Counties work to spend CARES Act funds fairly

Friday, July 10, 2020

SIKESTON — Local governments began receiving CARES Act payments from the Missouri Treasurer’s office in May, and officials are still working to disburse the funds fairly as they receive requests from entities within their counties.

According to the Missouri State Treasurer’s Office, Scott County received $4,491,008; New Madrid County, $2,003,356; Mississippi County, $1,546,277; and Stoddard County, $3,405, 212.

In late April, Gov. Mike Parson approved the CARES Act funding for each county. The CARES Act directed the Department of Treasury to use U.S. Census Bureau data for the most recent year for which data are available for population calculations under the CARES Act.

Counties began receiving the funds in May, but it’s taken some time for the counties to understand how the money will be spent to fill needs in a fair and timely manner.

“There are so many guidelines from the federal government on how we can spend this money and who’s eligible for the funds,” Scott County First District Commissioner Dennis Ziegenhorn said when the county first received the funds. “We are carefully going over all of this so we can distribute the funds fairly once applications are received.”

Each county must disburse the CARES Act funds on COVID-19-related expenses before Dec. 31.

“Government says: ‘Spend it accordingly, follow our guidelines or send back your portion,’” Ziegenhorn said.

The governing body of each city in the county can apply for funds, he said. Ziegenhorn said so far the Scott County has received inquiries from Missouri Delta Medical Center, ambulance districts, the health department, public and private schools as well as the city of Sikeston.

Entities in Scott County who are interested and want to submit an application can contact the county clerk’s office and set up an appointment to meet with the commission about their application and needs, Ziegenhorn said.

“We’d like to get all the requests in as soon as possible,” Ziegenhorn said.

The CARES Act Funds multi-page application is available on Scott County’s website: www.scottcountymo.com and under the “Latest news” section.

New Madrid County Clerk Clement Cravens said officials have also been working to meet the needs in the county.

“When we first got the CARES Act funds, we held a meeting with every political subdivision to give them the basic information we had at the time and to provide them with the application/document they would use should they have a reimbursement for funds they used related to COVDI-19,” Cravens said.

New Madrid County is accepting reimbursement requests by application.

“We’re asking our entities to submit their applications to us in two categories: payroll/benefits (frontline employees) and supplies,” Cravens said. “These are the COVID-19-related supplies and expenditures they were forced to make due to the pandemic. We’ll process those as soon as we can and get that money out as fast as we can.”

The county is anticipating a significant amount of reimbursement requests from entities of front-line employees, Cravens said. However, the county is focusing first on reimbursement requests from those entities with true, out-of-pocket expenses – those that were not budgeted and people had to spend money originally budgeted for something else, he said.

New Madrid County has already processed $95,000 of the CARES Act Funds and anticipates a larger amount when payroll and benefit requests start being processed, Cravens said.

Later in the year county officials will look at the remaining balance in the CARES Act Fund versus how many payroll benefit requests it has and come up with a percentage across the board to disburse the funds fairly while depleting the CARES Act money before the period ends, Cravens said.

However, when it comes to COVID-19, things are always changing, Cravens noted.

“It’s a learning curve for everyone from the United States to the county and local levels,” he said.

Ziegenhorn agreed.

“Everyone is facing a new normal,” Ziegenhorn said. “Changes are needed all around us, not just government buildings. So, please bear with us as we try to distribute the funds in a manner that will help each town in the county.”

Mississippi County County Clerk Emily K. Pullen was unavailable at press time.

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