The county executive’s latest move has been to demand the return of unused ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds from ECGRA and Diverse Erie for the recent blizzard. Instead, on December 19th, ECGRA approved a $500,000 grant to the county to cover the snow clean-up–more than the amount of unspent ARPA money, acting in the taxpayers’ best interests. Diverse Erie has since filed a lawsuit, since Erie County Council has granted them $1.5 million in ARPA money that the county executive refuses to certify. Again, ARPA funds were granted by the federal government and were distributed to help communities “bounce back” from the COVID pandemic. The county executive habitually accuses both ECGRA and Diverse Erie of a “lack of transparency.” However, both entities undergo routine audits without issues, and their use of ARPA funds benefits a much wider demographic of taxpayers than Project NepTWNE.
No demand was made of Gannon University, however, to return their unused ARPA money. Why not them? Have they undergone audits as to how the money was spent so far? Don’t the taxpayers deserve transparency there?
Considering that the ARPA funds were supposed to go to helping communities bounce back from the pandemic, and $1.5 million was given to Project NepWTNE for what was originally a water remediation lab in the Union Fish Building
and is now a display in Blasco Library, maybe the taxpayers are owed some transparency there.
Maybe the county executive is confused about what transparency really means. Maybe Santa could bring him a dictionary, but he’d have to be on the nice list for that, and demanding the return of ARPA money isn’t the way to get on that list. Guess he’ll have to get a dictionary from the library. Oh, yeah….right.
For more details, please take a look at these local media links:
ECGRA solicitor: Erie County executive has no authority to unilaterally redirect ARP funds
Diverse Erie rejects Brenton Davis directive to return unspent American Rescue Plan funds
Diverse Erie sues Brenton Davis for withholding funds approved by Erie County Council
Diverse Erie sues Brenton Davis for refusing to release over $1 million in ARP funding
“Speak the truth. Transparency breeds legitimacy.”
~John C Maxwell
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