County receives about $65 million annually
About 10 percent of Dutchess County’s funding — $65 million — comes from federal funding through eight agencies, according to a newly released report by Dan Aymar-Blair, a Beacon resident who is the county comptroller.
The report also calculated that Dutchess residents receive $1.9 billion annually in direct federal assistance through programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and military medical insurance.
Aymar-Blair released the report, which is posted at dub.sh/dutchess-federal, following a freeze on Jan. 27 by President Donald Trump of all federal funding, causing confusion for municipal governments and nonprofits. Although a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order a few days later and ordered the money restored, the funding has been inconsistent and unpredictable.
At the same time, cuts driven by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an ad hoc agency created by the administration and led by carmaker Elon Musk, have caused further uncertainty.
“We were getting a lot of questions,” said Aymar-Blair. “People had concerns about how much federal funding the county had, what it was used for, and whether it had been touched by the feds.”
In Putnam, the finance department and clerk did not respond to inquiries about how much of the county’s funding comes from the federal government. Putnam does not have a comptroller’s office.
Aymar-Blair said he had expected that the investigation would reveal sources of federal funding that the county could do without, but “every single program struck me as vital to the county’s functioning and to supporting the vulnerable people in our county.”
The county’s largest source of federal funding in 2024 was $43.6 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which funds programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (aka “welfare”); the Home Energy Assistance Program; adoption and foster care; and the enforcement of child support.
The county also received $2.95 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (aka “food stamps”) and $12.9 million from the Department of Transportation, among other federal expenditures.
The report said that, as of Feb. 20, the county had not seen delays in federal disbursements, but Aymar-Blair said this week that’s no longer accurate. “Everything’s changing all the time,” he said.
At a March 6 meeting of the county Legislature’s Public Works and Capital Projects Committee, Bob Balakind of the Department of Public Works reported that a federal grant the county had received to study the feasibility of electrifying the county bus fleet had been frozen. A consultant hired to produce the study was already a month into the work; if the funds aren’t forthcoming, the county will have to pick up the tab.
A grant to install new cameras at Dutchess County Airport also was paused, although “that may have since wiggled loose again,” Balakind said. He noted that 90 percent of the airport’s capital funding comes from the federal government, with the remainder split between the state and county.
“We’re usually only stuck with paying that last 5 percent, which is great,” he said. “But that federal funding is now much more volatile.”
There is confusion about the status of some of the $3.2 million that the Department of Housing and Urban Development pays the county after the nonprofit Hudson River Housing reported that it had been told its contract with HUD would not be renewed as of March 31. That could leave dozens of Poughkeepsie families homeless, it said. Hudson River Housing did not respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, the future of the Social Security Administration office in Poughkeepsie, the only one in the county, has been in doubt. The office, which had been closed for renovations, appeared on a list of government sites that DOGE expected to close.
Earlier this week, Aymar-Blair said that the office’s staff weren’t sure if they still had jobs. He noted that Rep. Pat Ryan, a Democrat whose district includes much of Dutchess County, including Beacon, has been “calling anyone who will listen to get that office back open.”
But on Monday (March 10), the Times-Union in Albany reported that the SSA said by email that the office would remain open under a new 10-year lease. On Wednesday, Ryan’s office reported that the office has opened on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and that the Peekskill and Middletown offices are also open.
Aymar-Blair said that the hardest part of compiling the report was thinking about what would happen if the county funding was cut. “I worry about the human suffering behind these cuts more than anything,” he said. “These are the kinds of things we’ll feel in our neighborhoods.”
Jeff Simms contributed reporting.
