Some Small Wisconsin Communities Turning Down ARPA Funds

Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 -- 12:01 PM

(By Sarah Lehr, Wisconsin Public Radio) -Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal coronavirus relief funding are being funneled to local governments across Wisconsin as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, a massive federal stimulus package.

But a few small Wisconsin communities have turned down the money. Four Wisconsin communities, the town of Wood River, the town of Big Falls, the village of Conrath and the town of Piehl, rejected a total of $129,266.

That's a miniscule fraction of the $410 million sent to more than 1,800 small communities across Wisconsin. The state's Department of Revenue took responsibility for distributing the aid to those small communities, which are known as non-entitlement units and typically have populations under 50,000.

Larger jurisdictions, including many cities and counties, received the federal funding directly. Rejecting ARPA aid is rare. Across the country, it's been rare for communities to turn down ARPA funding, and the places that have done so tend to be very small, said Mike Wallace, a legislative director for the National League of Cities.

"The calculation they're making is, 'How much would it cost to administer this program locally, versus how much we would be able to plug back into the economy, either by helping residents or maintaining government services and operations?'" Wallace said. "And I think that, for the smallest grantees, the amount of funds is really too small to go through the administrative burden."

The league analyzed how 15 states allocated funding from the historic stimulus package and found that, within that sample, less than 3 percent of the communities with populations under 50,000 had chosen to decline funding.

The average population of a community that turned down the money was 261 people, and was eligible for less than $100,000.

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