By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
The Sonny & Janet Meyer Food Pantry at Jewish Family & Career Services (photo courtesy of JFCS)
The home page of Jewish Family & Career Services’ website carries a bulletin of unmistakable timeliness:
Your support is urgently needed to ensure we can continue to provide critical services to all in Louisville in the future, it says, framed in bright red atop a pulsating Donate Now button.
Clicking on an invitation to “read an important message from our CEO” brings up a communication from Chief Executive Officer David L. Finke, topped by, in large capital letters and three exclamation points: “WE NEED YOUR VOICE!!!”
For over 117 years, JFCS has been committed to empowering clients with the tools they need to succeed. Recent developments at the federal level, however, have put these vital programs at risk of being eliminated in the very near future.
JFCS has significant government funding which allows us to provide a variety of services to the historically underserved populations in Louisville including immigrants, older adults, and individuals who have been the victims of crime.
Without these critical programs, many of our friends and neighbors will face significant barriers to meeting their immediate needs and achieving their long-term goals.
Welcome to the anxiety, uncertainty and perplexity associated with the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has slashed (or threatened to slash) funding for a broad array of programs previously thought to be sacrosanct. Coupled with renewed imperatives to deport undocumented immigrants, and cancelling entry to the U.S. by refugees already vetted for admission, the question then becomes: What does this mean for organizations like JFCS?
“I’ll talk about the silver lining and then I’ll talk about the clouds,” Finke said during a recent interview in his JFCS office.
“So, the silver lining is that as an agency we’re in a pretty solid spot, for the moment. A lot of my non-profit partners in the community and around the country have relied heavily on American Rescue Plan funds to sustain them…and use revolving lines of credit to pay their payroll. We do not.”
“The other good news,” Finke added, “is that we’ve had pretty substantial growth since I’ve been here. In the last three years we’ve almost doubled in size both in terms of staffing, and budget-wise. Some of that is because of great partnerships with foundations.”
Much of JFCS’s energy is devoted to assisting immigrants and refugees, which constitutes its newest “pillar of service.” Here is where Finke’s clouds begin to gather, considering that federal money accounts for about 20 percent of JFCS’s approximately $4.2 million annual budget.
“The reality is very clear,” he says. “If you look at the status of the federal approach – they’ve cancelled contracts on all immigration and refugee services. I was in D.C. where we had a meeting with HIAS (originally, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), which is under assault,” along with a swath of similar organizations.
Last month, after “the Trump administration severed contracts with all those agencies,” Finke said, meaning “there’s an almost complete and total freeze on immigration and refugee services.”
“So where does JFCS fall into this? JFCS doesn’t do resettlement anymore.,” Finke says. “We do what’s called ‘post-resettlement services’. So when you’re a refugee immigrant and you’re resettled, usually there’s federal funding for the first 90 days, maybe up to a year.” That money typically helps in such areas as “their initial acclimation, helping them get their benefits or helping them get housing.”
That’s where JFCS steps in. “Once they’ve been employed initially, we have services that can help,” for instance, with credentialing someone “who was working as a nurse in their original country. They come to (the U.S.) but they have no proof of their education – we help them get that.”
Money for those programs flows to JFCS via intermediaries like the Kentucky Office for Refugees, itself a department of Catholic Charities of Louisville, “which manages federal funds for immigrants and charities,” Finke says.
Additionally, “we have three grants from the Office of Refugee Resettlement at ACF – the Administration for Children & Families,” which – according to its website – “promotes the economic and social well-being of families, children, youth, individuals and communities.” With a budget of more than $70 billion, ACF is the second largest agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
JFCS uses those funds to support everything from English classes for recent immigrant and refugee arrivals to helping arrange loans to enable newcomers to buy a car, put a down payment on a home or start a business – what Finke calls “socialization into American culture.”
Among his biggest concerns are potential cuts to Medicaid, the vast federal health insurance program that benefits almost 80 million low-income Americans. A significant portion of JFCS clients depend on Medicaid to pay some or all costs of mental-health services.
“For an agency like ours, Medicaid reimburses in the neighborhood of $60 a therapy hour,” Finke says. “It costs about $80 a therapy hour to provide those services. So if you cut it further, it’s going to be a problem.”
That’s not all.
“It’s also going to be a problem for everybody in our community, regardless of whether they get Medicaid services. Because private insurance companies set their rates based on what the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services does. If CMS cuts their rates, then the private insurance companies are going to use that as an opportunity to reduce their rates, which means everybody will have a harder time finding well-established clinicians.”
