Category: Public Finance

Update: Treasury has published official population figures for non-metropolitan cities (non-entitlement units). The aid calculator for cities has been updated to reflect the new list of non-entitlement units and their populations. Read our analysis of the impact of these changes.

June 3, 2021

Update: The official aid figures have been published by Treasury for all state, Tribal, territorial, county, and metropolitan cities. Non-metropolitan city estimates have not been published.

May 10, 2021

Update: Looking for effective and creative uses of ARPA aid to make your community better? Read our explainer and share your ideas with us. We’ll keep more updates coming as we have them.

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was signed into law by President Biden on March 11, 2021. ARPA provides $1.9 trillion in economic relief through direct payments (stimulus checks), expanded child tax credits and unemployment benefits, small business loans, and aid to local and state governments.

ARPA allocates $350 billion in aid for state and local governments. This is in addition to the aid previously allocated under prior coronavirus relief efforts (the CARES Act and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act). Unlike aid in the previous supplemental act, aid in ARPA is largely unrestricted.

How can the funds be used?

Both state and local governments are required to submit to Treasury a certification from the governor or other authorized officer of the state attesting that the state, or local government, needs federal assistance for the purposes below.

• Respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by addressing its economic effects, including aid to households, small businesses, nonprofits, and industries such as tourism and hospitality;
• Provide premium pay to essential employees or grants to their employers. Premium pay cannot exceed $13 per hour or $25,000 per worker extra;
• Provide government services affected by a revenue reduction resulting from COVID-19; and/or
• Make necessary investments in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure.

How much is the funding?

• Counties will receive about $195 per resident
• Larger cities (approx. 50,000 residents or more) will receive an average of $200 to $300 per resident (the funding formula for this category takes into account city need)
• Smaller municipalities will receive ~$104 per resident

For comparison, in a typical year, the federal government disburses about $250 per resident in aid to all local governments serving that resident (e.g., city, county), not including federal pass-through education aid. ARPA aid more than doubles that amount ​(“Fiscally Standardized Cities” 2017; Chernick, Copeland, and Reschovsky 2020)​.^​*​

When will the funds come?

Half the funds will be paid by May 10. The other half will be paid no sooner than 12 months later (May 10, 2022).

ARPA Aid Allocations for 200 Largest Cities

Use the table below to look up the aid allocations for your city. Remember the aid amount below will come in two payments. If your city is not listed here, you can find the full aid allocations or estimates for all municipalities in the U.S. below.

ARPA Aid Estimates for 200 Largest Counties

Use the table below to look up the aid allocations for your county. Remember the aid amount below will come in two payments. If your county is not listed here, you can find the full aid allocations for all counties in the U.S. below.

Get Full Estimates Here

Civilytics is publishing aid allocations (when available from Treasury) or aid estimates (for smaller municipalities for which Treasury published populations but not allocations) for 20,000+ local governments in a searchable database available as a public Google Sheet. Access this free resource below:

City Aid Allocations

County Aid Allocations

Total Aid to States and Territories

To understand the scale of these funds, it may be helpful to consider the total aid each state or territory is receiving as part of the American Rescue Plan and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, which provided aid to state and local education agencies (among others).

The following table combines the ARPA allocations published by Treasury with the education allocations published by the U.S. Department of Education to show the total aid to each state. This includes:

• aid for the state/territory itself
• aid for smaller municipalities within the state (disbursed to the state, which will then allocate by municipalities’ population)
• aid to “metropolitan cities” (disbursed directly to those cities as explained above)
• aid to counties (also disbursed directly), and
• aid to state and local education agencies.

The table shows aid for each level of government with all numbers in millions.

Coronavirus Recovery Aid to Local Governments, in Millions

Methodology

Updated 6/3/21: Treasury has published detailed guidance on how aid will be allocated to non-entitlement units. All of our aid estimates have been updated to reflect the new information from Treasury. The only remaining difference will be in how states certify non-entitlement units and the final population of residents living in those NEUs. As a result, we have removed our methodology statement as it no longer applies to the published estimates. You can read the methodology for the old estimates here. We have also removed the text on how our estimates contrasted with Senate aid estimates as neither set of estimates is relevant now.

Updated 5/18/21: Funding amounts for states, counties, and metropolitan cities now come from the official Treasury allocations. Funding amounts for smaller cities (“non-entitlement units”) are still estimated by Civilytics based on the methodology described below because Treasury is not disbursing these funds directly and, thus, did not provide funding estimates for these municipalities.