How Large Are the American Rescue Plan Fund Distributions to State and Local Governments?

In March of this year, the American Rescue Plan (ARP) authorized the US Department of the Treasury to distribute $350 billion to state and local governments through the legislation’s Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) to help speed the nation’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, candidates and advocates have stepped forward to say what community challenges they will solve with the funds. When we hear that a county is receiving $500 million and a state is receiving $5 billion, both figures sound very large, but what we don’t know is how much change those allocations can create. To ground this conversation, we are providing a list of all of the planned allocations scaled by the receiving jurisdiction’s annual tax revenue. Most of us are familiar with the taxes we pay to state and local governments each year and the programs that those taxes are able to support. Scaling by our state or local government’s annual tax revenue enables us to consider whether our SLFRF allocation could be transformational or merely helpful.