Local public radio stations in the Roaring Fork Valley are set to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual federal funding next year after the U.S. House of Representatives sent the Rescissions Act of 2025 to President Donald Trump’s desk early Friday morning.
Aspen Public Radio will lose $210,000 annually from the $1.1 billion cut to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and KDNK will lose $174,000 annually starting in 2026. The two public radio stations, often lifelines during emergencies in the valley, plan to lean on community donations to make up for the coming budget shortfalls.
“Our current plan is to use reserves to buy us a little bit of time,” KDNK Station Director Megan Passmore said. “Yes, we have strong membership support and we’re going to seek to augment the funding that we’re losing with individual and grant support … but there’s also bigger ramifications with the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ that got passed, and I don’t know how that’s going to affect people’s pocketbooks at the end of the day.”
“I think it’s just still too early to tell, but I can say that, for now, we can operate as normal,” she added.
APR will lose just over $150,000 in 2025, and KDNK will lose about $100,000 in 2025 from funds that were previously allocated but not yet distributed. Stations are granted federal funding through community service grants from CPB.
APR Executive Director Breeze Richardson said the station will also turn to donors instead of conducting budget cuts.
“It’s really hard math to do because $200,000 can’t come out of any one (budget) line,” she said. “We need to try to raise it first. Will I reassess in a year? Yes, but the reality of the growth that Aspen Public Radio has experienced is that it’s through dedicated funding … the donors who support these things, I have no reason to believe will be any less enthusiastic about supporting them moving forward.”
The House approved the Trump administration’s plan to claw back $9 billion in previously allocated funds in a 216-213 vote after the Senate approved the bill on Thursday. All but two Republicans voted in favor of the cuts. U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, R-Grand Junction, who represents the entire Western Slope and much of southern Colorado, voted in favor of the bill.
Hurd’s district has the largest concentration of local and independent public broadcasting stations receiving federal support in the state.
“I voted in favor of the Rescissions Act because it represents a small step forward in curtailing government spending by clawing back non-life-saving foreign aid and taxpayer-funded radio programming,” Hurd said in a statement to the Aspen Daily News. “I am reassured by commitments my colleagues and I in both chambers of Congress secured to prohibit cuts to essential, lifesaving foreign aid programs such as (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and international food aid, as well as redirecting unused climate change funding to tribal radio stations.”
Amid votes in both chambers on the rescissions package, U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, announced he secured an agreement with the White House budget director to secure funding for Native American radio stations in multiple states to make up for the impending CPB cuts.
President and CEO of NPR Katherine Maher said in a statement the vote “is an unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions, and an act of Congress that disregards the public will.”
“Public funding has enabled the flourishing of a uniquely American system of unparalleled cultural, informational, and educational programming, and ensured access to vital emergency alerting and reporting in times of crisis — all for about $1.60 per American, every year,” she said in the statement. “Parents and children, senior citizens and students, tribal and rural communities — all will bear the harm of this vote.”
The bill will affect only a small portion of NPR’s overall budget, but its approximately 1,000 member stations will bear the brunt of the cuts. Maher has warned that many of those stations, especially those serving rural communities whose share of federal funding makes up 50% or more of their operating budgets, could shut down as a result of the cuts.
“If a station doesn’t survive this sudden turn by Congress, a vital stitch in our American fabric will be gone for good,” Maher said in the statement.
While APR will only lose 10% of its annual budget, Richardson said it will be important to plan for sustained funding from other sources long term to make up for the shortfall year after year.
“What we do immediately and what we do long term will look different,” she said. “I think that there can and will be a groundswell of support for this moment. My colleagues and I are not confident that it’ll necessarily translate into annual giving, so next year is really where the rubber is going to hit the road, and we’re going to have to figure out, what do I budget and how do I get out from under that?”
Long-term ramifications are still unclear for KDNK, Passmore said. The station could save around $60,000 by cutting all NPR and syndicated programming from its station, but it still wouldn’t be enough to make up for the federal losses.
Communities often rely on public radio stations in emergency situations, like wildfires. When a brush fire damaged fiber lines in June and shut off most cellular and wireless service to the valley, public radio stations were the only active sources of information before services were restored.
“We’re a vital communication tool,” Passmore said. “Especially in our valley, and especially with wildfire danger … I don’t think that many people fully grasp that aspect of what we do and how important it is.”
In May, APR joined NPR and two other Colorado radio stations in a lawsuit challenging Trump’s May 1 executive order that sought to cease all federal funding to NPR and PBS. The suit claims Trump’s executive order is a violation of the First Amendment’s protections for freedom of speech and association, and freedom of the press.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the bill would impact the lawsuit, but Richardson said more information may become available in the coming weeks.
