Data shows how local governments have used American Rescue Plan funds

A new compilation of projects funded by the American Rescue Plan Act shows that, among cities and counties with populations over 250,000, about 12 percent of money received by local governments has gone toward funding infrastructure investments. The National League of Cities and National Association of Counties, along with the Brookings Institution, published an interactive dashboard logging the expenditures that 152 municipal governments have made so far with their shares of the $350 billion in state and local assistance included in the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package that President Joe Biden signed in March 2021. While the American Rescue Plan was being debated, advocacy groups pushed Washington to make that $350 billion fund as flexible as possible for state and local leaders looking to shore up their organizations after the worst phases of the pandemic. As recently as last month, the U.S. Treasury Department was still tweaking its rules to allow for more spending on operations like cybersecurity and broadband expansion. While infrastructure is a broad category in the scope of Rescue Plan spending, the new dashboard includes numerous major tech-oriented investments: Palm Beach County, Florida, is spending $46 million on broadband; Prince George’s County, Maryland is pumping more than $10 million into cybersecurity tools including endpoint detection and network monitoring; the Seattle’s IT department has spent nearly $4 million on remote-work tools for city employees.