City to get $100M more
Will divvy up relief cash for defunct Suffolk County
But wait, there’s more! Boston’s expecting to receive a windfall of another $100 million or more in coronavirus recovery money — on top of the $434 million it’s already getting — because the feds budgeted big bucks for the nonexistent Suffolk County government.
President Biden’s “American Rescue Plan” bill that signed into law last month included $156 million for Suffolk County, which is made up of Boston, Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop.
But Suffolk County dissolved its government in 1999. So that money, the state says, will be split between the four municipalities on a per-capita basis — meaning Boston, by far the largest of the four, will get the lion’s share.
“We’re expecting between $100 million and $120 million” of that money, Boston’s newly minted Chief Financial Officer Justin Sterritt told the Herald on Thursday. That’s nearly as much as the $121 million the Hub received through the CARES Act a year ago.
He said the appearance of this money wasn’t actually a surprise — this is what the legislation says to do in cases like this, and he said the city lobbied to that effect as the law was being written.
The situation playing out in Suffolk County also will be the case for the seven other counties of Massachusetts that have dissolved their governments: Berkshire, Essex, Franklin, Hampden, Hampshire, Middlesex and Worcester. That means that the state’s nextlargest cities, Springfield and Worcester — in Hampden and Worcester counties, respectively — will also be in line for some more cash.
In total, the feds budgeted $1.34 billion for the state’s 14 counties out of the $8.1 billion coming to the Bay State.
The county cash will take some time to work out, because the state is waiting on final numbers.
In Boston, Sterritt said the city is remaining focused on spending the $434 million budgeted specifically for the Hub. The cash will come in two chunks, with about half showing up in the next month and the other half about a year later, he said, and he expects the county money to follow the same pattern. He said the legislation gives fairly wide latitude for spending the money, so it can go toward replacing lost revenue, battling the disease and economic recovery efforts. Acting Mayor Kim Janey earlier this week announced she’d be putting $36 million of it into a fund for rental relief.
Sterritt, who was just promoted from his position as the city’s budget director this week, noted that the city has until December 2024 to spend the cash, so the idea is to stretch it out so people don’t “fall off the fiscal cliff ” like they did when stimulus spending for the Great Recession.
He said the city will unveil more specific plans for the massive influx of dough in a couple of weeks alongside the city’s annual budget.