Reginald Moore has a point. He can’t understand why his four colleagues on the Leflore County Board of Supervisors are in no hurry to come up with a plan for spending the $5.4 million in coronavirus relief money the county has received or will be receiving.
The other four — Sam Abraham, Anjuan Brown, Eric Mitchell and Robert Collins — say that they are reluctant to do anything until they see more guidance from the federal government on how local governments can use the money. They don’t want to trip up and spend it in unauthorized ways and wind up having to pay it back.
We understand being cautious, but the federal government has already provided guidance. The U.S. Treasury Department’s website has loads of information, including a 42-page document of commonly asked questions and answers. In general, it says the American Rescue Plan funds can be used to support efforts to keep COVID-19 under control; to replace government revenue lost as a result of the pandemic; to help households and businesses still struggling to recover from the economic disruptions the virus caused; to address public health and economic inequities that the pandemic revealed; and to upgrade water, sewer and broadband infrastructure.
It seems relatively straightforward. Local government can use the money on masks, temperature checks and other measures designed to reduce the spread of the virus; it can throw the money on top of what the federal government has already doled out to help individuals and businesses; or it can make some long-lasting improvements to water or internet services.
It only gets complicated when local officials try to get too clever with the money, as Moore himself seems inclined to be. He has proposed, but he can’t get the votes so far to make it happen, spending $250,000 on a pandemic and disaster relief center that would do some work related to the virus but also some unrelated, such as connecting with at-risk youth to steer them away from violence.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann had a great suggestion when he met with local officials several months ago and told them to start planning now on how to use this windfall to make long-term improvements rather than squandering it on short-term objectives. The best long-term expenditure covered under the guidelines is improving water and sewer pipes, lines and treatment facilities.
Old pipes that are vulnerable to breaking or that can leach lead into the water and put children’s health at risk are not cheap to replace. The American Rescue Plan grants could conceivably put a big dent in these problems, particularly if local and state shares of the relief funding can be combined for this work, as Hosemann has indicated is a possibility.
The Leflore County supervisors also should rethink their decision to divide up the relief funds equally between the five districts. Although that might be politically palatable, it’s not the way to attack a capital project. They should identify where the water and sewer infrastructure is in the worst shape, and prioritize the work down from there.
If that means some districts get a bigger share than others of the money, so be it. All county taxpayers will benefit by letting the federal government pick up the tab on what they might otherwise have to pay to fix eventually.
If the supervisors can agree on this long-term approach, the short-term objective should be to begin the planning now.
