By Brid­get Brons­don
UConn Jour­nal­ism

Con­necti­cut and 20 oth­er states are suing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion over new “polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed” rules for which pub­lic ser­vice work­ers can get their stu­dent loans for­giv­en that oppo­nents say could impact mar­gin­al­ized groups.  

The fed­er­al stu­dent loan for­give­ness pro­gram, estab­lished in 2007, for­gives the remain­ing bal­ance on direct stu­dent loans after the bor­row­er has made 10 years of pay­ments while work­ing for a pub­lic ser­vice employ­er. The pro­gram has long sup­port­ed health­care pro­fes­sion­als, edu­ca­tors and first respon­ders. 

In March, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion cre­at­ed new rules for work­ers and com­pa­nies eli­gi­ble for the Pub­lic Ser­vice Loan For­give­ness Pro­gram. The new rules grant Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion Lin­da McMa­hon the pow­er to can­cel loan for­give­ness and ban orga­ni­za­tions from the pro­gram if their work engages in  “sub­stan­tive ille­gal pur­pose.”  

Oppo­nents wor­ry this vague word­ing will be used to pun­ish orga­ni­za­tions that sup­port caus­es the admin­is­tra­tion oppos­es or local gov­ern­ments that don’t fol­low Trump’s agen­da.  

“It is not ille­gal to be a police offi­cer. It is not ille­gal to be a fire­fight­er. It is not ille­gal to be an assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al, for sure. It is not ille­gal to be a teacher, a [para­pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tor], an admin­is­tra­tor. It’s not ille­gal to pro­vide health care to chil­dren who need it,” said Con­necti­cut Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong in a Novem­ber press con­fer­ence. “It’s not ille­gal to pro­vide health­care to sick peo­ple, even though they may have a com­pli­cat­ed immi­gra­tion sto­ry. And that’s what this pres­i­dent and Lin­da McMa­hon intend to do: pun­ish peo­ple for help­ing oth­er peo­ple.”  

In Con­necti­cut, near­ly 12,000 res­i­dents have received loan for­give­ness, and anoth­er 12,500 bor­row­ers are enrolled in the pro­gram, Tong said in a Novem­ber press con­fer­ence. “The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is about to pull the rug out from under­neath them,” he said. 

The CT Com­mu­ni­ty Non­prof­it Alliance, an orga­ni­za­tion of over 290 non­prof­its across Con­necti­cut,  sup­ports a wide vari­ety of pro­grams to assist mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties in the state, includ­ing health and addic­tion ser­vices for indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, behav­ioral health pro­grams for chil­dren, hous­ing pro­grams and edu­ca­tion and job ser­vices for indi­vid­u­als com­ing out of prison.   

Its mem­ber non­prof­its serve more than half a mil­lion peo­ple in the state and employ more than 170,000. Pres­i­dent and CEO Gian-Carl Casa said non­prof­its have been under­fund­ed for too many years and the loan for­give­ness pro­gram is an impor­tant incen­tive to attract and retain non­prof­it employ­ees.  

“If they’re under­fund­ed, they can’t com­pen­sate peo­ple well enough,” he said. “If they can’t get peo­ple, if they can’t recruit them and retain them, they can’t pro­vide ser­vices. That means the peo­ple who depend on those ser­vices don’t get them. This pro­gram is one way to help them stay.”  

The change to the loan for­give­ness pro­gram could impact hir­ing in an area already fac­ing short­ages. Kate Diaz, pres­i­dent of the Con­necti­cut Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, said pub­lic ser­vice pro­fes­sions are already strug­gling to attract peo­ple to their sec­tor as work­ers are “pub­licly abused and ridiculed” by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. 

“I was joy­ful­ly in a class­room, and I had to fight tooth and nail for the dol­lars that I was able to get back for my ser­vice,” she said. “We should not make it hard, we should make it joy­ful. We should make it a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve one anoth­er in any of the fields of pub­lic ser­vice. We have an admin­is­tra­tion that does not val­ue that work. That does not val­ue us.”  

Oth­ers say the fed­er­al loan for­give­ness pro­gram makes pub­lic ser­vice pro­fes­sions pos­si­ble for more peo­ple.  

Dr. Cara Delaney, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of obstet­rics and gyne­col­o­gy at UConn Health, said the pro­gram made it finan­cial­ly fea­si­ble for her to have a career in the pub­lic sec­tor. Although Delaney said she is about to ful­fill her 10 years of ser­vice required for loan for­give­ness, she said the process has become very dif­fi­cult and stress­ful in the past year due to the “ambi­gu­i­ty” of the new employ­er qual­i­fi­ca­tion rules. 

“This is gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence, and with the goal of cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment of fear and pow­er­less­ness, and despair,” she said. “And we must stand up to these efforts to tar­get dis­en­fran­chised com­mu­ni­ties.”