With talks in Washington currently stalled over providing additional federal aid to schools, state and local governments and small businesses—and some key federal lawmakers indicating they intend to refuse to vote for additional federal COVID relief, including funding for schools, in part because money allocated by Congress for COVID-19 relief earlier this year remains unspent—a memo released recently by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) provides a timely look at this issue.
The LFB memo reports on how the Governor has allocated the $2 billion the state received from the federal Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) as part of the CARES Act. (Note: The CRF money described in the memo does not include the funding specifically allocated to K-12 education or higher education under the CARES Act. The CARES Act funding for education was provided under a separate allocation.) To date, the Governor has announced initiatives involving the allocation of $1.76 billion, including $190 million for local governments. At present, only $243.7 million of the state’s $2 billion in CARES Act funds remains unspent. Gov. Evers subsequently announced the creation of a new “dashboard” website that will provide regularly updated information regarding how and where Wisconsin is investing federal funding, including funding from the CARES Act.
When the CARES Act was signed into law in late March, each state received a payment according to its share of the total US population, with a guaranteed $1.25 billion minimum payment. Wisconsin received a total of $2.26 billion; however, three Wisconsin local governments (Dane County, and the City and County of Milwaukee) were eligible to directly receive $260 million of the total, leaving $2.0 billion in CRF monies for the state to allocate. The CRF funds were received by the state in April.
