Supervisors still seeking ways to set COVID spending priorities

The Washington County Board of Supervisors is working to figure out the best way to decide how to spend more than $4 million in federal COVID relief funds.

One of the issues the county faces is that the federal government has yet to finalize the rules on how the money from the American Rescue Act of 2021 can be spent.

“We haven’t had the final ruling yet as to how this money can be spent,” board Chair Richard Young said during Tuesday morning’s board meeting. “The government said it would be August when they put the final rules out.”

The U.S. Department of Treasury’s compliance and reporting guidelines published on June 17 provide the following guidance regarding allocating the funds:

• Public Health: As relevant, describe how funds are being used to respond to COVID-19 and the broader health impacts of COVID-19 and the COVID-19 public health emergency.

• Negative Economic Impacts: As relevant, describe how funds are being used to respond to negative economic impacts of the COVID-19 public health emergency, including to households and small businesses.

• Services to Disproportionately Impacted Communities: As relevant, describe how funds are being used to provide services to communities disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 public health emergency.

• Premium Pay: As relevant, describe the approach, goals, and sectors or occupations served in any premium pay program. Describe how your approach prioritizes low-income workers.

• Water, sewer and broadband infrastructure: Describe the approach, goals, and types of projects being pursued, if pursuing.

• Revenue Replacement: Describe the loss in revenue due to the COVID-19 public health emergency and how funds have been used to provide government services.

Supervisors have discussed the idea of forming a committee with several subcommittees to present spending options.

“If we’re going to do this with various subcommittees and groups, we should have a group assigned to each of those categories,” Supervisor Jack Seward Jr. said. “They can figure out different ways of spending it, which would then go up to the next level.”

Seward said he likes the idea of having several different people involved in the decision-making process.

“I would be in favor of another group that looks at all these suggestions, distills them down and gives us what they believe their priorities might be,” he said. “Then, we make the final decision.”

Seward suggested that a committee should include Auditor Dan Widmer, Treasurer Jeff Garrett and Washington Economic Development Group Executive Director Mary Audia “because of her community contacts.”

“My thought of involving other elected officials is that they are elected by the people of the county too,” Seward said. “I think they ought to have some input.”

Garret said he did not think that it would be appropriate for anyone other than the Board of Supervisors to make decisions on funding requests.

“Anyone making these kinds of requests deserves to be heard by the Board of Supervisors, not an interim committee that’s in between them,” Garrett said.

He compared it to the annual budget process where various departments and groups make their budget requests to the Board of Supervisors.

“That would be a lot of work sessions to have people come to us and say, ‘I want this,’” Young said. “I think we need the subcommittees so they can hash all that out.”

Garrett suggested that the spending proposals be limited to county projects in order to ensure everyone in the county benefits.

“You’ll need to make sure that it’s focused on the intention of the funding, which might be a bit separate from what the county’s priorities were in the past,” Audia said.

Supervisor Marcus Fedler said that some of the categories, like lost county revenue and premium pay for essential workers, should be easy to calculate.

“The rest should be used in the community to help people,” Fedler said.

He proposed that the supervisors hold a work session to set funding priorities.

“I propose a work session where the supervisors sit down and establish a rubric with the information that we do know and establish how we wish to proceed and what we think is valuable and not valuable,” he said.

The board took no action on the issue, tabling additional discussion until next week’s meeting.