consistently oversubscribed—helps provide Californians, including those that face barriers to accessing the state’s natural resources, with invaluable opportunities to experience and enjoy the state’s parks, beaches, and other outdoor spaces. This capacity is critical to enabling the state to deliver on its goal of ensuring all Californians have access to nature and its benefits and to cultivating the environmental stewardship needed to successfully achieve other long-term state climate and biodiversity protection objectives.
Freezing funds for the Outdoor Equity Grants Program that are otherwise anticipated to be awarded this summer, after groups have already applied for them, is frankly unacceptable. It not only would prevent any of the important projects and programs that community groups have developed from being realized; it also would waste the scarce resources invested in developing them. Parks Now firmly believes that passing burden of the state’s revenue shortfall onto community-based organizations that help advance the state’s access goals is not the way to close the state’s budget gap. Instead, it makes the cure arguably worse than the illness.
While Parks Now ideally would like to see all of the funding that has been committed to the Outdoor Equity Grants Program protected in the budget, we urge you, at minimum, to ensure that the $50 million appropriated to the Outdoor Equity Grants Program over FY 2022-23 and FY 2023-24 is awarded as scheduled this summer, not delayed by or lost to the General Fund freezes that the Department of Finance has announced. We hope you will protect the hard work of communities across that state and strengthen California's commitment to outdoor equity.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
