Relief money will fund services, help families
By Ted Slowik
Daily Southtown
Fatigued Southlanders ready to put the pandemic behind them will have more money in their pockets when they are ready to venture out again.
“This means that soon, folks across the country will begin receiving $1,400 direct relief payments,” U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Matteson, said Friday.
The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan also will pump millions of dollars directly into local government coffers to help pay for essential services. The measure funds services to combat the health care crisis and helps people living in poverty, Kelly said.
“The American Rescue Plan is one of the most significant pieces of legislation since the New Deal,” she said.
About a dozen south suburban mayors joined Kelly and other officials outside Matteson Village Hall to discuss how the legislation will affect families, businesses, government and others.
The bill provides $350 billion to help state and local governments whose revenues declined because of decreased economic activity as a result of COVID-19, Kelly said. That includes $77.5 million in direct relief to suburban communities in Kelly’s 2nd District, she said.
“This money will ensure that our local governments can pay their workers, continue providing essential services to constituents and help with replenishing revenues lost during the past year,” she said.
The plan directs $20 billion nationwide for a vaccination program, she said. Additional money is allocated to expand coronavirus testing, provide personal protective equipment to first responders and others, and to help schools reopen.
Federal unemployment benefits of $300 per week will be extended into September to supplement state benefits. The plan provides $28.6 billion to help restaurants and bars hit hard by the pandemic, Kelly said. The measure expands the Child Tax Credit and increases the annual amount per child to $3,000, she said.
“The package is going to help families right here in our district,” she said.
Kelly said she pushed to include an amendment that expands Medicaid coverage for new mothers for up to one year after giving birth. Medicaid coverage currently ends 60 days after mothers give birth, she said.
“This expansion of benefits will allow women to receive care when they need to and not just when they feel they can afford to,” Kelly said.
Matteson Mayor Sheila Chalmers-Currin said communities have struggled to serve growing numbers of residents who need help while municipalities have lost revenue.
“Despite immense fiscal pressure, our local governments oversaw those efforts, while trying to maintain essential services and increase our internal capacity to provide support for residents and businesses,” Chalmers-Currin said.
Towns will immediately spend funds they receive, she said, which will help grow the economy.
“We can now help close deep budget holes and enable communities to be the engine of our recovery,” she said. “We can now preserve and maintain the desperately needed resources for cities of all sizes.”
Mayors of Chicago Heights, Country Club Hills, Glenwood, Harvey, Hazel Crest, Kankakee, Olympia Fields, Park Forest, Phoenix, Richton Park and Thornton attended the event, as did Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, D-Lynwood.
“This is so important for the south suburbs,” Glenwood Mayor Ronald Gardiner said. “The human and financial devastation this has caused, especially for the south suburbs, has been palpable.”
Senior citizens are among those who stand to benefit from the legislation, he said.
“We had to cut back on a lot of programs,” Gardiner said. “These funds are going to help provide those services.”
Richton Park Mayor Rick Reinbold said every community in the Southland had to reduce services. There were fewer clerks to accept water bill payments and fewer drivers to provide transportation services for older residents, among other examples.
“This legislation will allow us, on a municipal level, to restore a lot of the programming that because of reduced revenues due to the pandemic we were no longer able to provide,” Reinbold said.
Towns also have cut back on capital spending. The influx of cash ought to help create more construction jobs.
“We’ve all had to defer infrastructure maintenance and improvements,” he said.
The legislation also provides significant funding to help residents pay rent and mortgages, officials said.
State Rep. Debbie Meyers-Martin, D-Matteson, said she was talking with representatives of various state agencies about distributing the new federal funding for housing assistance, social services and other programs.
“I look forward to working with the mayors to make sure that this time, those dollars flow quickly and easily,” Meyers-Martin said.
Kelly said she, like millions of other Americans, personally experienced losses because of the pandemic. An uncle died last summer, she said. Also, she was related to Ted Lumpkin Jr., a Tuskegee Airman who died in January. He was 100 years old but still active, she said.
“I was in Mexico with him dancing at a wedding just two years prior,” Kelly said. “This affects everybody. I’m one of many who has suffered.”
I asked Kelly about how the past four years have felt like an attack on government itself, that efforts to sweep away regulations and purge personnel caused many to question the need for taxpayer-funded services.
“Government matters,” she replied. “To me, government is the safety net that people rely on. You might be riding high one day, but because of sickness or the loss of a job, you’re in need of rental assistance or food.”
Mayors standing behind Kelly nodded their heads as she talked about how the pandemic affected households that never before sought assistance from food pantries and other services.
“Sometimes people in the nicest of cars have driven up,” she said. “They had a good job before COVID hit, then they found themselves without a job.”