Jackson County’s inability to spend $70M from ARPA is ‘an embarrassment’ to Rep. Cleaver
WASHINGTON — A more than year-long game of chicken at the Jackson County Courthouse over the use of $70 million in federal COVID-19 aid dollars has Kansas City congressman Emanuel Cleaver exasperated.
With the county at risk of having to return those dollars at the end of the year because of persistent disagreements on how to spend them, Cleaver is urging both sides — County Executive Frank White, Jr. and four legislators on one side and five legislators on the other — to face reality and compromise.
Failing to do so would mean losing the money and hurting Cleaver’s credibility and ability to secure future funding from Congress for other projects in Kansas City and Jackson County, he said.
“It became obvious to me that the members of the legislature may not understand the finality of a federal deadline,” Cleaver said Tuesday outside the House chamber in the nation’s capital.
He almost missed a vote on the House floor because he had spent so much time trying to clean up what he saw as the mess the Jackson County Legislature was making back home.
Unwilling to accept a compromise offered by White that would preserve the federal money, a five-member majority of the legislature passed a spending plan Tuesday that White was certain to veto. Like White, Cleaver claims the plan that legislators finally approved was not in compliance with the rules governing the use of that federal money.
Cleaver said he had spent most of the day going between the county government and the U.S. Treasury Department to help find a solution that both abides by federal regulations and can pass through the Jackson County Legislature with less than two weeks until the money expires.
“To send $70.3 million back to the federal government with all of the needs of Jackson County is a sin,” he said.
But the clock is ticking. Not only does the legislature have to find common ground, it has to do so on a timeline crunched by the Christmas holiday and a Treasury Department navigating a presidential transition.
“I’m trying to make sure people understand the urgency of the matter. But also, and this is maybe selfish on my part, also the problem that it creates for me as a legislator and as someone who has to go to these appropriators” and ask for money for projects in Kansas City, Cleaver said.
How to spend the money
Jackson County has distributed more than $230 million in federal aid it received from Washington to compensate for the effects of the pandemic since 2020. That money went toward the costs of law enforcement, health care, losses to local businesses and other costs of running county and local governments.
A pot of money that, with interest, now totals slightly above $70 million was left over when the current county legislature took office in 2022. County Executive Frank White Jr. had intended to spend a large chunk of that leftover sum on a backlog of county public works projects.
The nearly century-old downtown courthouse needs hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs and upgrades, White said. A county administration building purchased with federal COVID dollars needs $20 million in work.
But a faction of the current legislature led by Manny Abarca and DaRon McGee has battled with White for more than a year on how to spend those remaining American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars.
The Abraca faction of four Democrats and a Republican who challenged Cleaver’s re-election this year, Sean Smith, want to give the money to local nonprofit groups and local governments that have various needs.
The legislature’s four other members — made up of three Democrats and one Republican — have sided with White, who claims the Abarca faction has not followed rules set out by the county code and federal government in how to distribute those dollars.
And by not following them, White claims the county would be at risk of having to return that money to the federal government.
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Another deal fails
With both sides dug in and time running out, White offered a compromise this week: Divert all the federal money to pay for county employee salaries and existing contracts, which would preserve the money for the county. Then come back next year and decide how to spend an equal amount in county tax dollars on causes the leaders had wanted to use ARPA dollars for.
Half of those future county dollars would be spent on infrastructure projects, and half would go to local nonprofit groups.
“I’m just trying to get us to the point where we can keep these dollars in Jackson County,” White said at Tuesday’s special meeting of the legislature. “You ran us out of time,” he told Abarca, “and so we are here today with this ordinance.”
But the Abarca faction rejected White’s proposal and instead voted on dozens of proposals to distribute the ARPA dollars to an assortment nonprofit groups and public works projects like sporadic sidewalk improvements.
They did so by a vote of 5-3, knowing that White would likely veto all or most of them and recognizing that they did not have enough votes to override his veto before the Dec. 31 deadline.
Frustration in DC
Outside of the House chamber, a fed-up Cleaver said he had been trying to intervene on behalf of the county throughout the day because he knew the current proposals would not fly with the feds.
“There’s nothing that has come by them that meets the regulations of the Department of Treasury as it relates to the ARPA funds,” he said of the legislature’s actions.
“My whole day has almost been on and off phones talking to people. Treasury has been helpful in that we know now that all the previous attempts to pass something wouldn’t have worked with Treasury.”
At the White House last week, Tom Perez, a senior adviser to the president, pulled Cleaver aside and said “this is going to make everybody look bad” if Jackson County has to return the money.
“I’m getting deeper and deeper involved in this thing because the reality is that this is happening to no other entity like Jackson County in the country and the territories.”
Jackson County is “the only one in the whole United States of America with this kind of problem.”
“That alone is an embarrassment to me,” Cleaver said, as he had helped get the county the money in the fist place.
Before the county legislature adjourned on Tuesday, Abarca, who is a former aide to Cleaver, told White that he was hopeful he would compromise and allow some of the spending measures approved Tuesday to become law.
White left the meeting without comment.
Reached Tuesday night by text, Abarca questioned whether Cleaver, a United Methodist church minister and his former boss, was critical of his legislative moves on the ARPA money.
“I know Rev well and know that if that was his opinion, he would share it with me directly,” Abarca wrote. “If I were him, I would be mad at the (county) executive’s inability to compromise, too.”
Indeed, Cleaver made it clear he was unhappy with both sides of the debate in being unable to settle their differences.
“If this thing doesn’t work out in the next few days, they have essentially handcuffed me up here in getting money for Kansas City,” he said.
“They have no choice. They’ve got to get it done or they will have defanged me as their legislator and damaged the Democratic Party.”
County legislators are set to meet again at noon on Wednesday with Christmas break fast approaching.
This story was originally published December 18, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
