SLFRF Educational Session for Obligating Funds (NACo / RFA / Treasury)

regarding the state and local fiscal recovery funds program my name is Veronica sto I go by verto and I am the director of the state and local fiscal recovery funds program so on this slide you will see the agenda for today's presentation we start with a little bit of background on the slf ref program and recently released reporting data we focus after that on explaining how local leaders play a critical role in meeting the oblig deadline I'm sure many of you are thinking of that date um we then uh finish with a very high level overview of recent guidance related to updates on obligation and as a reminder we have to have all slf RF funds obligated by December 31st 2024 it's not going to be the last time you hear that date but I am sure as good stewards of these funds you have been thinking about thate date often so uh you probably have been thinking about December 31st 2024 because uh if you haven't heard it from us before you're going to hear it from me and others recipients are required to return to treasury any funds that are not obligated by that deadline and so with that high level setting I will turn it over to my colleague merera Mera thank you so much Vero hello everybody my name is Mea Patel and I'm the director of strategic Partnerships of Treasury and lead the state and local fiscal recovery funds Outreach team so as you can see um I don't need to tell you that slrf authorized by the American Rescue plan is a historic piece of legislation the 350 billion provided directly to communities to respond to covid-19 and build strong resilient and Equitable recovery means that States territories counties local governments and tribes could each address their own need needs 45.6 billion was allocated directly to metropolitan cities and nearly 220 billion to additional smaller local governments and those funds went directly to your communities for projects that you selected as the best response locally for based on eligible uses next slide before we move on to a discussion on the obligation deadline I wanted to provide an overview of our April 2024 reporting data which was just published on our website on Friday we'll dig into this material a bit more later in this presentation but the numbers you see on the screen taken directly from our public data dashboard provide a summary of what we saw in the latest reporting cycle most notably I wanted to call out recipients investment in Workforce and housing projects as you can see recipients have budgeted 19.6 billion sfrf dollars to over 3,300 housing projects which is a 3% increase from last quarter's reporting and on Workforce recipients have budgeted 13.1 billion towards 400 44400 Workforce projects that have benefited nearly 1.5 million workers across the country this quarter's impressive data emphasizes the critical investment areas that are being invested in throughout our communities I encourage you to take a look at this data yourself on our website under the public data web page to share more I'll turn it over to my colleague James Bond thank you mea I'd like to turn uh to some more indepth Topline data for uh from our recently really released uh public data from the 2024 to q1 reporting cycle that does demonstrate how recipients have been putting the power of their slf ref program dollars to such great effect to create positive change in their communities from supporting uh economic recovery job creation and Workforce expansion to increasing access to healthy safe and affordable housing the impact uh that has been so clearly made on their communities and the nation is nothing short of uh remarkable in this latest quarterly data that's submitted to the treasury Department through March 31st 2024 recipients continue to report great progress in executing on their planned uses of slf award funds um and states and the largest cities and Counties have reported budgeting 94% of their total slf funds to specific projects uh with the total number of reported projects growing 20% since the previous reporting period and that just demonstrates continued steady progress in recipients planning for the use of these funds more specifically slf RF recipients reported 3117 billion in Lost Revenue resulting from the pandemic and a significant proportion of uh this revenue shortfall is being made up for with slf ref funds more than 20,000 participating governments reported that they are budgeting nearly 130 billion in slf ref funds to help replace this lost revenue and they're funding more than 78,000 projects to provide fiscal stability in their jurisdictions the data illustrate that the American Rescue plan prevented severe cuts to public services and helped State territorial tribal and local governments resume normal operations in addition to responding to the immediate aftermath of the pandemic governments are investing slf F funds to address uh long-standing structural challenges in the economy that uh the pandemic surfaced and exacerbated especially the need to increase the availability of affordable housing and invest in their workforces I'm gonna uh now turn to discussing what constitutes an obligation if we could go to the uh yeah this slide um there's a QR code in the lower right hand of this slide which links to our online uh slf rff FAQs and will allow you to follow along as we've ref ref them during this presentation for all seven eligible uses including the provision of government services for funds claimed under Revenue loss recipients must obligate slf ref funds by December 31st 2024 recipients must expend slf funds for all eligible uses except service Transportation projects and Title One projects by December 31st 2026 um now for those uh uh for those recipients that are expending slf funds for obligated for surface Transportation projects and Title One projects they need to do so by September 30th 2026 so what is an obligation an obligation continues to mean an order placed for property and services an entry into contracts sub Awards and similar transactions that require payment this definition has not changed since the program launch launched in 2021 some of these items have always constituted an obligation such as a sub contract or sub award uh some of these items have recently been clarified as counting as an obligation in the obligation IFR and the new frequently asked questions there are several Pathways via which an obligation can be incurred they are a an order placed for property or Services a contract a sub awward similar transactions that requirement uh payment which may include inter agency agreements if they meet the conditions in FAQ 17.6 payroll expenses for uh recipient