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

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were furloughed, avoiding layoffs, providing worker retention incentives, and paying for ancillary administrative costs related to hiring. Treasury believes this expanded approach, relative to the interim final rule, provides useful flexibility to recipients, which may increase a state or local government's ability to effectively deliver services to its residents. While the interim final rule already explicitly permitted using funds to restore recipients' workforces up to pre -pandemic levels, the final rule's inclusion of an upward adjustment factor recognizes that, as the population or economy of a jurisdiction grows over time, more workers are generally needed to effectively meet responsibilities. It also provides recipients greater room to employ funds toward building back the public sector workforce after years of chronic underinvestment since the Great Recession. Treasury arrived at the 7.5 percent adjustment factor through an analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on state and local government employment and data from the Census Bureau on population to estimate the extent of underinvestment in the public sector since the onset of the Great Recession. While Treasury considered a range of methodologies and point estimates to set the adjustment factor, a 7.5 percent factor errs on the side of recipient flexibility. Treasury believes this adjustment enhances recipients' ability to identify and meet the particularized needs of their communities. Treasury also believes that the additional enumerated eligible uses for supporting the workforce provide recipients several means to help retain current workers, decreasing turnover costs. Identifying Eligible Populations Treasury has provided several methods for recipients to identify households, populations, and communities eligible for services that respond to the public health and negative economic 384