Budget

EPA is pushing ahead with a major reorganization of its regional offices that includes reassigning long-running enforcement directors and changing some staffers’ duties, changes that an agency source fears will cause “chaos” and further weaken already declining enforcement despite EPA’s vow to minimize adverse impacts on staff.

A bipartisan group of senators is backing legislation that would reauthorize and boost EPA’s popular diesel engine retrofit fund to $100 million, with several GOP supporters of the bill defying President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2020 proposal to slash the fund from its FY19 level of $75 million down to $10 million.

President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2020 budget request would slash $2 billion, or 25 percent, from EPA’s current $8.1 billion appropriation, leaving the agency with $6.1 billion, terminating a host of voluntary and “lower-priority” programs and cutting funding for states even as the agency aims to give them more responsibility under its “cooperative federalism” agenda.

Key House Democrats are exploring the possibility of creating an EPA program for low-income households to help them pay for water and sewer services, a plan that previously has won bipartisan support in the Senate though House Republicans are questioning whether the plan would give the agency a role in setting local rates.