Title:APA Advocacy Briefing: The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act
ضبط شده در ۲۶ مارس ۲۰۲۰
قسمتی از متن فیلم: Hello everyone we’re gonna go ahead and get started my name is Jason Jordan I’m a PA director of policy and government affairs welcome to today’s advocacy briefing our first via zoom our first in this format I’m so delighted that you could join us today let me start out
Just with a few housekeeping things since this is a new platform for for many of us and certainly for our briefing formats we’re going to use the chat feature for questions so if you have questions throughout the course of the briefing feel free to put those in
The chat feature I’m going to ask everybody to go ahead and mute your lines we’ve got quite a number of people which is terrific on so that’ll be that’ll be important we’re also recording the webinar so if you want to get access to this briefing later on you
Can you can certainly do that let me just say that certainly these are extraordinary times and the legislation we’re going to talk about for a few minutes here today is extraordinary in its own way certainly historic in terms of its scope and size of 2 trillion
Dollars but I just want to say from the beginning how appreciative I am of the extraordinary service that all of you are providing to your communities in the midst of this extraordinary time I know that many of you are not only concerned about family and friends but also doing
A lot of wearing a lot of hats and doing a lot of special work for your communities and it’s it’s greatly appreciated I’m and part of the reason we wanted to get a briefing out before this bill was law the point in an effort to ensure that you have the information and tools
You need to understand the impact of what’s happening at the federal level that can support your your local activities so let me just sort of jump right in with an overview of kind of where we are and where a PA has been on this so I’m sure many of you have seen
The news that last night the United States Senate passed the legislation in the unanimous vote it took a long time to get there in many respects or some long night to get to that unanimous vote but but we are there there is an agreement bipartisan agreement the white house is
Signed off the house is poised to vote probably not today looks like Friday they will be doing a voice vote but we don’t expect any immediate changes or any changes at all to to the legislation in the house a PA at the beginning of this process lately
He sent two casinos a letter this letter was developed in partnership with a host of allies mostly representing state and local government but also a lot of state and local government professional organizations all of us had similar concerns that the fiscal interests and the social interests of local
Communities be well represented in any sort of emergency recovery and relief package that Congress was putting together particularly as it became clear that the scope of that package was going to be significant on the letter that we sent is available on the APA website if
You want to look at it in all its detail I am pleased that many of the items that we recommended ultimately were incorporated in some fashion and I know many of you on this call were part of the tremendous outpouring of advocacy that we had behind the letter where grassroots members chapters individual
Leaders in the organization contacted congressional offices to to really drive home the importance of some of the provisions related to planning and related to supporting state and local government you can see the three themes on the slide here that really grounded our approach here the first was housing security
Recognizing that at this time a lot of vulnerable populations and our communities would face significant housing challenges and that those housing challenges in turn have significant public health challenges where we are today so ensuring that significant resources were put into helping communities meet those housing security challenges was one pillar the second and
In some ways the most overarching is this idea of providing fiscal stability the letter reinforces the point that it is local government professionals of all stripes who are really on the front lines of addressing the emergency that we find ourselves in and anything that can be done to ensure the short medium
And long term fiscal stability of local governments is critical to an effective response whatever that response is in a local context so that was certainly a driving theme the third relates to mobility and access largely that’s transportation focused recognizing the unique challenges that particularly our transit agencies are facing in in this
Environment so those were the three kind of pillars anchors if you will of our approach to advocacy and now I want to turn to sort of what’s actually in the legislation itself and I walk through these I’ll try to give some sense of the specifics here but certainly we can get
Into more the details in questions I do apologize for so many numbers thrown on the slide I just felt it was important to give you some of the actual funding figures here since you know talking through the billion this and a billion that can get sort of confusing I’ll
Start with Community Development Block Grants well actually before I start with that let me just say that the structure this bill one piece of it is mostly focused on appropriated funds through existing federal programs and that’s what you see here on this slide so think of it this sort of a many appropriations
Bill although really it’s not so many many because in many cases this represents a year or more of typical funding for any of these programs but the Appropriations piece is one element of the overall bill and then there’s a second element that relates more to some of the new relief funds loan programs
And the like that have been set up that are different from separate from kind of the traditional programs that many of us are accustomed to working through so I’m going to start on that appropriation side here comida Velma bought grants of course a key element of what we urged Congress to
Do proven tool gets money directly to local governments there’s five billion dollars included in community I owe my block grant funding that will be allocated out within 30 days of enactment of the legislation there’s some important provisions here the first I would say is that the five billion dollars is split into different
