The historic infrastructure bill, known officially as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), provides more than $500 billion in new spending on everything from broadband internet infrastructure, to roads and bridges.
The Federal Economic Development Administration (EDA) recently announced 6 new programs that will invest $3 billion of ARPA related funding into communities struggling to economically recover from the pandemic.
Infrastructure has been a front and center debate in the halls of Congress over the past several months, and two recent votes – one in the House and one in the Senate – have helped to increase the odds of significant investment in the nation’s transportation infrastructure in the next few years.
Ohio has started to deploy its state share of the American Rescue Plan Act dollars. Ohio is scheduled to receive a total of $5.68 billion, half of which has recently come into the state. (The other half will be released to Ohio in 2022).
As local leaders start to think about deploying American Rescue Plan funds in their communities, we wanted to share principles that we believe can help Ohio’s legacy cities and communities fully benefit from these dollars.
The American Jobs Plan was made public on March 31 and calls for trillions of dollars of investment in hard and soft infrastructure across the country. At first glance, this package ticks a lot of boxes for GOPC.