With Alabama receiving another $1.1 billion from the American Rescue Plan (ARPA), it’s still not certain if Gov. Kay Ivey will call a special session so the legislature can decide how to allocate those funds.
Thursday on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program,” Alabama Senate Majority Leader Clay Scofield (R-Guntersville) said he was still not certain if there needed to be a special session this year.
“As of right now,” Scofield said, “it is still firmly up in the air whether or not that we even need to have a special session or if we can in fact wait until potentially around our organizational session or in coordination with our organizational session in January, or if in fact we can wait until the regular session and do another, like we did last time which I thought worked very well, have kind of a bump out special session within the regular session.”
The state senator said one of the issues was the lack of guidance from the federal government on how the state was allowed to spend the money.
“This round has a little more scrutiny from the treasury on what it can and cannot be spent on,” he explained, “so we’re still waiting on more guidance from that.”
Scofield also pointed out some of the concerns that have arisen from the allocation of the first half of the ARPA funds.
“We’re investing in broadband, we’re investing in water and sewer and other things,” he continued, “and there are challenges in that with the labor market to install that infrastructure, supply chain issues on fiber, on the technology involving broadband, or pipes and sewer covers and manholes and all that involved on the sewer and water assets. Again, we have until 2024 to appropriate this money and then until 2026 to finally spend the money.”
He argued there was no urgency to spend this money right away but instead felt it was better to the taxpayers for the legislature to take its time on this issue.
“I’m not sure that there’s a whole lot of rush,” he said. “I was very pleased at how we approached the last round of ARPA, very deliberately, and we really looked at it more toward ok this is one time money that frankly our kids are going to be on the hook for for a really long time, and we need to make sure that we invest it in key areas that hopefully will provide them with more opportunities and a better future. This round we’re not going to treat any differently. We’re going to be very methodical and deliberate in how we invest these dollars.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11am on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