Categories so that two billion dollars goes out through the exact same formula allocation process as the rest of FY 20 dollars would so whatever percentage you typically received as an entitlement community previously that two billion dollars is allocated exactly through that process there’s a separate billion dollars that’s allocated directly to the
States for distribution with an important caveat that the state has the opportunity to allocate those funds into entitlement communities if they choose to so a state could use their billion dollars to supplement existing entitlement community funding but it’s at their discretion so there’ll be a process there about how those that the
Billion that goes to the states gets allocated and then the the remaining amount of money is actually sort of targeted funds it would work almost like cdbg-dr in the sense that the Secretary of HUD will be able to direct those funds to states and localities based on
The severity of their impact so if there’s a place that is experiencing significantly higher rates of infection or significant housing challenges associated with that that would be funding that can be directed into into those communities that’s going to be largely at the discretion of HUD and
We’re just gonna have to see sort of what criteria that they put in place in order to make those those allocations the other piece that I would call your attention to is that a lot of the typical administrative components of CDBG are being waived temporarily our array permanently for this amount of funding
That includes the cap on public services as part of CDBG so there’s additional flexibility that you will have with those CDBG dollars to direct them above that public service cap it’s typically in place there’s also an interesting change in several accounts but particularly in CDBG where there’s essentially a suspension of any public
Hearing requirements that might have to be met underneath you know the existing program and a provision that allows communities essentially to experiment with both virtual public hearings as part of this process we’ll have to see what HUD says about that in terms of its specifics but the statute itself is
Pretty broad in terms of giving some flexibility to local communities in that process the second program I mentioned is the homeless assistance grant program there’s four billion dollars allocated to to that program with similar waivers for a lot of the administrative procedures that exist as part of that
Program including a suspension of the public engagement process there as well on the public housing side and the Housing voucher side as you can see on the slide there’s funding 1.25 billion dollars for the tenant based rental assistance program a further billion dollars for project-based rental assistance and 685 million dollars for public housing operating funds as part of that piece of the overall stimulus package so that’s that’s really the core
Of the housing programs there are smaller amounts of funding however allocated this is not an exhaustive list it’s a curated list of sorts there’s money into the section 202 program and disability housing program and a number of the other sort of traditional HUD housing accounts get funding but these
Were the main ones from from a planning perspective and in terms of overall dollar amounts going into the programs one of the other kind of big pieces of our letter to Congress in our lobbying with Congress has been around meeting the immediate and unique needs of public transportation agencies the legislation
Does include 25 billion dollars directly to support transit that funding is split through the two main formula programs for urban and rural systems so in terms of the percentage allocation that will go out it’s as per usual so it’s going to run exactly through the existing allocations and the existing formula
Programs however there’s a an open opportunity to spend those dollars on operations and maintenance specifically recognizing that there may need to be additional operating support provided right now and additional costs associated with cleaning bus facilities and so forth so 25 billion dollars to transit Amtrak a little over a billion
Dollars for Amtrak that sprits split not quite evenly between an allocation directly to Northeast Corridor operations and other interstate train service there’s a ten billion dollar allocation for emergency assistance to airports and then outside of HUD and VOT a couple of other things that I think would be of interest to local government
Professionals the economic development administration their economic adjustment program they’re going to be 1.5 billion dollars worth of grants available through EDA and then at HHS the Department of Health and Human Services the community services Block Grant Program received a billion dollar allocation there as well so these were
All programs that we highlighted in our letter as valuable contributors to the operations of local governments at this time there also I think importantly proven tools that professionals would know how to use instantly that wouldn’t require a whole lot of rewiring at the agency level before dollars would begin to flow
All these instances with one exception that I’ll get to in just a second the funding is intended to be allocated the statute specifies no later than thirty days beyond enactment so these resources should be flowing very quickly for the transit program it’s seven days I think recognizing and the sort of intense
Nature of need for getting funding into an into transit agency so that funding should be out in the course of the next week of course that’s based on the date of enactment assuming the house gets this thing passed on Friday then we’d be looking at a week from Friday because I
Think the president will be prepared to sign the legislation as soon as it hits hits his desk let me shift now from some of those appropriations driven programs some of the traditional Blackburn programs and and I should say that we and many of the local government organizations that we perfect with on
This specifically called out to Congress the valuable nature of the Block Grant approach for a lot of the funds directly to communities at the same time we recognize that the scope of what was going to be provided through that typical appropriations process was not going to meet all of the needs in
