Just weeks after the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission quietly removed references to climate change and disadvantaged communities from its annual work plan, local governments in other parts of the country are demonstrating a very different approach to federal pressure.
In the Denver metropolitan region, a coalition of cities and counties has retained and begun deploying nearly $200 million in federal climate funding despite the Trump administration’s broader effort to claw back or freeze grants connected to Biden-era climate programs. Rather than altering their language or delaying implementation, regional leaders moved ahead with a major initiative to expand heat pump adoption, reduce pollution from buildings, and provide energy upgrades to low-income households.
The program, known as Power Ahead Colorado, will deliver free efficiency retrofits to thousands of residents, distribute tens of millions in rebates, and train a new clean-energy workforce. Funding briefly stalled earlier this year but resumed, allowing the program to launch while legal disputes over federal authority continue.
The contrast with Santa Monica Bay is stark.
In Denver, local governments assumed that any funding disputes would be resolved through negotiation or litigation and continued implementing climate programs aligned with their policy goals. In Santa Monica, however, the Commission moved to preemptively rewrite its own commitments, removing climate and equity language from a foundational planning document to avoid the possibility of federal pushback, even though no written directive required the changes.
In other parts of Los Angeles County, local agencies have continued advancing electrification, heat resilience, and wildfire recovery initiatives using state funding, local bond resources, and ongoing litigation challenging federal interference. Climate planning, emissions reduction efforts, and adaptation work remain publicly framed as climate responses rather than euphemistically described alternatives.
The Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission instead chose a path of preemptive retreat. Without formal federal guidance and with weeks remaining before its submission deadline, commissioners voted to delete core climate and equity terminology from their work plan. Councilmember Traci Park, who serves on the Commission’s governing board, voted in favor of stripping the language through her designee Jacob Burman.
The decision is especially striking in light of the January 2025 Palisades fire, which devastated neighborhoods during extreme fire weather conditions widely linked to climate change. While Park has repeatedly invoked the fire as a defining crisis for her district, she has publicly rejected the role of climate change in driving the disaster, framing it instead as a failure of land management and preparedness.
Park’s vote to remove references to climate change from the Commission’s work plan reinforces that stance and deepens concerns about the normalization of climate denial in local governance at a moment when scientific consensus and lived experience point in the opposite direction. Public commenters warned that such anticipatory compliance weakens California’s broader legal and political resistance to federal overreach and accelerates the quiet erosion of climate and equity commitments.
“I’m stunned by what I’m hearing today,” one speaker said during the meeting. “You don’t want the inconvenience of a negotiation. That’s what’s driving this.”
Another commenter warned that voluntary compliance undermines ongoing state legal challenges. “You’re putting the Attorney General in a very bad position,” a speaker told commissioners, noting that California officials are actively contesting federal attempts to restrict climate and environmental justice work.
The Santa Monica Bay decision illustrates how institutions can diverge when facing the same political pressure. Some agencies continue implementing climate policy while defending funding through legal channels. Others quietly adjust their language, prioritizing administrative certainty over public clarity.
The experience in Colorado suggests that continuing climate work while contesting federal interference remains a viable strategy. Local governments there moved forward without assuming that funding would disappear simply because political priorities shifted in Washington. Rather than narrowing their commitments, they treated the funding dispute as a legal and political fight to be navigated, not a reason to stop naming the problem they are trying to solve.