EPA says it will slash workload after IG flags slashed workforce as overburdened

The Environmental Protection Agency has shed too many employees to manage its large portfolio of grants, its inspector general found in a new report released on Thursday, and it has not taken steps to plan for the new workload it took on under President Biden. 

The Trump administration pushed back on the finding, saying instead that it was slashing grants and the workload would therefore decrease commensurate with staffing cuts. The inspector general did not accept that rationale, noting employees are handling more grants than the agency itself has recommended. 

About half of EPA’s budget each year goes to states, localities and other entities in the form of grants. EPA saw a sudden surge in funding for grants under the Biden administration, after he signed into law a major infrastructure bill in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. The extra funding led to a 56% increase in EPA’s grants between 2018 and 2025. The value of those grants skyrocketed by 338% over that period. 

EPA employs both grant specialists and project officers to oversee that work, who respectively manage the administrative and technical aspects of the agreements. The agency lost 113 grant specialists and project officers since May 2025, the IG found. 

While EPA has conducted “high-level” workforce planning over those years, the auditors said it did not do so specifically for its grants workforce in general or in light of its newfound funding streams. That is despite the Office of Management and Budget directing agencies to engage in workforce planning in support of carrying out the two supplemental funding bills. 

EPA has found that its grants specialists should oversee no more than 60 grants each. In 2022, however, those employees in its Region 10 office were overseeing 173 grants each on average. By spring of 2025, that had decreased 102 grants per specialist, though in September—after EPA had gone through various efforts to decrease the size of its overall workforce—it had once again spiked to 180 grants for each employee. 

The agency seeks to limit its project officers to overseeing between three and 19 grants. At EPA’s Region nine, after workforce cuts took effect, those employees were overseeing 90 grants each. 

“Until the EPA improves its grants workforce planning, the agency may not be able to adapt to workload needs related to supplemental appropriations, to award or administer grants in a timely manner, and to mitigate the risks of improperly managed grants,” the IG said. 

EPA pushed back on the assertion that it needs to address its workforce planning or that there are any shortfalls in its staffing. Instead, said Monica Molina, the principal deputy assistant administrator in EPA's Office of Mission Support, the agency is planning to reduce its grant spending so significantly that its employee headcount will no longer be an issue. 

“Grant funding for EPA is anticipated to contract dramatically,” Molina said, adding the agency would therefore not focus on its shrinking workforce and instead find ways to improve post-award monitoring. She said EPA would reassess its needs in six-to-nine months after the impacts of the various efforts to shed employees is more fully known. 

Congress has already rescinded EPA’s IRA funding as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and is fighting in court to claw back additional grants it previously issued. The IG noted EPA’s workload from the 2021 infrastructure bill remains a significant burden, however, and due to staffing losses, the agency should develop a grants workforce planning document. It also highlighted that Congress largely ignored President Trump’s budget request to slash EPA funding, instead cutting it by just 4% in its fiscal 2026 appropriation and largely leaving annual grant funding intact. 

The IG said a comprehensive plan for EPA’s grants workforce would “reduce the risks of improperly managed grants.” The auditor also recommended EPA update its benchmarks for how many grants each employee should oversee and better assess its overall grants workload. 

Molina reiterated that EPA would not “focus efforts on a shrinking grants workload and workforce.”