Shutdown effects could ripple locally

Rome and Floyd County school and government officials are keeping an eye on Congress after an agreement to fund the government for two more weeks.

Rome and Floyd County government and school officials were scrambling early Monday to determine how the federal shutdown would affect their operations.

Departmental conferences started in the morning — before Congress announced an agreement to fund the government through Feb. 8. The temporary fix comes with a promise to address the issue of Dreamers, young adults brought to the country illegally as children. That gives local officials just over two weeks to firm up their positions before the next voting deadline arrives.

While federal money is not a large part of Rome and Floyd County budgets overall, it is a major source for some specific programs.

Airport construction, specialized police equipment, school lunches and transit service are among the items at risk.

“We’ll just have to keep an eye on things,” Floyd County Finance Director Susie Gass said. “We’re hopeful they’ll get it all fixed. There’s no talk of scaling back on anything right now.”

Most of the federal grants to local schools and governments are the reimbursable type, which means the money can be drawn only after a request that includes receipts showing how it’s been spent.

Rome City Schools Superintendent Lou Byars and Chris Toles, finance director for Floyd County Schools, both said their reimbursements are current. Also, local property taxes were paid in November, so there’s money in the bank.

“We’re flush right now,” Toles said. “We’re prepared for a short-term stop.”

Both school systems get federal money for their lunch programs, special education, Title I to help at-risk students and Title II for professional development.

Rome also was recently granted Title IV money: about $63,000 a year for technology initiatives and $350,000 a year for ASPIRE afterschool programs at four elementary schools.

Byars said even if the reimbursements were temporarily suspended, students and faculty members wouldn’t see an impact.

“We’ve got enough money in our account to cover the expenses until the money comes in,” he said. “It would

just be a matter of keeping up the books and waiting.”

The situation could get dicey if a shutdown were to last longer than a month or so, though.

Rome Finance Director Sheree Shore said the transit department is probably the city’s biggest recipient of federal grants, which pay for bus service operations and equipment.

“We’ve actually drawn most of the transit funding for this year. What would really be impacted if this thing lingered on would be 2018 money,” she said.

The federal fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.

Community development projects and entitlement funds also depend on the federal budget. A lengthy delay in reimbursements could mean deferring some programmed work such as sidewalk improvements or minor home repair assistance.

“For the short term, we’re OK,” Shore said. “If this were July or August, it would be a different discussion. But because we have drawn so much and are pretty much caught up, it’s not so bad right now.”

Gass said some of the county court functions also are grant-funded, although the money flows through the state. It wasn’t immediately clear how a federal shutdown would ripple through the layers of government.

Generally, the agencies that administer the grants would sent notice of the effects. None of them had as of Monday.

“We’ll just see what happens when we get closer to Feb. 8,” Gass said. “If it looks as if they’re not going to come to some agreement, I imagine we’ll hear from those agencies.”