Particular instances so we also supported these additional provisions to allow state local governments to access some of the same kinds of relief funds that were established for for the business side so the one of the late additions to the legislation in fact one of the additions that caused about a 24
Hour delay in getting the bill to the floor was the creation of a coronavirus relief fund specifically targeting state local and tribal governments it’s a hundred and fifty billion dollar fund a hundred and thirty nine billion of that will go to the 50 states within set-asides for tribal governments and a further set
Aside for the District of Columbia US territories the way this will work is that there is a minimum threshold of funding that will go to each one of the states so 1.25 billion dollars is guaranteed to each of the states regardless of population it’ll then be
You know with that as a as a foundation will be allocated proportional to population further within those state allocations larger local governments will be able to have that funding directly sub allocated to them based on their proportion of the overall state population that’s but that comes at the
Request of the chief executive officer of that local jurisdiction otherwise the state will you know distribute the funding according to you know their own their own strategy if you will for sub allocating those funds once they land at the state level and the eligibility here is extremely broad the language in the
Statute really only says that this funding is to cover unbudgeted expenses that have arisen as a result of the pandemic as a result of the emergency so conceivably this could cover a very wide swath of activities even if it doesn’t appear on its face to be you know
Directly frontline related in a public health way but if it’s having an impact on housing or transportation or other services there would be an opportunity to use some of this funding the other obvious thing here is that the infusion of these funds even if they were directly covering public health response
Emergency response activities that it provides a different sort of baseline at a time when sales tax revenues are drying up and other sources of revenue and the local level are are in distress this is a program that will be administered by the Treasury Department so sort of different federal agency face
For for state local governments in many respects and in terms of who’s going to be on tributing those funds so that that is a completely separate amount of money 150 billion dollars does not include those other program allocations that I talked about so the five billion to CDBG or the
۲۵ billion to trans and this is on top of that and a completely separate account and a separate process for accessing those dollars and there’s still some uncertainty as we as we talk this afternoon about exactly what the process is going to look like what Treasury will require there is a
Certification process but it’s a back-end certification the other thing I should point out about this is is it is intended to cover expenses that began to be incurred starting March 1st so it’s not as of the date of enactment of the statute its back dated to March 1st and it rings throughout the
Course of the year so if there’s an anticipation of expenses later on or incurred later on there’s an ability to come back to Treasury to to tap the overall funding that the other piece of the sort of stabilization efforts for local governments are a couple provisions related to both the Treasury
Department and the Federal Reserve so you might have seen that the Fed took action on its own prior to this legislation even coming into force indicating that they would use some of their liquidity support mechanisms to buy to directly purchase municipal securities this legislation sort of codifies that approach and encourages
The Fed to continue to do exactly that and develop additional criteria for how that’s gonna how that’s going to work and what it’s going to look like that’s important and I know municipal securities experts so I you know I’m not gonna pretend to know all the nuances of
That market place but I can tell you from conversations that I was having with folks in that space and in the local government space we were seeing last week significant challenges in that market place that were driving up dramatically the borrowing for local government so this legislation will certainly continue the work that
The Fed has done over the last 48 hours to to support the meaning market and perhaps you can extend that further the other provision that’s actually even more far-reaching than the purchase of securities by the Fed is the idea that the Treasury and the Fed would work
Together on a program to provide direct lending line to states and localities the legislation establishes sort of directional guidance on this topic as opposed to spelling out exactly how it’s going to work but it does charge Treasury with establishing a mechanism so that states and localities would have
The same sort of access to kind of emergency liquidity support through direct lending probably through the Fed but but perhaps directly through the Treasury Department so a different sort of approach there but again I think a recognition that the legislation really needed to provide some foundational support for fiscal stability at at the
Local level I know some of you are on the private sector side of this and and while many of your contracts are with local governments who would be accessing these funds and you’d be connected in that way I thought I would at least touch briefly on the small business
Aspect of this for those of you who may be running private planning firms or firms that are smaller in scope and keep in mind here you know we say small business and the image that comes to mind is a Main Street shop that might employ 20 people but in the federal lexicon
That’s a organization of less than 500 people so and for many of us that wouldn’t be exactly a small business if you had 400 employees but for the purposes of this legislation that’s the threshold that we’re talking about there are a lot of provisions and I’m not
Going to go into all those details but let me just hit some of the highlights the biggest one probably is a sort of opening up of the main SBA loan program so-called 7a loans specifically to help businesses who agree not to lay off or fire employees so there’s a new loan facility that’s
