COLUMBIA, S.C. — The U.S. Department of Treasury has released the allocation to states from the federal coronavirus relief package.
According to the Department of Treasury, South Carolina will receive nearly $2.5 billion in aid. These funds are part of the $350 billion allocation that was included in the American Rescue Plan.
The state is projected to receive $435 million dollars from non-entitlement units. According to the US Treasury, 'local governments that are not included in the Allocation for Metropolitan Cities table may be designated as non-entitlement units.'
"It's an incredible sum of money," said Curtis Loftis, South Carolina Treasurer. "The $435 million is for Direct Payments for cities, under 50,000. For cities over 50,000 is another $191 million for the school districts. It's $3.2 billion, for the counties, it's another billion dollars, and then for the states is $2.5 billion.”
State and local governments must use all their allocated funds by 2024.
"We have a lot of smaller cities and towns and even counties that don't have big staff," Loftis said. "So they're looking at. We've got a lot of money, how do we spend it."
In Kershaw County, they are expected to receive $12 million. The County Administrator, Vic Carpenter, said they will be cautious with their funds.
“We're not going to just try to spend it all as fast as we can, only to find out later that we had unknown needs that were kind of percolating below the surface that hadn't risen up or to find out that we had interpreted incorrectly and spend it on something," Carpenter said.
Carpenter said they first plan to use the funds by replacing lost income, supporting local critical employees, and fixing the counties infrastructure.
Loftis said he is grateful for these funds, but he's concerned over how much money is being borrowed and printed.
"What I fear is that we're going to drive the economy down," Loftis said. "I fear that we're gonna have this flattening out where there's so much money has been printed, and the data is so large that it's going to plague, not only this generation but for generations to come."