NARROWSBURG, NY — A review of all ongoing Department of the Interior (DOI) grant and cooperative agreement programs exceeding $100,000 ordered by Donald Trump’s newly installed Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke may soon cause the suspension of the work of the Upper Delaware Council (UDC), officials say.

The review has stopped all such federal funding, and DOI has provided no anticipated date for completion of the review.

Since its inception in 1988, the UDC has been the local interface between participating towns/townships and the National Park Service (NPS), principally responsible for review of local laws and ordinances with impact on the region’s substantial compliance to the requirements of the federal law (PL95-625) authorizing the area as part of the Wild and Scenic Rivers program.

Since 1988, the UDC has been federally funded at a level of $300,000 annually under a cooperative agreement. That amount has not changed despite the fact that, taking inflation into account, it would now take $449,036.58 to provide the same purchasing power as $300,000 did in 1988.

The federal contribution was supposed to have been supplemented by $100,000 annual contributions from the states of New York and Pennsylvania. Those state contributions have never been made. UDC Executive Director Laurie Ramie said she had no evidence that the state’s failure was ever addressed. “I wish I could go back and see why.”

Funding shortfalls have caused reductions in UDC staff and programs over the ensuing years. This year, lacking a federal budget, two “continuing resolutions” of the Congress have provided $172,210 since the beginning of the federal fiscal year, last October. UDC is $127,890 short of normal funding.

Following Zinke’s appointment in March, a general review of DOI cooperative agreement programs was ordered, suspending additional payment pending completion of individual reviews. No time frame for the completion of the UDC review has been provided.

Ramie reported that extensive filings originally made and accepted in May 2016 to execute the Cooperative Agreement were now required to be revised by the NPS Northeast Regional Office because they were made on expired DOI forms. The documents concerned spending in the FY-2017 budget, work plans from three UDC committees, a new requirement for line-by-line explanations of the revised budget, and narratives to accompany quarterly financial progress reports.

There had been no prior notice to UDC about the form expiration, of which Ramie noted that NPS also had been unaware. Speaking at the June 1 UDC meeting, NPS Superintendent Kris Heister admitted the NPS share of the error, and said NPS would aid in re-submitting these forms. Heister also cited a decrease in staffing in the NPS Northeast Regional Office’s Agreements Division as a reason for the processing delay.

The UDC’s re-submission was completed and filed with the NPS Upper Delaware unit on June 9, Ramie said.

The review of funding situation caused UDC to dip into limited unrestricted budget funding, leading to a $3,200-plus deficit since May 22. Ramie said an analysis and determination of “how long we can continue” will be made at the June 27 meeting of UDC’s operations committee.

The UDC approved a letter to Secretary Zinke outlining the UDC’s impending financial problems and issues at its June 1 meeting.