Sunday evenings on 90.9 KRCL are for the Deadheads.
The hour from 6-7 p.m. Sundays is devoted to the Grateful Dead. It’s the only hour on KRCL, a nonprofit community radio station, that isn’t locally-produced, said station director Gavin Dahl. But its listeners are loyal.
And if an emergency struck the greater Salt Lake area on a Sunday evening, Deadheads would be among the first to know. As a public radio station, KRCL is part of the nationwide Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS).
A half-million-dollar grant, the biggest in the station’s history, was supposed to help KRCL expand its emergency alert infrastructure. But a stop work order from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB) issued in February alerted Dahl that the money wasn’t coming. The grant — part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Next Generation Warning System (NGWS) program — was caught up in President Donald Trump’s spending freeze.
But CPB is now suing FEMA for the money it says it is owed. In a lawsuit filed Thursday in federal district court, CPB claims FEMA has not offered any justification for holding the funds and is unlawfully withholding money at the public’s peril.
“FEMA’s hold on these funds is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, in violation of law, and undermines the emergency alert system relied upon throughout the nation by millions of people whose only access to emergency information is through publicly-issued alerts by public broadcasting stations,“ CBP argued in its 33-page complaint.
FEMA argued in a response filed Saturday that the agency has not, in fact, frozen or withheld any funding, but instead has “modified its process” for reviewing payment requests in order to “ensure grant programs are free from waste, fraud and abuse.”
“We’re less prepared”
A federal judge put an injunction on Trump’s freeze last month, although FEMA directed employees to freeze the funds anyway, The New York Times reported. CBP’s lawsuit argues FEMA froze NGWS grant funds without warning or reason.
FEMA did not respond to written questions from The Salt Lake Tribune, and calls to the agency’s regional news desk did not go through Friday.
KRCL is one of 42 public media stations across the country now in funding limbo, according to the lawsuit. Some have already begun the work to improve their emergency communication systems and have submitted for reimbursement.
KRCL had not begun work yet, Dahl said. Plenty of KRCL’s existing equipment is aging, but still works fine. But it doesn’t reach as far as it could, Dahl said, and the $462,000 grant would have helped the station reach more than 100,000 listeners in more remote corners of the state.
“The concern is not being able to get to a large audience on the Wasatch Back if this program isn’t complete,” Dahl said “The impact is we’re less prepared, less connected and less safe when, God forbid, the next disaster comes up.”
Congress approved the funds in 2022 — and while the money belongs to FEMA, CBP is responsible for assigning it to different awardees and fielding all requests for reimbursement, according to the lawsuit.
The agency has committed $18.7 million of the $40 million earmark to 42 grant awardees, according to the complaint.
“At every stage of this process, CPB has kept FEMA fully informed of the status of the sub-awards,” the complaint says. “At no point has FEMA indicated that CPB has done anything that would call this grant into question. At no point has FEMA indicated that it is canceling the grant or taking any other adverse action with respect to the grant.”
(KRCL) Old radio equipment sits atop KRCL's 40-year-old backup transmitter. Station Director Gavin Dahl says the station had won a grant from the federal government to reach more rural listeners in emergencies.
CPB claims FEMA was legally obligated to provide advanced notification, in writing, if the grant was terminated. Instead, CPB alleges it only learned of the funding freeze when, on Feb. 19, the agency accessed the payment system to submit for reimbursement and saw the funds were “on hold.”
“As of the date of this Complaint [March 13], CPB has received no notices of FEMA - or indeed any communications of any kind - indicating that the status of this grant has changed,” the complaint says.
FEMA claims in its response that it updated its payment system in order to review each reimbursement request manually, which is why the payment system indicates a “hold.” But it is not actually freezing or withholding any funds, it argues in court documents.
CPB responded in turn that “undisputed evidence” is enough to conclude that FEMA’s actions amount to a freeze and have prevented CPB from “submitting any reimbursement request,” despite repeated outreach and “numerous temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions issued by federal courts ... directing FEMA ‘to continue releasing any disbursements on open awards that were paused due to OMB Memorandum M-25-13.”
“FEMA now pretends that such a hold never happened and is not continuing,” CPB said in court documents.
“A connective tissue”
CPB and FEMA owe more than $1.88 million to public media stations, the lawsuit claims.
It wouldn’t mean any money would immediately be sent to KRCL yet, as the grant money can only be awarded as reimbursement, and KRCL has not yet started working on infrastructure improvements. But Dahl said he’s now worried about finishing the necessary work on time.
Some of the work is essential and will happen no matter what, Dahl said. The question is whether KRCL will have any money left in its reserves when it’s done.
Dahl has asked U.S. Sen. John Curtis' office to write to FEMA on his behalf. A staffer in Curtis' office tentatively agreed to do so in February, according to an email exchange shared with The Tribune.
Dahl told The Tribune that as of Friday afternoon, he had not heard back from Curtis' office since submitting an official request to intervene. A spokesperson for Curtis’s office said he could not comment on specific cases.
Still, Dahl is optimistic that he’s heard anything at all.
“It at least makes me think they acknowledge this is a real concern,” he said."
Emergency alerts are a small part of what the public expects from KRCL — but a vital one, Dahl said. Public media stations help keep people informed in moments of crisis. And in the moments between crises, it helps listeners feel connected to the world around them, Dahl said — to their fellow Deadheads, or their neighbors one town over.
“That’s part of the value of radio: it’s a connective tissue amongst very different people,” Dahl said.
Shannon Sollitt is a Report for America corps member covering business accountability and sustainability for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.
