State, Cape County seeking CARES Act direction

When the State of Missouri allocated more than $800 million of federal CARES Act funds to counties in May, it did so with few guidelines about how the money was to be spent except to say it could only be used for COVID-19 pandemic expenses.

According to Cape Girardeau County Auditor Pete Frazier, Missouri officials are looking for guidance from the federal government on exactly how counties should account for how they use Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act funds.

Appearing Monday at a meeting of the Cape Girardeau County Commission, Frazier said he was recently in contact with the Missouri Office of Administration and the Missouri Treasurer’s Office to find out how they want Cape Girardeau County to report the distribution of its $9.2 million CARES Act account.

“The state reported they are still waiting for the U.S. Treasury to give them a little more exact guidelines about what can be claimed for CARES funds and how reporting will take place,” Frazier said.

The County Commission has used several million dollars of the county’s CARES Act fund to reimburse school districts, municipal governments and other organizations in the county for expenses they have incurred to purchase personal protective equipment (PPE) and other coronavirus-related items. The county has also allocated funding to the county health department to fund a countywide antibody study earlier this summer.

Frazier said the state has retained an accounting firm that is establishing a data collection portal to be used by county governments to submit monthly reports on the amounts and reasons for CARES Act expenditures.

“They’ll be looking for an overview of data, a summation of what it was that was being reimbursed,” he said. “If they have additional questions, then they’ll come back to us for any supporting documentation, which would be invoices, receipts and those kinds of things.”

The first report, he said, will be due by Sept. 21.

In other business Monday, the commissioners:

• Approved a motion to accept $17,170.37 in oversurplus funds into the county treasury, as required by state statute, from the county’s recent land tax sale.
• Approved an exchange of bridge replacement and rehabilitation (BRO) funds and “soft match” funds with Dunklin County, which will help both counties pay for several bridge replacement projects.

“They’re going to give us $50,000 of their BRO funds and put it into our BRO account and we’re going to give them $100,000 of matching credit,” First District Commissioner Paul Koeper explained. “We have two bridges we’d like to replace and by us doing this (trading) we will have accumulated enough money in our BRO account to go ahead and do this.”

Koeper said the Missouri Department of Transportation has identified bridges on county roads 420 and 436 as being eligible for replacement using matching credits in which the county would be responsible for 20% of the replacement cost with the remaining 80% paid by federal funds allocated through MoDOT.

“Hopefully by Thursday (at the next County Commission meeting) I’ll have the numbers and we’ll ask permission from MoDOT to replace those bridges,” Koeper said.

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