Governor Lamont spoke at the ARP Advisory committee’s recent meeting held at CCM’s offices in New Haven
Rare Federal Stimulus Funds
CCM American Rescue Plan commitee to help towns spend funds wisely
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ith the passage of the American Rescue Plan (ARP), towns and cities will receive a windfall of one-time, unexpected funds. The one caveat is that there are provisions on how the money could be spent. CCM, partnering with the Connecticut Council of Small Towns (COST) have formed a panel of public and private experts that will help our local governments administer funding from this program. ARP funding consists of $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief funds enacted by President Biden and Congress earlier this year. Funding to Connecticut municipalities is very substantial: towns and cities are anticipated to receive $2.55 billion statewide ($1.56 billion to general government / $995 million to schools). Funding for towns and cities will be distributed in a modified CDBG formula with entitlement cities (those with a population over 50,000) receiving funding directly from the Treasury Department and non-entitlement towns (those with a population under 50,000) distributed by the State as a passthrough. Metropolitan/entitlement cities will need to apply through Treasury to receive funding. Additional information can be found here: Request for Funding for Metropolitan/ entitlement cities Non-entitlement towns (those with a population less than 50,000) will receive funding from the State. Specific allocation of funds will be made available by Treasury in the coming days. Treasury has indicated that non-entitlement towns will not have to utilize the 6 | CONNECTICUT TOWN & CITY | MAY 2021
same request feature that metropolitan /entitlement cities need to. Importantly, there is a provision that will allow municipalities to collect funds that would have otherwise been allocated to counties. County funds will be distributed for all Connecticut municipalities by the State. Treasury will provide further guidance in the coming days but it will likely be similar to the non-entitlement process. As referenced before, these will be distributed on a per capita basis. “With the scale and depth of these unprecedented federal funds, CCM believes that establishing this ARP Advisory Committee to assist towns and cities will provide and even greater return on these federal funds for local government,” said Joe DeLong, CCM Executive Director and CEO. There remain some questions as to how the Treasury Department will allow some of the funds to be used. Specific provisions already include periodic reporting to the Treasury Department detailing how the funds have been used. Funds can be recouped by the Treasury if they deem the use non-compliant. CCM and NLC are working collaboratively on several efforts to provide members with accurate information regarding the Treasury information. Webinars were held in mid-May to discuss this crucial information as it came out. At the time of writing, there were plans for additional meetings as numbers and rules were finalized.