Available through the 7a program that would allow businesses to take out up to 250% of payroll costs or rent as long as they agree to keep workers and maintain payroll there’s some some restrictions on that in terms of it can’t be used for compensation for people making above a
Hundred thousand dollars a year but there is a component of this that allows for eight weeks of payroll to be actually forgiven as part of the loan process and there’s a separate line of support for small businesses there’s actually a 36-hour Express loan process so for businesses that might be in
Particularly severe constraints you know based on what’s been happening over the last couple of weeks there is this opportunity to go directly to SBA with this 36 hour Express loan process someone that may be important for your planning firm but some of it may be important for firms that you’re trying
To keep in business in your community there’s also a payroll tax deferral for these businesses for two years so again an effort to sort of keep keep businesses from shuttering and to provide some additional support I’m sure you’ve seen some of the broader media coverage around the tax rebates
And some of the other the other provisions that are available but I just want to touch on some of those small business items before I sort of turn it to questions that may have come in let me just say word about where we’re going from here I mentioned the house that was playing
For Friday and that should be the last stage of this process before it goes to the president for signature and then Congress is leaving town for congressional recess the Senate has announced they’re going to be out pretty much through the end of April so basically a month-long recess period for
All the obvious reasons however during that period we do expect work to begin on further stimulus measures I think a lot of people recognize that even as breathtaking as a two trillion dollar package is that it may not be sufficient to meet all the needs and in fact there
Was a debate about whether this was really stimulus or whether it was relief and recovery focused sort of setting up the justification for well we’ve done what we can on relief and recovery now it’s time to do something that has a little bit longer time horizon around it
In terms of stimulative impact so that could very well include a significant piece of infrastructure investment there’s bipartisan conversation happening around that right now we’re certainly going to be part of those conversations and we’ll keep our advocates fully informed about what begins to unfold one of the best ways
That you can stay informed and involved in a process is to be part of the planners advocacy network it’s free to APA members if you’re on the call and you haven’t already signed up for for pen that’s going to be your best way to stay in touch on the planning related
Details of this legislation as it moves into enactment and future stimulative legislative initiatives again perhaps focused on infrastructure which could have a significant impact on planning I will stop there we got about five minutes left in the thirty that we had allocated for this and we’ll see what
Sorts of questions you might have I’ve enlisted my colleague Emily posi to help navigate the questions that might have come in while I’ve been talking so emily is there anything that came through that we can help folks with yes Jason there are a number of questions
That have come through the first one was around some of the key provisions related to transit activities what are the types of transit activities that can be funded under that 25 billion earmarked for those yeah absolutely so one thing to keep in mind here is that it’s a formula based program so it’s
Going to be allocated out based on the same urban area and rural area formulas that come so in terms of the amount of money that’s set in formula in terms of the eligibilities for how that funding would be used in any given agency or locality it’s very broad the legislation specifically opens up
All aspects of operation and maintenance so these are not intended to be primarily or even secondarily really you know capital focused grants although the funding is available in the same eligibility supply but what they’ve done specific is specifically to say that there’s a recognition that due to combating the virus there are unique
Operational and maintenance needs that agencies may may have it does not specify a list I mean it gives some illustrative examples of things like the purchasing of additional cleaning resources to sanitize facilities it can be used on personnel and certainly it can be used to you know ensure that
Baseline level of operations are in place whatever that implies human capital perhaps or other sorts of things to keep basic operations moving forward and this may not be frankly the last infusion of support for for transit and other transportation agencies to I suspect we may see some more on the
Aviation side of this as well great thank you we have another question here and that says would substantial amendments be required if changing approved allocations and I think their thinking here about public facility funds to public services specifically can you restate that for me one more time is there a specific program that
That’s in reference to oh and it seems so would substantial amendments be required if changing improved allocations it looks like the example that they’re citing is public facility funds to public services well right now that’s a good question and I’m not that I have a complete answer based on
You know what what the bill itself says I can tell you that they have given the relevant agencies the ability to waive a lot of the existing requirements for a formal amendment process in many of these accounts so I think in all likelihood what we’re going to be
Looking at is that there will be less sort of front-end regulatory work to establish what that process looks like and more back in review of what’s being funded so in some cases there’s a certification process not a formal amendment process that is required where you would simply inform the agency and
