This story was reported and written by VPM News.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin's administration is not providing Virginia legislators or the public details of hundreds of millions of dollars of paused federal grants, according to records requests and documents acquired by VPM News and WAMU.
The absence of the figures means voters and candidates for office cannot consider potential policy responses to the cuts ahead of Election Day, even though the numbers will eventually become public when Youngkin proposes his budget in December.
Since President Donald Trump paused or canceled grants in January, the Youngkin administration has been tracking the numbers. In a September letter to legislators, Youngkin said an executive branch effort to "identify, catalog, and evaluate the fiscal impact of existing federal grants that were paused for review" was ongoing.
Secretary of Finance Stephen Cummings told a state Senate panel in September that $315 million across 18 grants was paused or canceled. That is down from $515 million across 38 grants, according to another presentation by Cummings in May.
But in September, the number increased to $466 million "to reflect cancellation of the 'Solar for All' grant," Cummings told appropriators Tuesday.
Cummings declined to speak to reporters after the September meeting of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee. Youngkin's office also declined to release six pages of documents that detail the grants, citing a working papers exemption in two separate requests made by WAMU in May and VPM News in July.
The legislators charged with writing Virginia's budgets asked even earlier. Senate Finance Chair Louise Lucas (D–Portsmouth) and House Appropriations Chair Del. Luke Torian (D–Prince William) wrote to Cummings in a June letter that has not received a response.
"We need to have at our disposal all of the data, so we'll know how to make our decisions. If we don't have it, it makes it more difficult," Lucas told VPM News after the September meeting. "When we ask the administration for information, it's because we need to factor that into what we do."
'Washing his hands of the whole thing'
Alex Keena, a political science professor at VCU, said the lack of response signalled Youngkin was done working with the General Assembly.
"He's a lame-duck governor at this point," Keena said. "I think he's just sort of washing his hands of the whole thing. He doesn't feel like he needs to necessarily be accountable to them anymore."
"I think that the governor is protecting Republican candidates," Keena added. "This is not good for Virginians, and obviously Republicans are the ones who will get blamed if the full scope of this comes to light."
It's unclear how many of the state's budget planners and agencies are aware of the drop in federal money. The Department of Planning and Budget would normally compile such reports, but in a response to a records request, an employee said it did not produce any list.
Youngkin is far from unique in using the working papers exemption to protect records from public view, according to Megan Rhyne, the executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. But she said it was unusual to see the exemption applied to the status of federal grants — which are themselves public.
"It is beyond what I've ever seen to shield an otherwise so obviously public record by way of this working papers exemption," Rhyne said.
The exemption is meant to cover papers prepared for the governor's "personal or deliberative use," but Rhyne suggested the fact that Cummings referenced them in presentations to lawmakers contradicts that description: "Because these grants ultimately benefit the public, I think the public should be aware of when they might be in jeopardy."
Following the money
In the absence of a full public accounting of the list of frozen federal grants, it's difficult to know what areas of the state government are most affected.
But there are clues.
In a May presentation to the House of Delegates' emergency committee on the impact of federal cuts, Cummings broke down the sum of paused grants by secretariat. The two highest dollar amounts were $271 million in health and human services, and $106 million in transportation. (Virginia's HHS budget for FY2026 is about $34 billion a year, $26 billion of which comes from Medicaid, and its transportation budget is about $11 billion.)
The balance of three federal grants to the Virginia Department of Health, totalling $219 million, is no longer flowing to the state agency, according to a public records request to the department. The federal government cancelled the allocations, which were provided as part of COVID-19 relief funding, on March 24 with no reason given.
"While these are labeled as COVID funds, I do want to make sure that everyone's aware that we were doing many things with these funds post-COVID," State Health Commissioner Dr. Karen Shelton, a Youngkin appointee, told the House Appropriations committee in May.
In August remarks to the General Assembly's money committees, Youngkin downplayed the COVID funding being paused, saying the money "was expiring anyway."
Of the $219 million in unspent health funds, $158 million is from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program to detect and prevent infectious disease outbreaks, according to Shelton's May presentation and WAMU's August records request. The grant was set to expire in June 2026.
Shelton said the grant allowed Virginia to increase the speed of its reporting on disease outbreaks, pointing to a recent response to meningitis cases and better stakeholder coordination to prevent infectious diseases from spreading in nursing homes.
The two other cancelled federal grants were for improving childhood immunization and vaccination systems and efforts to reach underserved communities with the COVID-19 vaccine, which had $56 million and $4.6 million left to spend, respectively.
The Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services was also impacted by the federal cancellation of COVID-era support, with nearly $31 million in unspent funding cancelled, according to an August public records request.
Of that money, nearly $18 million was a mental health block grant supporting community and family services, crisis intervention, peer support and housing programs. An additional $11 million in funding for substance abuse prevention, treatment, and recovery was also pulled.
Other health agencies said they either had no current federal grants or no records responsive to the request. The Department of Medical Assistance Services, which operates the commonwealth's Medicaid program, said it "does not have an existing data set, report, or analysis that aligns with your request, or that the documents you requested are not in the Agency's possession or control."
Spokespeople for Youngkin did not answer detailed questions on the funds and the lack of disclosure to the public. Instead, Press Secretary Peter Finoccohio sent a statement by email.
"As Secretary Cummings has repeatedly provided to legislators and the public at his nearly twice-a-month appearance before the General Assembly, federal grant reviews have been fluid and the vast majority ever paused for review have been restored," he said. "If Virginia Democrat leadership remains concerned about the flow of federal funding, despite the regular updates, they should call Senators Warner and Kaine and tell them to vote to end the Schumer shutdown and reopen the federal government."
Legislators, VPM News, and WAMU sent their inquiries before the federal shutdown began on Oct. 1.
These are the questions VPM News and WAMU sent to Youngkin about the paused federal grants:
- Why has the administration elected to keep this information to itself? I.e., why did it elect to invoke working papers exemption and not respond to legislators?
- It appears that this [list of paused grants] was calculated in the governor's office by the finance secretary (Both the Auditor and DPB said in a FOIA they did not have any such records of a list of paused grants).
- Governor Youngkin said the admin has gotten $2.1 billion unfrozen. Can you provide details on what you got released and when?
- The figures appear to be in flux: Is that accurate? In an Aug 14 presentation to the House Appropriations Committee in June, there were 24 federal grants to Virginia agencies that have been paused equaling roughly $461 million? That number is much lower now. Did the availability of the funds expire or were they released in Washington?
- Health Commissioner Dr. Karen Shelton has said that while many of the cancelled funds were from COVID-era funding tranches, they were supporting much more than Virginia's response to the COVID pandemic, including broader capacity to respond to infectious diseases like meningitis. Do you expect to include replacement funds to continue this work in your proposed budget later this fall?
Disclosure: VPM News Director Elliott Robinson is on the board of directors of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. Any questions about this story should be directed to Managing Editor Dawnthea M. Price Lisco.
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