The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on March 11, 2021, to provide economic relief in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The American Rescue Plan Act provides $350 billion in emergency funding for state, local, territorial, and Tribal governments to:

• respond to the COVID-19 public health emergency, or its negative economic impacts, including by providing assistance to households, small businesses, and nonprofits, or aid to impacted industries, such as tourism, travel, and hospitality;
• respond to workers performing essential work during the COVID-19 pandemic by providing premium pay to eligible workers of the State, territorial or Tribal government performing essential work or by providing grants to eligible employers that have eligible worker;
• provide government services, to the extent COVID-19 caused a reduction of revenues collected in the most recent full fiscal year of the State, territorial, or Tribal government; or make necessary investments in water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure.

The US Treasury Department continues to indicate that they do not expect to issue final funding allocations and implementation guidance until near May 11^th. However, the Treasury Department has released a pre-award statement on what information states and local governments should begin to assemble to assist in the receipt of funds from the American Rescue Plan’s State and Local Recovery Relief Fund.

State and local governments are urged to make sure they have assembled the requested information for direct payment: principally a DUNS number; an active registration in the System for Award Management (SAM); an entity payment information such as an EIN, name, and title of an authorized representative; and relevant banking information such as routing and account number, financial institution name, and contact information.

Click here for the Treasury guidance website.

The Recovery Fund provides funding for critical projects, and includes: $195 billion for states, $130 billion for local governments, including counties, cities, and smaller local governments, $20 billion for tribal governments, and$4.5 billion for territories.

About Jack:

As Chief Advocacy Officer, Jack Johnson manages the overall public policy operations at Destinations International including member advocacy education and training, development of destination tools and best practices, coalition work with peer organizations, industry research and related public affairs activities.  He also oversees the board governance, the Destination Management Accreditation Program (DMAP) and the DestinationNEXT (Assessments and Planning) Program. Johnson brings unrivaled experience developing innovative strategies, policy solutions and civic consensus for government, not-for-profits and small businesses.

Johnson has received numerous accolades including being named as one of Successful Meetings’ 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry in 2018 for his work on opposing travel boycotts and bans. Currently, his work around positioning destination organizations as a shared value in each of their communities and speaking with a new lexicon based on the emotion-driven by those values has made him one of the leading voices of the travel industry.

During his previous tenure with Choose Chicago, Johnson played a leading role in the extensive reforms of the McCormick Place Convention Center and the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau, resulting in a new convention center operating model with both a travel industry and a citywide civic perspective. Johnson was integrally involved in the merger of the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau and the Chicago Office of Tourism, resulting in maximizing their resources, unifying the message and embedding the organization into the city’s economic development strategy.