Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Jefferson County officials have decided to seek some of the federal funding that is available to counties that have incurred expenses or lost revenues as a result of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
After hearing a brief report about the availability of COVID-19 funding from County Attorney Scott Shirley on Thursday evening, June 18, the Jefferson County Commission tasked Clerk of Court Kirk Reams to be the county's representative for any funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, more commonly known as the CARES Act.
The clerk's office is to serve as the central depository for any funds that the county may receive and also keep track of the accounting for the funds disbursements.
The commission also, as part of its decision, established a workgroup that will put together a list of approved local expenditures related to COVID-19 for submission to the appropriate agency.
County Coordinator Parrish Barwick explained that the federal funding is part of the $2 trillion stimulus package that distributed $1,200 to individual citizens as compensation for lost wages as a result of the coronavirus
pandemic.
As part of the stimulus package, a considerable amount of the money was to be directed to local communities that incurred expenses in combating COVID-19 or that lost taxes and other revenues as a result of the high unemployment rate and shuttered businesses.
As it happened, Florida's 12 large counties with populations of more than 500,000 received $2.47 billion in COVID-19 funding directly from the U.S. Department of Treasury. Whereas the state's other 55 counties and small cities have yet to receive any of the $1.275 million that still remains and that the Governor's Office has been holding.
After pressure from the Florida Association of Counties (FAC) and the Florida League of Cities (FLC), however, the Governor's Office recently indicated a willingness to distribute the $1.275 million, provided that cities and counties submitted proof of justifiable expenditures related to COVID-19.
Barwick estimates that Jefferson County is eligible for about 25 percent of the total allocation, which comes to about $664,685 at this time, he says. According to the FAC's calculations, however, Jefferson County could receive as much as $888,490, and Monticello up to $147,260, based on the twos' respective populations.
FAC, in one of its recent communiques, noted that the dynamics at the state level were changing and appeared favorable for the eminent dispersal of the remaining funding. It advised small counties to create a plan for how they planned to spend the funding.
“Similar to what they did with the vacation rental reopening,” the FAC communique stated of the plan to be formulated. Meaning that the plan should be kept simple and based on the U.S. Treasury guidelines.
It's the argument of the FAC and FLC that the coffers of counties and cities have been drastically impacted by the COVID-19 epidemic and that they deserve the additional resources to ensure for their citizens' care.
State officials, for their part, have ascribed their reluctance for distributing the funding to mixed signals from the federal government initially about how the money could be spent. The confusion, they said, derived from the various guideline that the Treasury put out right after the passage of the CARES Act to help state and local officials decide how to use the funding.
Since, however, Treasury has reportedly clarified the guidelines to include not only necessary expenditures incurred because of the public health emergency, but also “second-order effects” of the pandemic, such as “providing economic support to those suffering from employment or business interruptions due to COVID-19-related business closures.”