71 | The Role of Evidence in Local Spending of Pandemic Fiscal Relief Funds

On the Evidence

Last year’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was the largest one-time federal investment in state, local, and Tribal governments in the past century, and it included $350 billion meant for governments to respond to and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. State, local, and Tribal governments have wide latitude in how they can spend the money, including the use of evaluation and data management tools that can improve the efficacy of public health and economic assistance programs. On the latest episode of On the Evidence, guests Zachary Markovits, Candace Miller, and Christy McFarland discuss the role that data and evidence are playing in state and local spending of ARPA fiscal relief funds. Markovits is the vice president and local practice lead at Results for America. His organization partnered with Mathematica to create the ARP Data and Evidence Dashboard (https://results4america.org/tools/arp-dashboard/), a free online tool that uses publicly available plans from local governments to analyze trends and assess the extent to which localities use data and evidence to guide how they spend their ARPA coronavirus fiscal relief funds. The dashboard is meant to inform and inspire state, local, and Tribal governments as they spend their coronavirus fiscal relief funds, half of which won’t be available until the spring. Miller is a principal researcher at Mathematica who helped create the ARP Data and Evidence Dashboard with Results for America. She also leads Mathematica’s work with Washington State on contact tracing and has appeared on a previous episode of On the Evidence to discuss the opportunities of and challenges to implementing an equitable approach to contact tracing during the COVID-19 pandemic. McFarland is the research director at the National League of Cities, which has developed the Local Government ARPA Investment Tracker (https://www.nlc.org/resource/local-government-arpa-investment-tracker/) and a local action tracker for COVID-19 (https://www.nlc.org/resource/covid-19-local-action-tracker/). Find a full transcript of the episode here: mathematica.org/blogs/the-role-of-evidence-in-how-local-governments-spend-federal-pandemic-relief-funds Explore the ARP Data and Evidence Dashboard from Mathematica and Results for America: https://results4america.org/tools/arp-dashboard/ Explore the Local Government ARPA Investment Tracker from National League of Cities, Brookings Metro, and the National Association of Counties: https://www.nlc.org/resource/local-government-arpa-investment-tracker/ Read a blog by Zachary Markovits about how the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund in the American Rescue Plan Act encourages state, local, and Tribal governments to invest in solutions with evidence of effectiveness: https://results4america.medium.com/5-ways-governments-can-make-the-american-rescue-plan-work-for-all-526c8cda2537 Explore the Local Action Tracker from the National League of Cities, which collects and shares municipal responses to COVID-19: https://www.nlc.org/resource/covid-19-local-action-tracker/ Read an overview of the final rule from the U.S. Department of the Treasury on the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Relief Funds: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/SLFRF-Final-Rule-Overview.pdf