STATE COLLEGE — Governments of all sizes across the United States are nearing the deadline to commit pandemic relief funding from the federal government. As more comprehensive information on how tens of thousands of entities used public money is released, analyzing the funds’ final destinations and impacts still requires work.

The funding, authorized as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, provided unprecedented aid to approximately 31,000 state, county, city, tribal, territorial and local governments.

“I make the argument that we probably haven’t seen this level of funding come to localities like this, really, in our lifetimes,” Williamsport City Council President Adam Yoder told Spotlight PA .

The majority of recipients — more than 26,000 — are small local governments, a U.S. Treasury official told Spotlight PA in an email. Many of them have never received federal funding before, and lack of familiarity with awarding procedures can add to the administrative burden, the official said.

In Pennsylvania, 2,556 of these small municipalities received a total of $1.21 billion. They are called Level 5 entities under the program, a definition that comes with less frequent reporting requirements.

Each recipient of pandemic relief funds reports to the U.S. Treasury the amount of funds it has obligated or obligated under a specific order or contract, and in what category of authorized uses the dollars are expenses. The public can access this information on dashboards maintained by the Treasury.

Follow these steps:

• Determine which dashboard contains the latest information about the government you are interested in. Due to different reporting requirements, the latest data available for Tier 1 and Tier 2 grantees (the Commonwealth plus the most populous counties and cities) includes funding obligated by the end of July. Use the July 2024 Reporting Dashboard on the page. For small local authorities, which are level 5, use the April 2024 reporting dashboard. (Approximately 84% of Pennsylvania’s Tier 5 municipalities met the reporting deadline and are included in the Treasury database.)

• Using the “Recipients” tab, filter and search for the government unit of interest. You can see the total allocation for each recipient, the number of projects they have submitted, and other details.

• Using the “Projects” tab, you can search the details of each project, including funding amount, description and status.

Among the 2,140 Tier 5 units in Pennsylvania included in the April report, nearly two-thirds used their entire allocation for income replacement, according to a Spotlight PA analysis. Income replacement includes government salaries and benefits, upgrades to government technology and facilities, and costs to maintain or build infrastructure.

The U.S. Treasury designed this category to be the least administratively burdensome, with smaller municipalities in mind, said Amanda Kass, an assistant professor at DePaul University who studies this funding program.

But Kass said the ease of reporting also means it’s harder to track the specific impacts of funding.

Take Elk County, which committed $3,448,509 to three projects, according to the April dashboard. Each project included an identical description, “Revenue Replacement under 6.1 “Provision of Government Services.”

But the county planned and implemented more comprehensive projects than the description suggests. One example is the ongoing development in Elk County of a new permanent 911 radio tower, which was intercepted amid private land conflict earlier this year.

The county is working to identify a new location for the tower before the critical bond deadline at the end of this year, Pat Straub, Elk County’s chief clerk, told Spotlight PA in an e- email. The county is also committing to two multi-year projects using this funding and hopes to spend its entire pandemic relief allocation according to the program schedule. Spotlight PA submitted a Right to Know request for details on these plans, which the county has not shared.

Due to the delay in the U.S. Treasury receiving data from governments, members of the public need to do some work if they want to get the most up-to-date information on how their local governments are using pandemic relief funds .

Pennsylvanians can submit open records requests to public bodies for more details. Requesting a detailed list of projects your municipality has financed with state and local tax stimulus funds could be a good start.

A combination of the U.S. Treasury Dashboards and Pennsylvania’s Open Records Act can present a more complete picture of how ARPA funding works in your community.