State Historic Preservation Office funding

The State Historic Preservation Office could possibly lose funding due to delays in federal grants and state funding.

If their funding is not received by August 2025, they will be forced to shut down their operations. This would have statewide effects on infrastructure projects, funding of rural governments, tribal consultations and local tourism.

Jim McPherson, Board President of the Arizona Preservation Foundation and the Arizona Advisor for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, joined “Arizona Horizon” to provide insight on funding for the State Historic Preservation Office.

“This is a state agency, there’s one in every state and territory as well as tribal historic preservation offices. And what they do is make sure that projects that may influence historic buildings or archaeological sites are well planned for in the future. Water, infrastructure, highways, broad brand, they all need a component to check on how they are affected by the history or the archaeology,” McPherson said.

The State Historic Preservation Office has been waiting on funding that was recently release by the U.S. Department of the Interior. McPherson shared some insight into why there was a delay in receiving the federal funding.

“It wasn’t released because there was, we’re in a new times and the federal government is under new leadership and they’re taking a different look at things. But then strong lobbying, strong advocacy on the part of the preservation advocates throughout the country helped for that release,” McPherson said.

McPherson also discussed why it was important that the State Historic Preservation Office received funding from the federal government.

“Ours is 87% is done through the federal government and the rest is through the state. But the state portion is really not hard dollars. It’s volunteer hours for sites tours that help protect our archaeological sites. So we were asking for gap funding for this period before the next fiscal year that funds could be used from the state parks’ revenue fund which has significant monies. That in case the money didn’t come from the federal government, the state would pick up that portion for this fiscal year,” McPherson said.