Agenda - Council - 09/13/2022 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Treasury Response: In the final rule, Treasury maintains the interim final rule's approach that general economic development or workforce development, meaning activities that do not respond to negative economic impacts of the pandemic and rather seek to more generally enhance the jurisdiction's business climate, would generally not be eligible under this eligible use category. As noted above, to identify an eligible use of funds under this category, a recipient must identify a beneficiary or class of beneficiaries that experienced a harm or impact due to the pandemic, and eligible uses of funds must be reasonably designed to respond to the harm, benefit the beneficiaries that experienced it, and be related and reasonably proportional to that harm or impact. As noted above, recipients should analyze eligible uses based on the beneficiary of the assistance, and recipients may not provide assistance to small businesses or impacted industries that did not experience a negative economic impact. Provision of assistance to a business that did not experience a negative economic impact, under the theory that such assistance would generally grow the economy and therefore enhance opportunities for workers, would not be an eligible use, because such assistance is not reasonably designed to impact individuals or classes that have been identified as having experienced a negative economic impact. In other words, there is not a reasonable connection between the assistance provided and an impact on the beneficiaries. Such an activity would be attenuated from and thus not reasonably designed to benefit the households that experienced the negative economic impact. Research cited by some University, Arlington, VA, September 2015), available at: https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/Coates-Sports- Franchises.pdf; Dennis Coates and Brad R. Humphreys, Do Economists Reach a Conclusion on Subsidies for Sports Franchises, Stadiums, and Mega -Events?, Econ Journal Watch 5, no. 3 (2008): 294-315, available at: https://econjwatch.org/articles/do-economists-reach-a-conclusion-on-subsidies-for-sports-franchises-stadiums-and- mega-events; Matthew D. Mitchell, Daniel Sutter, and Scott Eastman, The Political Economy of Targeted Economic Development Incentives, Review of Regional Studies 48, no. 1 (2018): 1-9, available at: https://www.mercatus.org/publications/corporate-welfare/political-economy-targeted-economic-development- incentives. 218