employees if they meet the conditions in FAQ 17.7 and cost related to certain legal and administrative requirements of the slf ra award funds treasury has released the new section 7 of the FAQs to provide additional clarifications on the definition of obligation to help recipients ensure effective and efficient implementation of recipient funds um and that includes how to cover payroll cost in 2025 or in fy2 and FY 26 um how inter agency agreements between departments count as an obligation and flexibility to cover contract cost in increases now I want to talk about what uh does not constitute an obligation so an obligation is not an adopted budget or budget amendment an appropriation of slf funds an executive order a resolution a written or oral intention to enter into a contract a grant of legal authority to enter into a contract uh claiming funds under the revenue loss category and this includes utilizing the $10 million uh standard allowance so I want to note that any recipient using the revenue loss eligible use category must still meet the obligation deadline and enter expenditure information as a project in their project and expenditure report and then the uh moving uh slf forf funds to a general fund as Revenue loss but not further establishing an obligation with those funds by December 31st 2024 also does not constitute an obligation so I want to run through a couple obligation to-dos well in advance of the uh December 2024 deadline ensure your projects will be obligated by uh this deadline some ideas for this assurance include uh getting your staff to give you a written plan for how they are ensuring your projects are satisfying the definition of obligation um asking for a formal briefing briefing at a committee or to the whole Council um or uh government body uh or uh having a staff develop a calendar of key dates that might still require a government Body Action to share with you and uh your other members um of your government body another set of obligation to does um include develop contingency or backup plans for projects that may not be obligated by December um funds not obligated by December 31st 2024 will need to be returned to treasury uh prepare for the council actions to return the funds to treasury if that's the case um I now want to hand it over to my colleague Joel to uh share some more information on some new um hot off the press's resources Joel Thanks James before I get into um the discussion on this slide I want to encourage you to scan the QR code on the bottom right corner of the screen where you'll find a one-page document with more information about the inter agency agreements that we'll be discussing so in FAQ 17.6 treasury clarified that inter agency agreements that meet certain conditions qualify as transactions requiring payment and are thus sufficient to meet the obligation requirement of slf frf if you finalize an inter agency agreement by the obligation deadline at the end of 2024 you can treat that inter agency agreement as the obligation of funds that a government agency will then expend in 2025 and 2026 and as the slide notes memoranda agreement and memoranda of understanding can count as inter agency agreements any agreement um must meet the requirements that are summarized on this slide and that are further detailed in FAQ 17.6 I encourage you to take a look at that FAQ and the one pager that are um that's available at the scanned QR code next slide please so in addition to responding to the immediate aftermath of the pandemic governments are investing slrf funds to address long-standing economic challenges including as my colleagues alluded to earlier and especially the need to increase the availability of affordable housing and invest in their workforces investing in and expanding access to affordable housing is a key goal of the Treasury Department and of the Biden Harris Administration governments across the country are leveraging slrf award funds to construct new housing and to rehabilitate or repair existing housing in the summer of 2022 treasury expanded the flexibility for recipients to use their slrf funds to invest in making affordable housing since then spending on affordable housing continues to accelerate treasury in partnership with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the US Department of Agriculture recently updated our affordable housing howto guide this June and we've made this guide available online if you scan the the QR code on the screen you'll see the affordable housing howto guide this guide spells out our new guidance that substantially expands the the universe of affordable housing projects presumptively eligible to be funded through slrf by providing a summary of updated guidance related to slf rf's recipients ability to use those funds to invest in affordable housing the guidance clarifies and expands on the framework that are that is outlined in the slrf final rule updates in March 2024 with FAQ 2.14 and 4.9 this affordable housing how-to guide provides examples showing how recipients can combine and layer slrf with other sources of funding to maximize resources and meet housing needs in your communities I'd like to take a moment to pause here to encourage you if you've not already done so to use your smart device to scan that QR code you see displayed on the screen and as I said that will link to the affordable housing how-to guide that we've been discussing I hope that's use I'll now turn it back over to my colleague mea thank you so much Joel and and thank you all for joining us here today I want to give a special note of gratitude to no and to World olds for America for their partnership on this important presentation these opportunities are possible because the economy is in a stronger place today as a result of the American Rescue plan and looking forward the treasury Department remains focused on ensuring that recipients can Leverage their slrf award funds to meet the unique needs of their communities in ways that will power inclusive and Equitable economic growth for decades to come as public servants in the United States we recognize that there are real lives behind the data displayed on these screens our work extends Beyond tracking Trends it has a direct impact on the nation's well-being the economy and our quality of life it touches our families our neighor neighbors our communities and shapes our future so I encourage you to please please continue to share your stories of how your communities those real people perspectives have benefited from these funds and we look forward to being in touch with that I will turn it over to my colleague aarin at no thank you great thank you so much merera and all of our partners