Congress' last task before the holidays is the FY2023 Omnibus Appropriations bill, and as of Friday, the ARPA Flexibility provisions that the League’s federal partner, the National League of Cities (NLC), has been advocating was included with both Senate Leaders Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) backing but a late-breaking Congressional Budget Office scoring change on the provisions caused it to be withdrawn at the last minute before today's release of the text.
NLC’s staff have identified a fix that Treasury finds acceptable to make this revenue neutral, and there will now be a push to include ARPA Flexibility as a Sen. Cornyn (R-TX) amendment on the floor. Please reach out to your U.S. House representative TODAY and urge them to share their support with the House Leadership – including Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer – to put ARPA Flex into the FY2023 Omnibus Appropriation bill.
The bipartisan State, Local Tribal, and Territorial Fiscal Recovery, Infrastructure, and Disaster Relief Flexibility Act, also called ARPA Flex, (S. 3011/H.R. 5735) was approved by unanimous consent in the Senate on October 19, 2021. The Act would permit the U.S. Department of the Treasury to restore program and administration assistance to local government grantees that are managing ARPA Local Fiscal Recovery Fund grants. This assistance is especially helpful to many small and mid-sized local governments that do not have full-time grant managers. It would also allow Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds to be used in conjunction with other federal infrastructure and community development grants. Lastly, it would provide "emergency relief from natural disasters or the negative economic impacts of natural disasters, including temporary emergency housing, food assistance, financial assistance for lost wages, or other immediate needs."
Contact: Paul Penna, Senior Legislative Analyst, ppenna@njlm.org, 609-695-3481, x110.