Exclusive | Lee Zeldin hits the brakes on $2.3B for Biden’s green school buses — threatening Hochul’s EV mandate

WASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin is hitting the brakes on $2.3 billion left in spending from the Biden administration’s electric school bus program — following backlash over New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s mandate and as the vehicles have been breaking down in the cold and failing to be produced in a timely manner to districts.

Zeldin made the decision to review the taxpayer-funded program after $2.7 billion was already “frivolously wasted” under former President Joe Biden on thousands of electric buses, according to an agency spokesperson, working out to a price tag of roughly $318,452.45 per vehicle to produce.

In New York City, for example, more than $61 million in EPA grant funding went toward just two entities making 180 of the “green” buses for five school districts, with a cost range of $295,000 to nearly $395,000 for each one — but it’s unclear how many are even in use.

Just 150 buses are on the road now in New York, according to a spokesperson from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, after more than $210 million in taxpayer funds were spent.

“At the Trump EPA, we have a ZERO tolerance policy towards any waste and abuse of hard-earned tax dollars,” Zeldin told The Post.

“We are in the process of reforming the Congressionally mandated Clean School Bus program to ensure child safety is prioritized and that taxpayers get high-quality, reliable buses worthy of their investments for our schools.”

Biden’s EPA awarded a total of 1,152 districts with the billions of dollars in rebate or grant funding to replace 8,236 school buses — though dozens of districts due to manufacturing issues were still waiting for their vehicles to arrive as of February 2025, the Washington Free Beacon first reported.

The agency’s inspector general also audited the first round of rebates and grants for the program in 2023 and found the billions in taxpayer funding were left vulnerable to “potential fraud, waste, and abuse” — with $38 million in ineligible rebate requests ultimately being yanked.

Hochul and the state legislature previously passed legislation mandating schools stop purchasing traditional diesel buses in 2027 and fully convert their fleets to electric by 2035.

Officials and parents have griped that the all-electric buses can’t sufficiently provide heat for students in the colder months, break down on routes and cost districts millions of dollars to switch.

“This continues to be a top area of concern that we hear about from school board members,” Government Affairs Director of the New York State School Boards Association Brian Fessler told The Post.

Fessler districts face mounting financial, logistical and operational barriers as the 2035 deadline approaches. His association estimated in a report last year that the cost of replacing the nearly 45,000 diesel buses on the road in the Empire State at nearly $11.2 billion.

That doesn’t even account for the millions more each district will likely have to spend on charging infrastructure, building upgrades, and additional staff.

“The Biden EPA disastrously doled out cash to ill-suited manufacturers as advanced payments, as opposed to only making payments when the buses were actually manufactured and delivered,” Zeldin added.

“There are well-documented examples of manufacturers failing to deliver buses to school districts after receiving millions of tax dollars,” he said. “It’s an unbelievably reckless approach that was frequently favored by our predecessors.”

New York State school districts got a combined $213 million worth of rebates and grants for 61 districts to replace 681 buses starting in 2022, according to EPA data. Then-Big Apple Mayor Eric Adams announced two years later that the city would begin rolling out a 180-vehicle fleet with more than $61 million of that pot.

The city’s self-proclaimed “premier school bus dealer” Bird Bus Sales, also known as J.P. Bus & Truck Repair, took a $31,597,733 grant to roll out 80 of those electric vehicles for four city school districts, adding up to a price of $394,971.66 per bus.

The nonprofit NYC School Bus Umbrella Services, Inc., got a $29.5 million grant for 100 more of the vehicles in another city district, costing exactly $295,000 per bus.

The city Department of Education runs NYC School Bus Umbrella Services, with several officials — including deputy chancellor Emma Vadehra — serving as chair of its board. Nearly all of its revenue comes from city coffers, according to tax records.

The nonprofit only began submitting IRS returns the first year that Biden took office in 2021, the records show, with its revenue jumping from $6 million to more than $177.5 million as of the latest filing — and roughly $135.8 million of that going toward salaries, other compensation or employee benefits.

It’s unclear how many of thosee buses have been deployed. Reps for both entities did not immediately respond to a request for comment about which districts received buses and how many were operable.

Almost two dozen buses sent to Erie County’s Lake Shore Central School District via another $7.9 million grant also caused an uproar this December, when children returning home from school told parents they were freezing inside the vehicle and others said the bus had stopped working and forced them to wait a half hour in the cold, WIVB reported.

“Lake Shore Central School District is aware of questions regarding heating on electric buses during cold winter conditions,” superintendent Phil Johnson said in a statement, adding that leaving the heat on was a district regulation and that “student comfort and safety remain a priority.”

Johnson added that “there are no immediate plans” to buy more electric buses but emphasized the district has “a responsibility to our community to pursue the most cost-effective means to meet the NYS mandate to have a 100% electric operation by 2035.”

The green bus mandate has also rankled local pols.

“New York state pushing it onto rural school districts is an utterly ridiculous political act,” Assemblyman Robert Smullen (R-Fulton), a candidate running to succeed North Country GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, told The Post.

“It makes the ‘Green New Scam’ even worse because school districts have to take money away from educational programs and they have to give it to a transportation program that adds nothing to their children’s education,” Smullen added.

He, as well as state Sen. George Borello (R-Chautauqua), whose district borders Lake Shore School District, said they support the EPA’s move to cut the grants.

“This should be another wake up call for the governor that the federal government is not going to subsidize her radical costly agenda,” Borello told The Post.

The mandate is also not popular among voters — presenting additional roadblocks as school districts ask them to sign off on ballot measures authorizing new electric bus purchases in order to comply with the mandate.

A wide-ranging report from the state education department released in late 2024 showed that only 7.4% of the 583 districts who responded to a survey had put forward a ballot measure allowing them to incur new debt for electric buses. Of those 43 ballot measures, seven failed. 

School districts are now able to apply to the state for two separate two-year suspensions of the 2027 mandate that they cease buying diesel buses, though they are still required to have all electric fleets by 2035.

Republicans and Democrats both helped create the Biden EPA’s $5 billion Clean School Bus Program by passing the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021, which authorized funding for the electric vehicles through the end of fiscal year 2026.

An EPA spokesperson emphasized that Zeldin “has cancelled roughly $30 billion in wasteful grants and contracts since being confirmed as EPA Administrator” and “anticipates providing additional information about the revamped and modernized Clean School Bus Program in the near future.”

Reps for the mayor’s office and the city’s Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.