at the treasury Department for for hosting hosting this webinar we truly appreciate the partnership over the years since ARA was signed into law back in uh March of 2022 uh we are now uh excited to hear from our next speaker um who is a close friend and colleague uh of no and that is County Executive David Crowley uh with Milwaukee County Wisconsin uh Milwaukee County under County Executive Crowley's leadership has done an incredible job uh since funding was authorized under arpa to the county in terms of Investments supporting communities and residents on the ground so with that County Executive thank you so much for joining us today and I will turn it over to you thank you again awesome thank you so much for that lovely introduction Aon and good afternoon to everyone who is here first and foremost I do want to say thank you to no thank you to the US Department of Treasury and results for America for this opportunity to really discuss how County invested R arpa funds and so I sincerely appreciate uh the partnership of these organizations and their continued effort uh to put for opportunities that enable communities uh to share best practices now for those who may not know in 2019 hwae County we became one of the first jurisdictions in the nation to declare racism as a Public Health crisis and when I entered office our Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors and myself we immediately passed P an ordinance to advance racial equity and eliminate Health disparities and so when Milwaukee County received our $183 million in arpa funds we use these one-time Federal recovery dollars to advance our vision of racial equity and Health Equity and so instead of pouring those resources to fund ongoing services and creating even larger budget gaps down the road we found smart ways to really support the community as we transition from a state of emergency to a state of recovery and so one of the first things that we did is we created the arpa task force which facilitated a process to help us evaluate projects and recommend funding for items that were aligned with our vision and so the arpa task force this is a crosssection of Milwaukee County leaders that provides funding recommendations uh to our Milwaukee County Board now overall we funded 73 projects 73 projects with the most of these funds going towards projects that improve the County's fiscal health and our response to the economic harms as it relates to our workers the families the small businesses impacted Industries as well as the public sector and so we invested in programs that were really designed to not only stabilize but to help improve the prepandemic conditions for most of our impacted communities so we use our dollars to build the capacity of many Community organizations that serve people with significant barriers uh to services and so under my direction our Department of Health and Human Services our housing division we were funded the largest number of affordable housing projects in our County's entire history and so my Administration we've provided $19 million in funding particularly for affordable housing all across Milwaukee County and so thanks to the arpa funding 2023 we broke ground we broke ground on our future Marshall peacock Health and Human Service Center and so for the first time in Milwaukee County's history our Department of Health and Human Services will have a building designed specifically specifically to delivering Health and Human Services and this helps us by eliminating physical barriers to receive care this is helping to improve access to the resources and services that many families and individuals rely on but these funs also brought an unprecedented injection of capital into our local economy and so the Investments these Investments they provide an opportunity particularly for disadvantaged businesses both minority and women own to work closely with us at Milwaukee County and not only grow their business but also the communities as we support but this Administration my Administration we've also created the framework for the Milwaukee County climate action plan to achieve Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050 while also making sure that we're advancing Equity Justice and resilience all throughout our community and so this framework it has really helped to inform particularly our lighting jobs program which was also funded through the American Rescue plan act and so through this program the county we've created a career Pathways particularly for Young People by training them to install energy efficient enhancements in Milwaukee County buildings and so I inherited a stral deficit when I first took office which is only exacerbated as many of you would understand by the covid-19 pandemic and so addressing this particular deficit by using arpa funds to support Innovative strategies was a clear priority for this Administration and so we created the fiscal Health Challenge now this was a challenge that really allowed Milwaukee County our departments to propose strategies that decrease County spending increase revenue or create an operation or create some operational efficiency and so this challenge was very competitive and ultimately it helped us fund a total of about 15 different projects and so while the fiscal Health Challenge encouraged you know ideas created by our milwauke County departments I can assure you that these projects that were that these projects were developed with and by the community were also approved and so we made sure that Community participation particularly was a part of this process every step of the way it's not only important to us as a county but is definitely important to our community members and so to do this we recruited Community Partners we recruited residents to participate on the community support uh service area subgroups and so overall we had about three different subgroups with Community participation and they recommended a total of 22 projects and our residents they were really en encouraged to really share their priorities of how we should be spending our arpa funds and we received a total of 137 ideas from community members but I'm proud to say and I'm proud to share that 85% of the community support programs and projects that were given to us aligned with the top five Community priorities of Milwaukee County and so we've always supported participating uh participatory budgeting particularly through our ARA funds as well uh but this also allowed community members to make direct decisions about how to allocate a portion of our arpa budgets and as a result we were funding about $800,000 for early childhood and family support participatory budgeting but in addition