
Gene Sperling, senior advisor to President Biden, speaks during a July 21 press conference at the 2022 NACo Annual Conference in Adams County, Colo. Photo by Denny Henry.
Error message
In order to filter by the "in queue" property, you need to add the Entityqueue: Queue relationship.-
County NewsFrom Cook County, Ill.'s medical debt relief plan, to Boone County, Ky.'s universal internet plan to Adams County, Colo.'s equity rubric for grant proposals, counties have used ARPA funding to strengthen what were vulnerabilities.Sperling, county leaders tout equitable recovery
-
County News Article
Sperling, county leaders tout equitable recovery
The COVID-19 pandemic’s economic effects hit counties twice — once with the immediate demand for a vast number of services, but more insidiously, undercutting the economic activity that funded most of those services.
The Biden administration, staffed by economists who still had regrets from the Great Recession, answered back with the American Rescue Plan, with a quick distribution of half of the $65.1 billion allocated directly to counties in 2021, with the other half coming in 2022. That strategy prompted counties to look at their long-term needs and beyond merely surviving the disruptions, by targeting vulnerable populations and economic sectors in their communities and committing to fortifying them.
“After the Great Recession… we saved the auto companies and we saved the big suppliers, but not all those small suppliers who went out of business,” said Gene Sperling, senior advisor to President Biden. “It was heartbreaking, [and] through no fault of their own. No city or state had any money to help deal with their communities with major foreclosures, there were no funds left to deal with them. The funds helped you get out of recession, but they didn’t have the power they needed to make sure it was a recovery.”
Now, with long-term recovery in mind, each county is taking aim at its own lingering issues. For Cook County, Ill. it was recognizing the drag that medical debt was having not only on residents’ finances, but their willingness to seek additional medical care.
“Medical debt is the number one reason that people in this country declare bankruptcy, so we decided to forgive as much debt as we could,” said Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle. “This fall, with just $12 million of our federal funds, our partner [RIP Medical Debt] will negotiate the purchase of hundreds of millions of dollars in medical debt for Cook County residents and forgive them,” which will additionally help improve their credit scores.
“This is a problem too many people across the county, especially people of color and young people with disabilities are encountering,” she said.
NACo Immediate Past President Gary Moore, a judge/executive in Boone County, Ky., recounted how his work with NACo’s Broadband Task Force prompted him to seek out solutions to connect high-speed internet to every home in his county. That project, funded by ARPA and a partnership with Cincinnati Bell and aiming for 40,000 homes, is on track to be complete by March 2023. That’s due in large part to the speed with which the federal government distributed ARPA funding.
“The investments that we're making in our community — they move quick — and they move quick because of the direct allocation of funding to each county,” Moore said. “Direct allocation was something we believe strongly in. We know that funds that travel from the federal government to state governments and then down to cities and counties, but we didn't want this to be the norm. We needed to act and we needed to act quickly.”
Sperling said direct allocation to counties of all sizes, an improvement over 2020’s CARES Act funding that required a county to meet a 500,000-population threshold, was to empower counties.
“It's like the government did not trust that most of the counties [via the CARES Act], even major counties with 200,00… 300,000 people, could use these funds and giving it directly has led to so much innovation, to so many people not having to go on hands and knees and beg for the funds.”
And the timeline for counties to spend ARPA money, 2026, was another lesson from CARES.
“I've had a couple of [mayors] telling me…they threw away their CARES [funding],” Sperling said. “They had to spend it in months, they didn't think about it. When [ARPA] came, they got their community together and they said ‘What are our biggest challenges related to the pandemic? How do we solve them?”
Since Congress passed ARPA in March 2021, the Delta and Omicron variant waves have caused shockwaves throughout the American economy, as have Russia’s war against Ukraine and global inflation. Those disruptions have validated Sperling’s desire to give counties more flexibility than they had with CARES.
“If it's another thing that we learned it is to give yourself a cushion, provide some insurance when you're trying to get out of a deep hole, because things go wrong you don't foresee,” he said.
Adams County, Colo. allocated ARPA funding through a scoring rubric for grant applications, placing emphasis on minority-owned businesses and nonprofit organizations who served the county’s most vulnerable residents during the pandemic and before.
“We knew getting that money back into our communities through a grant process would help save small businesses, continue critical testing and vaccination clinics and ensure that our families could stay in their homes,” said Commissioner Eva Henry. “The grant program has already proved successful with businesses once on the brink. Now, thriving nonprofit partners are expanding their services and programming to meet the ongoing need and as helpful as these funds were, we know there are other areas of immediate need.”
When the pandemic began, Blaine County, Idaho saw itself become an early hot spot for infections. County Administrator Mandy Pomeroy and the Board of Commissioners saw the local fissures from the pandemic and tried to address them.
The county has upgraded its communications systems, its IT system and updated facilities to be more sustainable. But even those improvements were made with residents in mind. Among the grants the county awarded was to a local crisis hotline, so they could make resources available bilingually to serve the county’s Spanish-speaking residents.
