Public participation: As American as apple pie

Adams County is receiving $20 million in pandemic recovery funding through the American Rescue Plan (ARP) program enacted in March of this year. In fact, $10 million was received in May and is now in the bank drawing interest, with the next $10 million due to be delivered in 2022. The program as originally authorized has several eligible uses, including: public health response expenses, the replenishment of pandemic related budget shortfalls, aid to individuals and businesses impacted by the pandemic, premium pay for essential workers, water and sewer projects, and broadband development projects. An Interim Final Rule was issued by the Treasury Department in April along with additional guidance, thus enabling local governments to begin planning for the use of the ARP funds. With over a thousand public comments received on the Interim Rule, Treasury is still considering a Final Rule.

Adams County, like many, if not most, Pennsylvania counties is understandably moving very deliberately to consider its options, with the funds not needing to be obligated until the end of 2024 and actually spent until the end of 2026. Part of the reason for this deliberate pace is that the National Association of Counties is pressing Congress to pass additional legislation to broaden the eligible uses of ARP funds. In fact, the U.S. Senate has passed a bill, S. 3011, the Disaster Relief Flexibility Act, that will allow counties and cities to use a significant portion of ARP funds for budget purposes without showing pandemic related revenue shortfalls. The Senate bill also makes eligible any infrastructure project now permitted under existing federal statutes, as well as natural disaster recovery expenses. A similar bill has been introduced in the House, but final action still could be weeks or months away.

What’s been missing in the federal ARP legislation is a strict requirement for public participation in the decision-making process for the use of ARP funds. Local governments are very familiar with public participation requirements, since they have been a statutory requirement in most federal spending programs, including the very popular Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program since its enactment in 1974.

Under the CDBG program, Adams County receives approximately $300,000 a year and makes use of a robust public participation process in deciding how to allocate the funds. There is an annual solicitation for grant proposals accompanied by detailed information on eligibility requirements. There is a Public Hearing at a regular Commissioners meeting devoted to public comments on the kinds of projects people feel should be included in the County’s allocation each year. After applications are received there are additional public meetings to discuss the merits and priorities of those proposals that have been submitted. In the end, the Commissioners make the decisions, as they should, but individuals and organizations have had their chance to be heard and to argue for the projects and programs they support.

In wisely taking their time to approach these momentous funding decisions Adams County leaders have revealed neither their priorities nor their plans for an implementation process. While some people are anxious to know for certain that there will be a process to promote public dialog on the use of ARP funds, I believe the County will build on its outstanding record of listening to public comment and engaging with the community to arrive at funding decisions for the good of all.

Adams County, the Borough of Gettysburg and all other CDBG recipients routinely engage in a public participation process for grantmaking purposes. Public participation has been vitally important to the CDBG program for almost 50 years. What’s more, the requirement has been shown to cut down on the number of legal challenges and citizen complaints. Recently, Adams County created a Broadband Development Task Force with members to be chosen from the public. That is another form of public participation that is to be highly commended. Deciding on how to allocate American Rescue Plan funds, with such a wide array of eligible uses, should be no different.

A CDBG-type public participation requirement was omitted from the original ARP legislation presumably because the funding was considered to be needed on an urgent basis. However, when you see a deadline for obligating funds of December 2024 and a deadline for actually spending the funds of December 2026, the urgency for using the funding loses its salience.

In announcing a public participation process for ARP funding, the Mayor of Lancaster, Danene Sorace, put it well: “This once-in-a-generation investment must be made with great care and thought about what is most needed in this specific community with transparency and true engagement with our community in how to invest the public dollars.”

Not all jurisdictions will use a public participation regimen identical to their annual CDBG process. Nearby Cumberland County, for example, is making use of a series of focus groups with non-profits, businesses, municipalities, to be followed by public surveys in deciding how to use its allocation of ARP dollars. On a larger scale, the City and County of Denver has created a separate organization called RISER Together Denver, which is a full-fledged public engagement campaign consisting of polling, forums, and four live streamed telephone town hall meetings, attracting more than six thousand participants from the community. Public participation can and will come in all shapes and sizes.

In the end our County Commissioners will make the hard decisions on how and where to allocate these federal dollars, the equivalent of more than 66 years of CDBG funding. That’s a huge amount of money for Adams County and I know it will be well used. The same public process that has served the community so well in dispersing CDBG funds should be the starting point for considering American Rescue Plan funding.

Bill Gilmartin, a member of Gettysburg DFA, lives in Orrtanna and is retired from a career in Washington as a Congressional aide, a lobbyist and an assistant secretary of HUD from 1993-1995. He serves on the boards of United Way of Adams County, Pennsylvania Interfaith Community Programs, Inc., and the Adams County Housing Authority.