to that we funded $600,000 for zero youth corrections and this decision it came from six Community listening sessions attended by 189 community members 37 of whom have had a personal history or have touched the criminal justice system and some some type of shape form or capacity and so I'm extremely proud to support participatory budgeting through my annual budgeting process but we also rely on the support of our off office of equity to do the same and so during my time at Milwaukee County we also created the off office of equity and this has helped to advance Equity based policies of throughout Milwaukee County and so the office of equity they've received about $2 million over $2 million to develop a community engagement strategy and this is really uh this really centers around our our community health but also the resilience and to help build community and uh uh leadership organizational leadership as well as advocating to increase the capacity of Milwaukee County residents and so under my leadership but also under my Administration this office of equity have compiled an online racial Equity a toolkit that really reflects all countywide uh Equity efforts but it's also LED to a case study on community resilience during the covid-19 pandemic and so next thing that we did is we've made sure that every decision that we make within Milwaukee county is transparent and so we've created an arpa website particularly for people who is interested in learning how we funded uh our community uh projects but what we funded and so they can always visit that website and so this particular website it hosts two different types of dashbo force that provides more information on the 22 projects that were funded through our community support category and another focus on the 45 projects that was funded through the revenue loss recovery and as you can tell I'm very proud I'm very proud of what we've accomplished through our arpa funding and we want to make sure that all of our arpa projects uh they are complete they have complete performance evaluations so we want to know did we meet uh what we intended did we meet the intended uh outcomes did we advance our strategic objectives through the use of these arpa funds particularly towards addressing the two main things that we care about which is the disparities but also making sure we putting our money where our mouth is by advancing equity and so for that reason we funded an evaluation project to really help us understand to the extent of which these projects achieve their goals as well as how those achievements lad up to the County strategic objectives and so when we evaluated our ARA projects we'll be able to understand and communicate the return on investment but also the progress towards our goals and intended outcomes as well as the impact of ARA Investments on our residents on our communities and on the County's fiscal Health now I didn't do this work alone you know we like to work together and so I'm extremely proud particularly of our American Rescue plan Act task force and our Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors for their work to really approve these funds we were able to get these dollars out of the door very quickly and so my staff Works to make sure that these funds are not only spent but the programs are delivered with an eye towards Innovation and so with that I do want to say thank you again for your time thank you to n for their contined and unrelenting support of counties across this entire nation youve definitely been a huge resource and and effective advocate for Muke County and I also want to say thank you to the treasury for this opportunity to share best practices and enable local governments to better serve our communities and last but certainly not least a thank you to results for America which shares Milwaukee County's belief of utilizing effective uh data-driven best practices to really Implement resources and put these dollars right back into our community and so if folks have questions please do not hesitate to reach out to not only me my team or anyone connected to Milwaukee County for more additional information and with that I'll pass back over to you eron thank you so much County Executive that was an absolutely incredible overview of the great work that Milwaukee county is doing everything from the community engagement piece all of the Investments you made and then of course emphasizing all of the D data driven practices that we know that are extremely important to really get a better sense of how impactful all of the programs you've implemented to to support your communities and residents so thank you again so much County Executive for for joining us thank you so we will now go ahead and and turn to the ni portion of this presentation so uh good afternoon everyone thank you so much for for joining uh treasury Na and results for America uh on this first kind of kickoff series of uh various educational sessions that we'll have moving forward my name is Aaron Hurley I serve as the Director of government Affairs here at the National Association of counties um and uh have been working on the implementation of of the ARA state and local fiscal Recovery Fund since 2021 and have just had a great relationship with our partners at treasury uh throughout the years so I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and kind of just have a couple couple tiered approach in terms of what I'm going to be talking about here today first I want to demonstrate the work that we've done with treasure since the American Rescue plan Act was signed into law I want to emphasize a couple of pieces that our friends at treasury uh just reviewed specifically around obligation and how you can make the most of Investments leading up to the 2024 obligation deadline and then also some new resources that treasury has released and how uh n and treasury are are engaging uh moving forward so as you can see here um why the relationship is so beneficial uh between no and treasury is that from the onset since arpa was signed into law no has met consistently with the Department of Treasury around eligible uses um reporting requirements and new flexibilities um as soon as the uh bill was signed into law or the package was signed into law no had multiple meetings with the Department of Treasury so that we could all be on the same page in terms of what are the vast County roles and responsibilities that that we have when supporting our residents to make sure that there was a holistic idea in terms of what sort of eligible uses could be included into those kind of larger uh eligible use buckets around Public Health negative economic impacts public sector Workforce water