The federal government has cut more than $177 million in grants that supported New Mexico state agencies since President Donald Trump took office in 2025, state Department of Finance and Administration officials told state lawmakers Monday.
The vast majority of that lost money — nearly $156 million — was money intended to help install solar panels in low-income and disadvantaged communities across the state, according to the DFA report. Mark Melhoff, acting director of the DFA’s Financial Control Division, noted that his figures only account for federal grants that the Trump administration clawed back from state agencies and do not include terminated grants at public universities.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year terminated some $7 billion in “Solar for All” spending, a Biden-era initiative which funded the New Mexico program and several others like it across the nation. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez subsequently joined his counterparts in nearly 20 other states to sue the federal government over the decision.
Melhoff told state lawmakers on the interim Federal Fund Stabilization and Affordability Subcommittee Monday that it remained to be seen whether the litigation would return the money to state coffers.
New Mexico’s agencies rely heavily on federal funding. More than 70% of the state Health Care Authority’s budget, for example, comes from federal appropriations, Melhoff said.
To that end, Melhoff said the Department of Finance Authority recently created a Federal Reporting and Compliance Bureau to assist leaders in the state agencies who undergo annual federal auditing and make sure they hang onto as much of the federal funding as possible.
Currently, the bureau has just one employee, but Melhoff said he hopes it will soon grow to two.
State Sen. Cindy Nava (D-Bernalillo), who co-chairs the interim subcommittee, said she was excited about the new bureau but concerned about putting all of that work on a small group of people. Nava, who previously worked for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said she has long wanted to see New Mexico tap into lesser-known federal funding opportunities.
“This bureau sounds exactly like what we need, but we really need to ramp it up,” she told Melhoff at Monday’s hearing.
