The AGC-backed legislation led by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Alex Padilla (D-CA) makes several categories of infrastructure investments—including transportation—and disaster relief explicitly eligible for unspent COVID-19 relief dollars.

The $1.7 trillion federal government funding bill signed into law on December 29 included an AGC-backed provision to provide flexibility for American Rescue Plan Funds to be spent more broadly on infrastructure. You might recall, AGC has previously reported on legislative efforts to make this clarification and also directly advocated for the change with the Department of Treasury.

This legislation clarifies that several categories of infrastructure investments—including transportation projects—and disaster relief are eligible for unspent COVID-19 relief dollars, eliminating ambiguity as to whether such projects could receive these funds. In addition, the cap on how much of the COVID money can be spent on these new purposes would be the greater of $10 million or 30% of the funds.

For more information, contact Alex Etchen at [email protected].