sewer and broadband and then of course Revenue loss as well too so making sure that we were able to really identify all of your uh functions and man mandated responsibilities as well too when we're thinking about kind of in the we around eligible use so treasury heard us uh when they released that final rule in January of 2022 um and we did have follow-up meetings with treasury as well too for additional clarifications around eligible uses uh so that we could make sure that counties are um investing funds um and making sure that they are complying with with guidance I will say um you know beyond that that January 2022 date ni has consistently uh met with treasury around uh new guidance that has been released in accordance with different legislation was passed whether it was like that that corn and Padilla amendment that uh expanded the scope of eligible uses to Community Development uh block grants cdbg projects uh surface Transportation projects as well as uh disaster relief efforts as well too so making sure that we're coordinating around those eligible uses and again uh providing feedback of what we're hearing from County leaders across the country I will say uh also uh to this day uh we do have weekly standing meetings between ni and the treasury Department um and uh we are pretty much brainstorming how we can uh best work together uh to provide resources to County leaders whether again it's around guidance uh reporting requirements as those are uh continuing to be updated around uh the obligation interim final rule that came out again the cornin Padilla legislation that we saw being passed back in December of 201 23 um so we continue to have those meetings the reason why I want to say that is that you'll have my contact information at the end of this presentation if you have any sort of feedback or questions uh for the Department of Treasury if you aren't in communication with them already more than happy to um hear from you and work with treasury uh around around those items as we do have these weekly meetings so we are all on the same page now I wanted to get into that obligation uh interim final Rule and FAQs that we heard from treasury a little bit about uh just just right before this but wanted to kind of really hit home the point uh for County leaders about the new flexibilities that they have in these obligation uh FAQs and inorm final rule as you're thinking about okay how do I best obligate These funds ahead of the December 2024 deadline you likely seen that ni has released a lot of information around the obligation interim final rule and corresponding FAQs we did have a webinar uh a couple months ago when the FAQs were released and we do have an updated analysis on our website as well um again want to do a huge shout out and thank you to our partners at treasury because they did hear the feedback uh that County leaders and and no did have regarding uh the uh definition of obligation and around uh you know what is the most efficient and effective definition and ways in which counties are able to invest those funds so just some of the major wins and highlights for counties around this new obligation guidance is that counties can use your arpa state and local fiscal recovery funds for personnel costs for any sort of eligible position under treasury's guidance so really kind of think about the public health and Public Safety uh employees that you're able to um those are the eligible positions under treasury's guidance if you have those positions uh filed by the obligation deadline of December 31st 2024 um you will actually be able to cover those Personnel costs uh until December 31st of 2026 we know that many positions are are already being covered by the arpa state and local fiscal recovery funds so this was a huge huge flexibility that was granted um under the more recently released FAQs that were that came out so again really really major win uh for counties and work with treasury that we were able to accom accomplish um ultimately if you do decide to use your arpa state and local fiscal recovery funds for those Personnel costs you do have to uh report out an estimate for how much you anticipate um those obligation or excuse me those Personnel costs to to be so you would be reporting that in your uh project in expenditure reports or your p& reports um there is a little bit difference in terms of dates here um for those quarterly art report filers so think of the the larger Urban counties that have a population of 250,000 and above or received more than $10 million in in arpa dollar arpa funds you are going to have to report by January 31st of 2025 and then for those smaller counties um that that didn't receive $10 million and have a population less of 250,000 residents you have a little bit more time until April 30th of 2025 um two other key highlights is that sub recipients are not subject to that December 31st 2024 obligation deadline so just making sure that all of the funds are spent by December of 20126 so you have your subrecipient agreements in place of course just make sure definitely that all of the funds are expended by 2026 and then the final key highlight here is that after the December 31st 2024 obligation deadlines counties do have the option to reclassify excess funds from one eligible project to another which I'll talk about in just a minute so kind of going into a little bit more detail on that Personnel cost piece as I mentioned as long as you have positions filed by the December 2024 obligation deadline you can cover those Personnel costs until December 31st of 2026 so what do Personnel costs actually include um it's salary salary and wages covered benefits and payroll taxes some other key pieces um around covering these Personnel costs so again I've mentioned this a couple times as long as the positions that you are obligating funds for are reported by December 2024 that obligation deadline you can actually reorganize positions to continue to cover those Personnel costs simply you can't add any new positions after December 31st of 2024 so let's just say you have like 10 positions that you reported to treasury you were uh provided those estimates as well too you're not able to you know add any sort of position you couldn't cover 11 for example uh there are a couple of examples that you will see on the right side of the screen um just to kind of help County leaders as they're thinking about okay what can we do or what are we prohibited in doing so an example here is if there's turnover and Personnel uh a county may continue to pay different Personnel in that same job position so again going back to that 10 you know if if you are covering costs for 10 uh Personnel or 10 uh 10 