San Diego County, Calif. Supervisor Nora Vargas was elected in the middle of the pandemic, taking office in early 2021. She sees the equitable approach her county has taken as the local government ideal.
“Our county’s success in protecting our communities is exactly how government is supposed to work for all of us, not just some of us,” she said. “[ARPA] was a catalyst to ensure that we were building healthier and stronger communities. We will continue to allocate these resources in an equitable fashion for our community so that they can thrive, not just survive.”
From Cook County, Ill.'s medical debt relief plan, to Boone County, Ky.'s universal internet plan to Adams County, Colo.'s equity rubric for grant proposals, counties have used ARPA funding to strengthen what were vulnerabilities.2022-07-21County News Article2022-07-26
The COVID-19 pandemic’s economic effects hit counties twice — once with the immediate demand for a vast number of services, but more insidiously, undercutting the economic activity that funded most of those services.
The Biden administration, staffed by economists who still had regrets from the Great Recession, answered back with the American Rescue Plan, with a quick distribution of half of the $65.1 billion allocated directly to counties in 2021, with the other half coming in 2022. That strategy prompted counties to look at their long-term needs and beyond merely surviving the disruptions, by targeting vulnerable populations and economic sectors in their communities and committing to fortifying them.
“After the Great Recession… we saved the auto companies and we saved the big suppliers, but not all those small suppliers who went out of business,” said Gene Sperling, senior advisor to President Biden. “It was heartbreaking, [and] through no fault of their own. No city or state had any money to help deal with their communities with major foreclosures, there were no funds left to deal with them. The funds helped you get out of recession, but they didn’t have the power they needed to make sure it was a recovery.”
Now, with long-term recovery in mind, each county is taking aim at its own lingering issues. For Cook County, Ill. it was recognizing the drag that medical debt was having not only on residents’ finances, but their willingness to seek additional medical care.
“Medical debt is the number one reason that people in this country declare bankruptcy, so we decided to forgive as much debt as we could,” said Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle. “This fall, with just $12 million of our federal funds, our partner [RIP Medical Debt] will negotiate the purchase of hundreds of millions of dollars in medical debt for Cook County residents and forgive them,” which will additionally help improve their credit scores.
“This is a problem too many people across the county, especially people of color and young people with disabilities are encountering,” she said.
NACo Immediate Past President Gary Moore, a judge/executive in Boone County, Ky., recounted how his work with NACo’s Broadband Task Force prompted him to seek out solutions to connect high-speed internet to every home in his county. That project, funded by ARPA and a partnership with Cincinnati Bell and aiming for 40,000 homes, is on track to be complete by March 2023. That’s due in large part to the speed with which the federal government distributed ARPA funding.
“The investments that we're making in our community — they move quick — and they move quick because of the direct allocation of funding to each county,” Moore said. “Direct allocation was something we believe strongly in. We know that funds that travel from the federal government to state governments and then down to cities and counties, but we didn't want this to be the norm. We needed to act and we needed to act quickly.”
Sperling said direct allocation to counties of all sizes, an improvement over 2020’s CARES Act funding that required a county to meet a 500,000-population threshold, was to empower counties.
“It's like the government did not trust that most of the counties [via the CARES Act], even major counties with 200,00… 300,000 people, could use these funds and giving it directly has led to so much innovation, to so many people not having to go on hands and knees and beg for the funds.”
And the timeline for counties to spend ARPA money, 2026, was another lesson from CARES.
“I've had a couple of [mayors] telling me…they threw away their CARES [funding],” Sperling said. “They had to spend it in months, they didn't think about it. When [ARPA] came, they got their community together and they said ‘What are our biggest challenges related to the pandemic? How do we solve them?”
Since Congress passed ARPA in March 2021, the Delta and Omicron variant waves have caused shockwaves throughout the American economy, as have Russia’s war against Ukraine and global inflation. Those disruptions have validated Sperling’s desire to give counties more flexibility than they had with CARES.
“If it's another thing that we learned it is to give yourself a cushion, provide some insurance when you're trying to get out of a deep hole, because things go wrong you don't foresee,” he said.
Adams County, Colo. allocated ARPA funding through a scoring rubric for grant applications, placing emphasis on minority-owned businesses and nonprofit organizations who served the county’s most vulnerable residents during the pandemic and before.
“We knew getting that money back into our communities through a grant process would help save small businesses, continue critical testing and vaccination clinics and ensure that our families could stay in their homes,” said Commissioner Eva Henry. “The grant program has already proved successful with businesses once on the brink. Now, thriving nonprofit partners are expanding their services and programming to meet the ongoing need and as helpful as these funds were, we know there are other areas of immediate need.”
When the pandemic began, Blaine County, Idaho saw itself become an early hot spot for infections. County Administrator Mandy Pomeroy and the Board of Commissioners saw the local fissures from the pandemic and tried to address them.
The county has upgraded its communications systems, its IT system and updated facilities to be more sustainable. But even those improvements were made with residents in mind. Among the grants the county awarded was to a local crisis hotline, so they could make resources available bilingually to serve the county’s Spanish-speaking residents.