And justified in terms of whatever the scope is inside that program but the intention is to at least temporarily suspend a lot of the formal procedures that would typically bind you in a lot of these program areas we have another question here about where you might find more information on the community
Services Block Grant good question the I mean the agency that runs the program is the Department of Health and Human Services and so they have you know all of the information about that particular program I’d be happy to we’ve gotten some summary materials on this provision
You know in the stand this stimulus bill related to that block grant program that we can make available you know as a summary but it’s an HHS program and so they would be the the resource for you know all of the details on that and I
Should say that I would expect that all of these agencies would be having guidance out very quickly given the fact that they’ve only got a 30-day window to actually just burst two dollars Jason we have a someone who’s interested in a little bit more detail around CDBG and
Home funds specifically any guidance or and how need will be determined for the new allocations of those programs so it’s a great question and we only know a little bit of quite frankly so the first two billion dollars will be dispersed exactly like the allocations for entitlement communities have been
Dispersed previously so whatever your allocation was for the last fiscal year funding that your Seaford for CDBG that would be the same guidance for the distribution of this two billion of the first two billion dollars it would function essentially like many annual appropriation into CBG with the exact
Same process that’s in place now the billion dollars to the state’s functions a little bit differently than typical in that states would be allowed as I mentioned before to take some of that billion dollars and distribute it into entitlement communities in their state they don’t have to but that would be an
Option that they would have they have broad discretion for how that billion dollars would be would be allocated within the state the two billion dollars from HUD is the one that has I think for me the largest question so basically what the statute suggests is that the Secretary will be authorized to allocate
That funding based on some determination of exceptional need it references specifically communities that may be disproportionately hard-hit by health and housing related impacts so you could imagine that if a community is experiencing really really high infection rates that they may there may be a system put in place where there’s
An additional allocation of CDBG dollars based on based on that criteria but we don’t know what the criteria is going to be I would expect that the first order of business at HUD would be the distribution of the three billion dollars that go to states and localities
Directly through a process they’ve got a pretty good handle on and that sack by that third tranche that 2 billion by the secretary will come out quickly but we’ll have to see exactly what metrics they choose to use to allocated and I know we’re a couple minutes over
So I want to give you one last question to go ahead and answer its there’s a point here that a couple of folks are really interested in asked can you elaborate on your point earlier that communities with higher impact may get more funding well I think that relates
Back to what I was just referring to in the CDBG program where and it’s not unique here that in several of these accounts there’s some even in the block grants there’s some allocation that’s being held back so that you know whatever determination is made I mean
They’ll come up with some sort of metric to determine who’s harder hit there would be additional resources that would flow into into those communities so that’s what the two billion dollars that HUD will control at CDBG I think that will operate a little bit like cdbg-dr
Does now in terms of how it functions the difference is that that’s a pretty cut-and-dried either you got a you know emergency declaration or you did in this case everybody’s got an emergency declaration so it’s a it’s a different universe that they’re operating in but I think it’ll work the same the other
Piece of that don’t forget about that Relief Fund that 150 billion dollars that is is very open-ended in terms of what would qualify for for funds that I think you know for communities that are experiencing sort of disproportional impacts that would be another direct line that would supplement the the Block
Grants and the other the other funding programs I will say you know one of the downsides of doing this the afternoon after something passes in the evening is that we’re still sorting through a lot of the legislative nuance here ourselves and I’ll make a last plug here for for
Folks who want more of these details as we dig in and understand what the agencies are doing we’re going be you know ensuring that our advocates are well aware of new guidance that comes out or the regulatory process underneath these particularly in some of the accounts that we know folks are
Either completely unfamiliar with because they didn’t exist 24 hours ago or have changed significantly as opposed to what’s what’s in the legislation so I just want to say as we as we round out our time here that I appreciate so many of you joining us for this I appreciate
The impact that you made in ensuring that these tools and resources were included your advocacy was important I heard from a number of congressional staffers who specifically acknowledged having heard from local jurisdictions about some of these programs so your advocacy made a difference just like you make a difference for the folks that
You’re serving every day we appreciate everything that you’re doing and you can look forward to more of these sorts of opportunities one of the things that we’re trying to do to meet your needs as as things changing evolve is provide more kind of quick opportunities to provide the content out to members as
Well thank everybody I want to say a special word of appreciation to the APA team the marketing team the policy community team everybody worked really hard to pull this together well together all the advocacy work that happened over the last few days a real team effort and
And I appreciate it and look forward to continuing this conversation all of you out there thanks so much for joining us
ID: tM0qhTSRTNs
Time: 1585692496
Date: 2020-04-01 02:38:16
Duration: 00:36:52
