by Robert Lynch, September 15, 2021
Let’s first give it a nickname: “Mock-ARPA.” (It sounds better than “Fake-ARPA.”)
Now, let me explain why we’ve named it such.
Months ago, the Federal Government pledged Tompkins County nearly $19.9 Million through the American Rescue Plan (ARPA). In late-July, though not all agreed, the County Legislature assigned all of the expected, multi-year federal assistance to “Government Operations,” a fancy phrase that covers just about everything. And in part to save on paperwork, three-quarters of the total was set aside as “Cash for Capital,” funds to be spent on future building projects and the like. (See story posted here July 20th.)
At the time, lawmakers promised recalcitrant hold-outs they’d revisit post-COVID funding later, strongly indicating they’d tap the County’s own massive surpluses—its Fund Balance—to underwrite the human service needs that critics asserted Uncle Sam’s funds were truly intended to address.
That brings us to Wednesday (Sept. 15), when the County Legislature made good on its July promise—sort of.
Following more than two hours’ of eye-glazing discussion, and with only Danby’s Dan Klein in dissent, the Legislature earmarked $7 Million in local moneys to future grants under the “Tompkins County Recovery Fund.” (That’s why we’ve called it “Mock-ARPA.”)
No one’s yet decided exactly how the money will be doled out… or to whom. No doubt, the County Legislature will have the final say. But it’ll likely be a third-party agency, selected later by the County, that’ll vet the many expected non-profit applicants angling for support.
“The idea of this recovery fund is that it does allow the community to recover,” said legislator Leslie Schill, who predicted the spending, handled properly, could accomplish “significant, transformative change.”
Schill was one of the Legislature’s “Gang of Three,”—another apt nickname—that over recent weeks crafted the Recovery Fund Proposal. They took on the task after lawmakers got hopelessly lost during an unfocused, hours-long, August 10th study session that would have challenged the best of reporters to find a coherent story line.
What Schill, Rich John, and Mike Sigler, that Gang of Three, came up with and unveiled for the first time Wednesday—namely a two-page, bullet-pointed, targeted implementation plan for legislators, administrators and staff—legislative colleagues then promptly took their turns picking apart, and significantly weakening the plan as they did.
The proposed Recovery Fund (Mock-ARPA) the lawmaking trio initially advanced would have spent a full $15 Million from Fund Balance, not just $7 Million. It envisioned distribution “through a series of three competitive funding rounds,” with $7 Million as only the “initial round” allocation, not the only one. Front-loaded by design, the program’s successive rounds would have allocated $5 Million, and then $3 Million over an unspecified, multi-year period.
“Well, I can’t vote for this,” asserted Dryden’s Mike Lane. “One word we haven’t heard much about in this discussion,” he said, “is ‘taxpayer.’” “We represent people who are going to have to pay taxes for government operations as we go along,” the Dryden Democrat continued. “And they’re looking for us to be protective of their money.”
Lane found support with Lansing’s Deborah Dawson, always a budget hawk.
“I fear that if we save [meaning give] a big pile of money to a particular sector or need, and then we end up in an economic shutdown again, or if we had a huge medical need that we had to meet, we wouldn’t have the money,” she said. “We would have thrown away the money we gave out, and we wouldn’t have the money to meet a newly-emerging need,” Dawson reasoned.
Dawson’s choice of words irritated Ithaca’s Henry Granison.
“I don’t think that we’re throwing the money away,” Granison responded. “I think we’re investing in the community; simple as that.”
In a double-layered series of amendments that left some lawmakers bewildered, the Legislature Wednesday trimmed the initial $15 Million funding plan by more than half, leaving only the $7 Million initial funding round untouched. (Lane and Dawson would have favored just $5 Million, but supported the final compromise.) Only Klein opposed any funding at all.
“I don’t even support a specific dollar amount,” said Klein. “We are still in the pandemic. We don’t know what’s happening next. We really are not in a position to make very solid predictions about really knowing what the needs are going to be down the road,” he observed. “I am not personally in a hurry to spend this money.”
With the Gang of Three’s Mock-ARPA proposal battered and bruised, yet still standing as a shell of its former self, timing remained an open question as Wednesday’s meeting ended. Promptness must overcome traditional bureaucratic lethargy. First round funding proposals would require lawmaker approval before year’s end to fall within the current budget cycle. And should they fail to do so, the requests would meet a new Legislature, one with at least a 36 per cent membership turnover. The new panel would also need to decide whether to proceed with funding rounds two and three.
But one of the Mock-ARPA’s three original architects, Rich John, called his group’s plan a “compromise.” And he faulted Klein’s suggestion that lawmakers advance the Recovery Fund only in concept, without any fixed dollar amounts.
“If you don’t say any numbers,” warned John, “you have kind of a shapeless program. I don’t think you instruct the public on what we’re really trying to do.”
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