employees um if someone is laid off you have nine as long as you are sticking to that 10 number and that person has that same job position you can cover that that additional person's uh Personnel costs as I mentioned uh you can reorganize those positions as well too as long as an eligible position or an eligible use and then the final example here is again going back to that 10 uh employee example if you have 10 job training Specialists that that are again reported by December 2024 you may use the funds to cover payroll for one of those training Specialists who might have been promoted so again you have flexibility in there the other key piece that I again I wanted to highlight um is uh the reclassifying of funds for other eligible uses so after the December 31st 2024 obligation deadline if you're County has excess funds that were not obligated by the deadline um or that were obligated by the deadline excuse me but not expended on an actual activity you can actually reclassify your state and local fiscal recovery funds from the original activity to another eligible state and local fiscal Recovery Fund program so long as your county actually incurred an obligation for that project that you're trying to reclassify funds towards by December 31st of 2024 so again you have a couple of examples on the right side of the screen um I think one that I I'll just highlight before I move on to kind of future Treasury and NCO collaboration efforts um is that say your county decided to use your funds for a project you obligated funds before 202 December 2024 you thought that it complied with the guidance however you know a couple months after the obligation deadline um say maybe your county audit auditor says okay actually this negative economic uh IMPACT program that you decided to obligate funds towards it's actually really not in compliance with treasury's guidance maybe because you know as you all know uh the activities that you are doing it the whatever however you're allocating funds it has to be proportional to the impact that a resident a household a community experience so maybe you know your auditor is thinking okay well this wasn't proportional you're actually the funding is too high for the impact experienced by residents household Community they deem it that it is no longer eligible so now under this new obligation guidance what you're actually able to do is reclassify those funds that you had originally obligated towards this this program this negative economic impact program and reclassify it to other eligible use or another eligible program um under treasury's guidance really what you just have to do is demonstrate that you had had a contract in place for you know the other program by December 31st of 2024 so that's really really key there but again this reclassifying ability really allows counties to make sure that they are making the most out of these arpa dollars um with the limited amount of time left um and being able to provide the services and support that that our residents need so those are the the two major items that I wanted to point out uh just so County leaders are really thinking about the best ways to invest the funds with the new flexibilities uh given that we are in this tight timeline uh with the obligation date coming up uh other two quick items that I did want to mention is treasury did release an inter agency agreement Qui quick reference guide that they mentioned earlier but again really want to reiterate and hit that point home to folks uh what this does is that it provides an overview of certain requirements and a checklist for County inter agency agreements um what ni will do on our end and you know we'll be sure about it we typically always write blogs about new resources that treasury has come out with whether it be this uh quick reference guide other helpful tools especially when it comes to um completing your project and expenditure reports so na will definitely work with treasury to make sure that all County leaders are aware of this new resource and have access to it you actually can if you scan the QR code on the screen right now um you it will actually take you directly to treasury's uh quick reference guide right now so you actually have that ready to go and another point that I already mentioned at the top of my presentation is the educational series but again just to reiterate this is the beginning of a series of educa educational sesss sessions that we're going to be doing with the with the Department of Treasury um they are mostly going to be focused on obligation making sure that you all are aware of how to you know most effectively and efficiently obligate your funds ahead of the deadline but we will do kind of a a spotlight on various areas whether it's around housing Workforce Development and so on another you know kind of plug there is if you do have ideas for you know other sessions that you think would be helpful over the next few months um definitely feel free to reach out to myself to treasury um and it would be very very helpful uh on on that point too and then finally last Point here um no does have an an arpa resource Hub so again if you scan that QR code it'll take you to that resource Hub uh we feature new treasury gu guidance arpa investment spotlights other reports from from think DS and partners like results for America as well too that will give you a good idea in terms of okay how can we continue investing these funds another resource that we have for you all is that you'll see on the bottom left hand of the screen we do have an email address for questions uh from County leaders so if you have a question about the arpa state and local fiscal Recovery Fund just go ahead and email questions no.org and that will go to na staff and we'll be able to answer your questions there um and finally uh just my contact information right here that is my email and phone number so please feel free to reach out um with any questions whether about this presentation or arpa more generally as well too so with that I would like to turn it over to uh Zach marovitz he serves as the vice president and local practice lead at results for America um Zach and results for America has been an incredible partner uh with no and we're so appreciative of all of your work um and looking forward to your presentation so Zach I will turn it over to you thank you Erin I appreciate that those comments uh that presentation and the warm introduction um and thank you all I'm going to share my screen um thank you to US Treasury uh the whole no team Aon and your whole team there County Zack cley and every one of you for joining uh today um I'm honored to be here representing results for America uh