Boone County Commissioners announced late Wednesday afternoon that they were unveiling their plan to spend millions in remaining CARES Act money.
But their news release doesn’t say where the money is going.
The Missourian reported Monday that the County Commission, tasked with getting the money to the places it’s needed most, had only distributed about $3 million of the $21.2 million it received. The CARES Act money must be distributed or committed to a recipient by Dec. 30, or it goes back to the federal government. It can only cover costs incurred by the end of this year.
The release states that county officials, who received the money eight months ago, are confident 100% of the funding will be distributed before Dec. 30 and that it has sent out contracts to funding recipients.
Of the 12 paragraphs in the release, seven are devoted to explaining why it has taken the county so long to distribute the money. None detail where the remaining money will go.
However, Presiding Commissioner Dan Atwill was quoted in the news release, where he made an effort to explain how organizations were prioritized in terms of funding.
“We had a lot of very worthy organizations apply for funding,” Atwill said. “Unfortunately, due to limited funding, we were compelled to only fund the organizations that had been impacted most by the pandemic and those organizations that would play the greatest role in Boone County’s recovery. We were forced to make some very tough decisions.”
Janet Thompson, who represents the northern district on the commission, told the Missourian that as soon as contracts are finalized, the recipients of the funding will be announced.
The news release said the likelihood of a federal audit, the high number of requests for funding, the “exhaustive process” of reviewing applications and the fact that many applicants withdrew their applications because they already received funding from other sources while they were waiting for the County Commission, were reasons for the slow pace at which they’ve distributed the money.
Michelle Hall, who is listed in the news release as the media contact, did not respond to calls from the Missourian on Wednesday afternoon asking who would be receiving the funding.