The Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) was authorized under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and provides $65.1 billion to every county, parish and borough in America. As part of the program, recipients are required to submit reports to the U.S. Department of Treasury, which has been tasked with overseeing the implementation and administrated of the program.
On January 31, 2022, the first quarterly Project and Expenditure Report is due for counties that have certified for recovery funds and have a population that exceeds 250,000 residents (referred to as Tier 1 recipients by Treasury) or counties with a population below 250,000 residents which received over $10 million in recovery funds (referred to as Tier 2 recipients by Treasury). For this initial report, counties will be required to submit demographic and programmatic data for how recovery funds have been obligated or invested from March 3, 2021 to December 31, 2021.
The U.S. Treasury Department recently released the Project and Expenditure Report User Guide to be used by counties to submit data associated with the Recovery Fund. This user guide provides detailed instructions to help recipients enter and submit the following:
- Project data
- Subrecipient data
- Subaward data
- Expenditure data
- Project and Expenditure Bulk Upload Templates
The following IMPORTANT CLARIFICATIONS on how to report revenue replacement and other expenditures in the Project and Expenditure Report were released by the U.S. Treasury on January 25, 2022:
- Option to defer choice of claiming $10 million standard revenue loss allowance: If a county has not decided whether or not to take the standard allowance, Treasury won’t commit them to their reported choice in the January 31st report.
- Decisions made in the reporting around the standard allowance as part of the January 31 Project and Expenditure Report may be changed in the April 2022 Project and Expenditure report when the Final Rule takes effect. More guidance on this will be released as we approach that reporting period.
- If a county has nothing to report in the Revenue Replacement section and doesn’t want to make any choice, they may enter zero in the required fields and use the description box to explain that they have not yet allocated funds under revenue loss and will update their response in future reporting cycles. Treasury may choose to follow up in these cases for further details.
- What to do if a county has no projects to report on the January 31 Project and Expenditure Report: If your county has not yet identified any projects to report, please know that maintaining a project list is a core requirement of the Recovery Fund program. For the Project and Expenditure Report due January 31, 2022, Treasury will be offering an option to select “No Projects to Report” at this time. Selecting this option will require providing a written explanation and may result in additional compliance follow-up from Treasury. Please see the user guide for additional guidance; information will also be provided in the Project Overview module of the Project and Expenditure Report. If you have questions or need additional information, please send an email via SLFRP@treasury.gov.
- Additional resources and helpful information from Treasury: If you are unable to log in to Treasury’s State, Local, and Tribal Support portal after establishing your accounts or need technical or other assistance, please send us an email at covidreliefitsupport@treasury.gov for assistance.
- Treasury has posted a series of recorded webinars to assist recipients to understand and comply with relevant reporting requirements and assist recipients in accessing Treasury’s Portal:
Please note: Counties with populations below 250,000 residents and received less than $10 million in Recovery Funds, are not required to submit a report by January 31, 2022, and there will not be a report record available for you to do so. Your first reporting deadline to submit the Project and Expenditure Report will be April 30, 2022, and annually afterwards. A Project and Expenditure Report will be made available for your jurisdiction to complete ahead of your April 30, 2022, deadline.
For more information on reporting requirements and deadlines for the Fiscal Recovery Fund, please review Treasury’s Compliance and Reporting Guidance. The compliance and reporting guidance also provides important information on how to track Fiscal Recovery Fund expenditures and how counties can ensure subrecipients are in compliance with these requirements.
To view the National Association of Counties (NACo) analysis of the Treasury's Final Rule for the Recovery Fund (January 13, 2022), click here.