American Rescue Plan Act final guidance gives local governments flexibility - Manistee News Advocate

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ONEKAMA TWP. — Onekama Township treasurer Ed Bradford said it was good news when the U.S. Department of Treasury issued the final Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds rule earlier this month.

Bradford said the final rule — which goes into effect April 1 — affords local governments more more options when it comes to spending American Rescue Plan Act dollars than the interim final rule indicated.

"The interim guidance made it relatively challenging to spend that money because of the restrictions, but in the final guidance, they basically gave all communities a flat $10 million allowance — kind of like a standard deduction on your 1040 tax return," Bradford said. "If your total amount of money that you're getting is under $10 million, you can basically spend that on any valid government servicee, unless it's been explicitly prohibited by the act."

Michigan was awarded nearly $11 billion in federal stimulus money through the rescue plan that President Joe Biden signed into law in March. The funds included roughly $1.8 billion for metropolitan areas, while another $1.93 billion was made available to Michigan counties.

An additional $644 million was provided to communities under 50,000 individuals, which the U.S. Treasury Department called non-entitlement units of local government.

Manistee County was set to receive $4.7 million, with $94,516 allocated to Onekama Township, according to documents from the Michigan Department of Treasury.

Bradford said during the Onekama Township's January board meeting the restrictions found in the final rule are not applicable to Onekama.

"For the township, we really don't have anything that qualifies," he said. "We don't have unfunded pension liabilities and we're not lowering our taxes, so any money that we get from the American Rescue Plan Act we can spend on any valid government service."

The final rule gives local governments freedom to spend the federal funds to address a wide range of needs.

"You can build a park, you can repave a parking lot, you can put it towards roads, you can buy police or fire cars — whatever that might be," Bradford said. "That gives all communities a tremendous amount of flexibility."

Bradford said with very few municipalities receiving $10 million, the flexibility will be enjoyed by the majority of local governments.

"I think that's a big sigh of relief. I think they said there's 1,700 townships, and there were only a handful of them that were over $10 million," he said. "For townships in particular, they weren't getting a lot of money. Even for the City of Manistee and some of the smaller communities, this is a big, big win in terms of how that money can be spent."

Bradford said Onekama Township may seek input from its residents to determine how best to utilize the funds.

"What it's actually going to be used for is a topic for another day, but I just wanted to update the board on that," he said. "... We may want to set up a process at one of these meetings where we take public input as to what that should be used for, but we basically have tremendous flexibility."