and to discuss with you some of what we've done to support jurisdictions across the country to use data and evidence in spending the state and local fiscal relief funds and to help uh them and you all spend towards what works so today I want to talk with you a bit about tools you can use uh I'm going to start a bit about RFA who we are what we do I go a little bit into background uh much of which you all many of you already know uh about state and local fiscal relief funds and some five data and evidence practices that we have seen kind of nested in the guidance I go into a few tools and resources uh for spending towards evidence-based practices using state and local fiscal relief funds um and finally some suggestions that may have come uh many have that really come from many of you and your colleagues from across the country who are looking to obligate funds before the end of this year um and I just understanding all the caveats on the obligations that you heard from the team at US Treasury and that Aaron just laid out a bit at the beginning of this webinar first a bit about results for America so results for America uh is a nonprofit organization with a mission of making what works The New Normal uh for government uh for government uh with government really as a center of work with the goal of taking the2 trillion dollar over2 trillion doll uh that governments spend every year uh to accelerate economic mobility and close racial gaps across the country and as you are aware um I don't need to tell this group The uh American Rescue plan uh not only had provided almost $2 trillion in fedal stimus funds but 350 billion dollars going directly to many of you state and local and tribal governments uh through the slrf uh funds um this is the largest ever investment that we had seen at federal dollars to build state and local government capacity to use data and evidence to deliver on the Equitable outcomes and towards economic Mobility that we'd ever seen uh and to make the most of this opportunity one of the things that we were really excited to see in the guidance that treasury had put out was sort of we had boiled down into five key practices um that were there to incentivize State local and uh tribal governments um to invest the dollars uh not not just in recovery but in to advance economic recovery economic mobility and racial Equity using an evidence-based approach um you can see these five areas on these slides that includes you know building data and evidence capacity use of data and evidence investing in evaluation engaging communities and ensuring as I mentioned Equitable outcomes uh we know that using these dollars in the most cost- effective way is a priority for most jurisdictions and why many of you are on this call today um prioritizing evidence-based policies and programs is the shest way to achieve those outcomes um and as we think about obligating the remaining funds RFA has been working with so many of you uh across the country to think about how how to prioritize evidence-based programs and evaluations in this spending so um what I think our role here on this call is today is uh to to share a few uh tools you can use to immediately support um this in your jurisdiction so let me run through a few just for you now um the first is our the results for America um the American Rescue plan data and evidence dashboard this is something results fromer am and Mathematica released um that looks at how state and local government leaders have been investing uh their American Rescue plan funds state the state local fiscal relief funds funds um and how they're using data and evidence to get better results the dashboard is based on analysis of 200 of the recovery plan plan performance reports uh many of you have submitted the treasury from 50 states 83 counties and 6 67 cities across the country it's a it's a snapshot but a really comprehensive snapshot of funding priorities uh and how well um state and local policy makers are implementing these five treasury data and evidence practices I just highlighted that can really serve as a criteria for how governments should invest our dollars to maximize the impact of their Investments it uh I mentioned how many um jurisdictions is from it also it includes analysis of over uh 8,300 projects from these 200 reports uh that includes uh we pull out 110 notable projects that I think you all can use and serve as models uh uh for investment and um this includes 24 evidence-based solutions that totals over 300 uh300 million that can serve as model as models for you all 44 examples um uh building of building evaluations in Investments and another 44 examples that is almost $600 million investment um of state and local governments developing in-house data and evidence capacity the most effective use of this tool um for those of you looking to obligate new funding now is to is to piece through the notable projects and examples um but I want to call out a couple of um interesting information that um has come for the stash R but you may not be able to pull out directly um from just poking around in it uh the first is confirmation uh that I think many of you probably feel that investment in core data practice is critical to preparedness and use of these funds in a separate analysis that we did with Mathematica of the data in this dashboard as well as with data from our whatw city certification program um this is a program that measures how cities specifically use data in managing City processes and it looks at the how this is done in a a best-of class uh process we have found that certified cities those that had uh are exer of not the top of using data to drive City processes we're better positioned to use data and evidence to promote recovery econom ability racial Equity through ours the second uh piece of information I want to call it here is that we had found that in just a descriptive way that about 40% of jurisdictions we tracked were investing American Rescue plan funds in Pilot programs but many many fewer were investing in evaluating these programs and this is something um you can you can use these funds for would encourage you to think about and I'll get to a resource for that um in a second okay before getting to the next tool just want to highlight a couple of examples of the kinds notable projects uh that you can find this dashboard and these are uh obviously on top of the great example that uh Mr Crowley did and discussed earlier in the call today a first is uh beralo County in New Mexico um this uh care campus service programs this is a a evidence-based Community um uses evidence-based Community reinforcements approach towards behavioral and health assistance to young