Additionally, Finke pointed out risks to JFCS’s Sonny & Janet Meyer Food Pantry and similar food-air programs.
“As we discuss the cascading impact of these federal funding cuts, it should be noted that Dare to Care received word of federal cuts to their funding,” Finke says. Such reductions “will have a negative impact to our food pantry as well as food pantries throughout the Louisville region.”
Across the street from JFCS on the Jewish Heritage Fund campus, the Trager Family JCC and the Jewish Federation of Louisville host another agency with local ties that’s heavily reliant on federal dollars: SCN – the Louisville branch of the Secure Community Network – which coordinates security initiatives here and in Jewish communities across the U.S. and Canada.
Under normal circumstances, a significant chunk of funding for security initiatives and enhancements supported by SCN comes out of the Non-Profit Security Grant Program (NSGP) that originate with FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency – part of the Department of Homeland Security. Money then flows to Kentucky’s Office of Homeland Security (KOHS), which in turn disburses funds to local end-users whose applications have been vetted and approved – with one essential requirement: reducing the risk of terrorism.
In Louisville, “the work we’ve done in physical security enhancements, training, hiring additional security officers – things like that — has been instrumental in situations where we’ve identified suspicious vehicles and/or persons that may pose a threat,” says SCN Regional Security Advisor Stuart Lowrey, who works out of an office at the Federation.
“We’ve prevented access to facilities by persons who were not cleared to be in those buildings,” he added, “whether they be schools, synagogues, or any other facility serving members of the Jewish community.”
At present, however, the Trump administration has paused all NSGP awards as part of a broader rethinking of where federal dollars should go. When (or even if) such funding will be released is a question nobody can answer confidently – least of all Josiah Keats, executive director of Kentucky’s Office of Homeland Security.
“I was just on with leadership of (federal) DHS who’d reportedly had meetings at the White House a few days ago in regard to this matter,” Keats said. “And there was no update.”
Kristi Noem, less than two months into her tenure as Secretary of Homeland Security, “knew more than she was willing to report to the group.” Keats said, referring to the Homeland Security Advisory Council – comprising representatives from states and U.S. territories. “But she said every program is going through a very thorough review – whatever that means.”
Meanwhile, Keats urges stakeholders – Jewish and otherwise – to lobby their state legislators, reminding them how vital NSGP funding is in keeping both venues and visitors safe from potential terrorist acts. His own department is doing likewise.
“If there is a mechanism of communication, we have pulled that lever on every party, on every official channel and every back channel that we have,” he shared, “and that is happening across the nation.”
Holders with the biggest stakes are also tapping into media, print and electronic, domestic and foreign.
“Congress must fully fund the Nonprofit Security Grant Program,” blared a March 2 headline in Israel’s Jerusalem Post, where Michael Masters – Chicago-based SCN’s national director and CEO – argued his organization’s case point by sobering point.
“For those who have never had to enter a place of worship and scan for exits or send their children to school fearing they may be targeted, the necessity of security funding may seem abstract. But for the US Jewish community, it is a lived reality marked with every synagogue that installs reinforced doors, every school that adds surveillance cameras, and every community center that enhances its emergency alert system,” he wrote, adding:
“At a time when hate and violence against Jews across this country are at historic levels, the NSGP has provided life-saving funding to protect Jewish communities and institutions. The Secure Community Network (SCN), which works closely with local Jewish institutions to facilitate grant applications and implement security measures, has seen firsthand how these funds prevent tragedy.”
No matter the organization, some elements qualify as intangibles.
“When Stuart and I do talks about security in the Jewish community – the physical safety aspects,” JFCS’s Finke said, “you also talk about emotional safety – because whether it’s security or antisemitism, there’s the fear of the unknown. And the more you focus on these negative aspects, (especially) on social media, there’s the likelihood of becoming more anxious and more depressed, having difficulty making better decisions.”
Not knowing how many federal dollars to expect creates its own kind of apprehension. Finke mentioned getting a report showing that “our food pantry use is up.”
“I don’t know if that’s because people aren’t working and therefore they need more food, or what,” he said. “Is that individuals who fear they may not seek medical care, or may not be able to work? That creates a whole other layer of problems.”
If there is a relative upside to all this, it may be that Kentucky has a “rainy-day fund” the state can tap to help lessen the strain of the federally-mandated funding pause.
“We’ll continue to support what’s already begun,” Keats said, “but we need to pump the brakes for a short time on initiatives that have not actually broken ground.”