San Diego County, Calif. Supervisor Nora Vargas was elected in the middle of the pandemic, taking office in early 2021. She sees the equitable approach her county has taken as the local government ideal.
“Our county’s success in protecting our communities is exactly how government is supposed to work for all of us, not just some of us,” she said. “[ARPA] was a catalyst to ensure that we were building healthier and stronger communities. We will continue to allocate these resources in an equitable fashion for our community so that they can thrive, not just survive.”
Hero 1
About Charlie Ban (Full Bio)
County News Digital Editor & Senior Writer
Charlie is the County News digital editor and senior writer.More from Charlie Ban
-
Video
Counties leading pandemic recovery through American Rescue Plan investments
Speaking from the NACo Annual Conference county leaders outline new initiatives and how they are deploying resources from the American Rescue Plan to respond to increasing community needs. -
Conference Session
Counties and the American Rescue Plan: Implementing the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund at the Local Level
Mar. 25, 2021 , 2:00 pm – 3:00 pmIn March 2021, Congress passed and the president signed a massive COVID-19 relief package, which provided new and critical funding to counties of all sizes to cover increased expenditures, replenish lost revenue and mitigate economic harm from the COVID-19 pandemic.
-
-
Reports & Toolkits
Strengthening Local Economies through the Recovery Fund: Executive Summary
NACo's report examines how counties are leveraging American Rescue Plan resources to support communities and rebuild the economy, even as the pandemic continues to affect jobs, public health, housing, and more. -
Reports & Toolkits
American Rescue Plan Resource Hub
In March of 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 authorized the $350 billion State and Local Coronavirus Fiscal Recovery Fund (Recovery Fund), which provided $65.1 billion in direct, flexible aid to every county in America. -
Blog
President Biden releases FY 2024 budget request that includes county priorities
On March 9, 2023, President Biden released his fiscal year (FY) 2024 budget request outlining the administration’s proposal for federal spending for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2024. -
Video
Counties testify on our role in evolving federal land management challenges
Carbon County, Wyo. Commissioner John Espy testifies how counties are best suited to assist federal land managers navigate evolving management challenges. -
Blog
U.S. Senate Majority Leader urges U.S. Treasury to specify capacity building for competitive federal funding opportunities as an eligible use of Recovery Funds
On March 6, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urging the Department to allow American Rescue Plan Act State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds to be used to fund capacity building investments in order to access new competitive federal funding opportunities.
-
Conference
2022 NACo Annual Conference & Exposition
July 21, 2022 – July 24, 2022The NACo Annual Conference is the largest meeting of county elected and appointed officials from across the country. Participants from counties of all sizes come together to shape NACo's federal policy agenda, share proven practices and strengthen knowledge networks to help improve residents’ lives and the efficiency of county government.ConferenceConference 07218:00 amConference<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="width:100%" summary="header-block">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td> -
Basic page
Finance, Pensions & Intergovernmental Affairs Steering Committee
All matters pertaining to the financial resources of counties, fiscal management, federal assistance, municipal borrowing, county revenues, federal budget, federal tax reform, elections and Native American issues. Policy Platform & Resolutions 2022-2023 2022 NACo Legislative Prioritiespagepagepage<p>All matters pertaining to the financial resources of counties, fiscal management, federal assistance, municipal borrowing, county revenues, federal budget, federal tax reform, elections and Native American issues.</p>
Contact
-
County News Digital Editor & Senior Writer(202) 942-4210
Related Resources
-
Blog
President Biden releases FY 2024 budget request that includes county priorities
On March 9, 2023, President Biden released his fiscal year (FY) 2024 budget request outlining the administration’s proposal for federal spending for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2024. -
Blog
U.S. Senate Majority Leader urges U.S. Treasury to specify capacity building for competitive federal funding opportunities as an eligible use of Recovery Funds
On March 6, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urging the Department to allow American Rescue Plan Act State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds to be used to fund capacity building investments in order to access new competitive federal funding opportunities. -
Blog
Treasury releases Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Fund payments to eligible consolidated city-county governments
On February 21, the U.S. Department of Treasury launched the Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Fund (LATCF) for eligible city-county governments. The LATCF provides $10.5 million distributed in two equal payments of $5.3 million for FYs 2023 and 2024 to “eligible revenue sharing consolidated governments” under the American Rescue Plan Act.
-
-
Reports & Toolkits
Strengthening Local Economies through the Recovery Fund: Executive Summary
NACo's report examines how counties are leveraging American Rescue Plan resources to support communities and rebuild the economy, even as the pandemic continues to affect jobs, public health, housing, and more. -
Reports & Toolkits
American Rescue Plan Resource Hub
In March of 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 authorized the $350 billion State and Local Coronavirus Fiscal Recovery Fund (Recovery Fund), which provided $65.1 billion in direct, flexible aid to every county in America.
More From
-
2023 #NACoLeg Tuesday General Session
Tune in for Tuesday's General Session at the 2023 NACo Legislative Conference.
Learn More