adults a really good example of how sort of using the data and the evidence that exists in the field towards a um really key uh priority for the county itself in in lexan F County in Kentucky you see uh Nami um supported here this is a mental health court that uses an evidence-based approach on supporting problem solving um for those who are suffering from mental illness and from the criminal justice system at large um is a nonprofit uh that the the count is funded there but wanted to highlight this again as another kind of evidence-based program that our funds could ultimately support now tool number two here is results for America's economic Mobility catalog the uh econom Mobility catalog um is a a Clearing House a catalog of strategies and models that are evidence-based and it's designed specifically for local leaders uh like yourself to facilitate identifying and implementing evidence-based strategy uh it allows you to bring evid based programs into your community in particular programs that have been leveraged by others and other communities out there something any jurisdiction can use um uh and can use really any of your funds available including recovery funds so you may want to bookmark for budgeting processes and you can see through this call out here how it's structured you can look by economic Mobility strategy so uh Early Childhood K through 12 Etc or uh by spe specifically the population outcome that you're looking maybe to drive uh from a priority in your community so kindergarten Readiness postsecondary enrollment Etc below these Pages you'll feel it organized by um strategies and programs or tactics beneath that with many different case studies this is designed not for just interested passive observers or academics it's focused and been structured around government officials who are looking to replicate and scale Solutions into your backyard and specifically for you all today and for the purposes of uh American Rescue plan um and we want to this be a especially useful for for decision makers and so we have a badge on specific pages that we see are eligible for uh slrf RF dollars um here you'll see the page on the home instruction for parents and preschool youngsters which is an Evidence evidence-based uh strategy um and it has that kind of arpa eligible badge directly on its main page you see the orange arrow pointing to it right there this is a great way uh to Source new programs for your community especially those that have been shown to work elsewhere and that are that may be tied to critical priorities uh you are facing in your backyard lastly and most recently is our new uh newly released evidence policy guide as I mentioned before you know through some of our research with mathmatica we found uh 40% of jurisdictions uh we tracked are investing in uh arpa investing arpa hunds on pilot programs but few are investing in evaluating those programs uh on top of that and again through through the discussing with speaking with many many of you on this call today we know that government leaders are increasingly looking for opportunities to better support residents through policies that deliver results um and to assist to this effort we um we had built this evaluation policy guide um uh it's a new resource um and you'll in it you'll find the best elements and key lessons that we've learned at the federal state and local government policies that encourage and shape the use of evidence to improve the impact of government spending um I pulled this table of contents that you can see here um because it starts with uh sections on defining evidence um defining uh uh evidence of Effectiveness and Equity goes into incorporation of community into the process um through creation of evaluation policy and into how to make evidence-based funding decisions and then how to sustain it through a culture of evidence and evaluation on top of this each chapter um has specific worksheets that you can use your teams to execute this flawlessly as well as a chapter at the end then those worksheets together but in case you run into issues um I'll have our contact information at the end of these slides so that we can uh provide some help so finally uh I want to provide some Initial Ideas uh on obligating the remaining um uh State local fiscal relief funds towards these programs and these are some ideas um but I I would encourage you to make sure you're following what Aon presented and the treasury team presented earlier um so the first is you look at assessing your current programs identify in any uh that may already have an Evidence base and could be modified to incorporate key design principles um you may have lots of programs that are uh evidence-based that you can look at expanding the the contract or the opportunity to sort of um to deliver on the supports you have there um on that consider expanding or scaling the evidence based programs that you have this might be through individual program itself or building out the key design principles that made that program spaced into existing rfps uh may want to think about investing in a evaluating um a current program that does not already have an Evidence space so this goes back to the evaluation policy guide how can you sort of think about further studying this there's a lot of research out there of how what um evidence of impact but maybe not evidence of How It's implemented effectively and so building evaluation to it is really important explore maybe one-time evidence-based Investments this could be training school staff on be positive behavioral supports or even onetime purchases like Noone um for supporting critical outcomes in your backyard and finally um identify any plan spending you know like database or it upgrades that could increase the data capacity um these are key points we've seen a lot of jurisdiction be successful on this across the board with that um I will thank you for your time I want to provide our information here should you have immediate question on these tools and I or our team here are able to connect you to the right people to get the information you need thank you again to treasury to no to County exec crley and with that I'm going to pass it back to the team at US Treasury thank you so much Zach really appreciate it and thank you all for joining us here today uh for all of our speakers for their insightful perspectives we look forward to having you join us at Future educational sessions uh to provide resources and guidance on how to meet the obligation deadline for the slf funds of December 31st 2024 if you have any questions in the meantime you can contact us at slrf treasury.gov with that we will conclude this session have a great day thank you