Common use of Eligible Uses Clause in Contracts

Eligible Uses. A. Public Health and Economic Impacts Sections 602(c)(1)(A) and 603(c)(1)(A) provide significant resources for State, territorial, Tribal governments, and counties, metropolitan cities, and nonentitlement units of local governments (each referred to as a recipient) to meet the wide range of public health and economic impacts of the COVID–19 public health emergency. These provisions authorize the use of payments from the Fiscal Recovery Funds to respond to the public health emergency with respect to COVID–19 or its negative economic impacts. Section 602 and section 603 also describe several types of uses that would be responsive to the impacts of the COVID– 19 public health emergency, including assistance to households, small businesses, and nonprofits and aid to impacted industries, such as tourism, travel, and hospitality.20 Accordingly, to assess whether a program or service is included in this category of eligible uses, a recipient should consider whether and how the use would respond to the COVID–19 public health emergency. Assessing whether a program or service ‘‘responds to’’ the COVID–19 public health emergency requires the recipient to, first, identify a need or negative impact of the COVID–19 public health emergency and, second, identify how the program, service, or other intervention addresses the identified need or impact. While the COVID–19 The interim final rule implements these provisions by identifying a non- exclusive list of programs or services that may be funded as responding to COVID–19 or the negative economic impacts of the COVID–19 public health emergency, along with considerations for evaluating other potential uses of the Fiscal Recovery Funds not explicitly listed. The interim final rule also provides flexibility for recipients to use payments from the Fiscal Recovery Funds for programs or services that are not identified on these non-exclusive lists but that fall under the terms of section 602(c)(1)(A) or 603(c)(1)(A) by responding to the COVID–19 public health emergency or its negative economic impacts. As an example, in determining whether a program or service responds to the negative economic impacts of the COVID–19 public health emergency, the interim final rule provides that payments from the Fiscal Recovery Funds should be designed to address an economic harm resulting from or exacerbated by the public health emergency. Recipients should assess the connection between the negative economic harm and the COVID–19 public health emergency, the nature and extent of that harm, and how the use of this funding would address such harm. As discussed, the pandemic and the necessary actions taken to control the spread had a severe impact on households and small businesses, including in particular low-income workers and communities and people of color. While eligible uses under sections 602(c)(1)(A) and 603(c)(1)(A) provide flexibility to recipients to identify the most pressing local needs, Treasury encourages recipients to provide assistance to those households, businesses, and non-profits in communities most disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.