CT has 69 public health contracts canceled after Trump funding cuts, issues stop work orders

CT Insider – Friday, April 4, 2025
By Jordan Nathaniel Fenster

In the wake of sweeping federal funding cuts and massive employee layoffs, the state Department of Public Health has already started canceling contracts with the possibility of layoffs looming.

Commissioner Manisha Juthani said the “wholesale reductions in force” at federal agencies like the Centers for Disease Control have left several Connecticut programs on hold, forcing the state to cancel contracts and cut ties with long term contractors.

“We had 69 contracts where we had to issue stop work orders,” she said. “We had 50 contractors who we had to tell they can’t report to work because I have no money to pay them. Some of them worked alongside us as if they were DPH employees, but really they were contractors, and we had to put in stop work orders.”

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that layoffs at U.S. health agencies had begun, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. saying the goal was to reduce the total employee head count by 20,000, from 82,000 to 62,000.

When asked if DPH had laid off any agency staff as a result of those cuts, Juthani said, “We have not done that yet.”

“Half of our workforce is funded through federal dollars,” Juthani said. “We’re going to have to be more realistic in our expectations.”

The problem, Juthani said, is two-fold: There is a loss of funding to the state, and the departure of thousands of federal employees who administer that funding.

“A number of entire groups of workers at CDC have been let go. We may have grants in a given area. For example, we have a grant on climate and health. That entire group has been let go,” Juthani said during an interview with CT Insider. “We don’t know what that means for the grant funding, but there’s nobody operating the grant at the federal level. We have deliverables. We’re supposed to report things to them. There’s nobody there to pick up the phone or answer an email. So what is it going to mean for that grant?”

One example is PRAMS, the federal pregnancy related adverse event monitoring system, which Juthani said helps the state provide maternal and infant health care needs.

“It’s a big survey that is administered by the CDC nationally, many state health departments get funding through this,” she said. “We’ve not been told that the grant is terminated. However, everybody doing that work has been let go. So what does that mean?”

Juthani and Gov, Ned Lamont announced last month the loss of $150 million in six federal public health grants initially intended for infectious disease-related programs following the COVID pandemic. Those grants include $118.8 million in funding for epidemiology and laboratory capacity, $29.2 million for immunization activity and a $4.5 million loss in funding for health disparity programs.

Those six grants were funded as of March 24, and Juthani said while, “We haven’t let people go yet,” local health departments were told to “proceed at their own risk, because we don’t know if we’ll be able to pay them beyond March 25.

“It seems that Connecticut takes another blow from the federal government every day under the Trump administration,” Senate Pro Tem Martin Looney, Majority Leader Bob Duff and Sen. Saud Anwar said in a joint statement. “Today, we learn that 50 individuals working with the Department of Public Health who keep the agency’s operations functional were issued stop work orders, and another 49 agency staff are at direct risk of losing their jobs, all as a result of grants previously approved by Congress and suddenly rescinded by federal leaders. What’s worse, we fear this is the tip of the iceberg, and continue to struggle to determine exactly what our state is losing so we can properly respond.

Though Juthani said there have not been any layoffs at DPH as a result of that funding loss, she said there have already been cuts, that she’s being forced to decide between “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves.”

“I’m not ready to give up yet. I’m not ready to give up. I’m trying to figure out a way that we can do it,” she said. “But, you know, there are a lot of people who are going to suffer along the way, even if it’s people just losing their jobs because we were given no notice or there was no way for us to float things while dealing with uncertainty and chaos and that is troubling to me.”

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