CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A number of municipal leaders from across Kanawha County were on hand Thursday for the Kanawha County Commission meeting. The meeting included a workshop for those mayors and other civic leaders with some guidance on how to handle a windfall of money from the American Rescue Plan.
Many of those municipalities will have more money than they’ve ever had at one time and the idea, according to Commissioner Kent Carper, is to spend the money wisely and within the law.
“You’ve got to be careful, you need a paper trail,” the Carper told the group.
There are guidelines laid down within the federal law which created the funds, but they also offer some wide latitude in how the money can be spent. Carper said one key thing which many may not realize is the American Rescue Plan allows for reimbursement of loss of revenue whereas the CARES Act from last year did not.
“There’s a difference between the loss of revenue recouped or recovered and the actual incurring of expenses,” he said.
The commission has hired several attorneys and accountants to help provide assistance to the towns and municipalities along with water boards and other civic organizations who may share in the funding.
The allocations could be used to help small businesses. That was the question on the mind of Linda Kelly of Anders Floor Covering on Charleston’s West Side. She’s been to several workshops put on by the city and her question surrounded where private business needs to go for help.
“Are small businesses eligible to receive rescue funds,” Kelly asked.
“Yes,” Carper said. “Now when I say yes, I’m not saying we’re going to do it, but I would be surprised if we didn’t apportion some of this to small business.”
Many of the questions come down to a technicality and may require a case by case assessment by those accountants who have carefully studied the legislation. St. Albans Mayor Scott James suggested his city has incurred a big loss to B&O Tax revenue just because car dealerships are running short on vehicles to sell. The vehicle shortage was created by a shortage of microchips to run the automobiles and the chip shortage was blamed on Covid. Mayor James asked if that was the kind of revenue loss which could be covered.
“The answer from a general term would be yes. If it is due to Covid, then the revenue loss can be recovered back to the date of Covid,” said one of the experts on retainer with the vommission.
Carper said the county would hold more workshops in the future, probably on a smaller and more individualized scale to help municipalities hone down and narrow what their requests will be. He said ultimately however, the decisions on what to ask for must come from the cities and nobody else.
“That’s called making a public policy decision,” he said.