Shad Burner and Missouri’s management of the ARPA windfall

Missouri received $2.7 billion in ARPA funds. What's next? The package, developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, is one of the most extensive economic rescue plans in U.S. history.

Please don’t call Shad Burner Santa Claus.

The Bernie, Missouri, native, director of Federal Initiatives for the state’s Department of Economic Development (DED), has no sack of toys on his back this holiday season, but he is helping lead a process that is potentially lifechanging for Missourians.

Burner is the state’s point person for DED distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money.

According to the news release announcing his appointment, “[Burner] will oversee new recovery programs created as a result of the American Rescue Plan.”

Background in coordinating financing

Burner, appointed to his current role Dec. 16, 2021, has a history of connecting people and programs to available financing.

While in a previous position as DED’s Southeast Regional Manager, Burner helped coordinate statewide COVID-19 initiatives, connecting employers with vaccination resources. Burner has also led other economic development projects, including the location of Delta Peanut in Kennett, Missouri, and helping other key employers expand and grow in the 25-county Southeast region.

He continues to serve as Gov. Mike Parson’s Missouri designee on the eight-state Delta Regional Authority (DRA), a job creation and economic development consortium “[making] strategic investments of federal appropriations into the physical and human infrastructure of Delta communities,” in the words of DRA’s website.

Brief history of ARPA

President Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act into law March 11, 2021.

The package, developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, is one of the most extensive economic rescue plans in U.S. history.

Municipalities, counties and states have been sent ARPA money with a collective mandate to commit the resources allocated by no later than 2024 and to have it spent fully by the end of 2026.

U.S. Treasury’s “final rule,” governing the way all ARPA recipients may spend money and how those expenditures are tracked, went into effect April 1, 2022.

“We will have to report back [to Treasury] to ensure we’re compliant with the rules [and] there’s a pretty robust set of guidelines governing how anyone spends ARPA funds,” Burner said.

Missouri and ARPA

In all, the state received approximately $2.7 billion in ARPA funds. During the 2022 state General Assembly regular session, Missouri Department of Economic Development was allocated approximately $500 million “for grant programs to support economic recovery and development of communities, businesses and organizations across the state,” according to a handout prepared by DED.

This article is addressed to the monies allocated specifically to DED.

Grant programs and broadband

Burner’s Federal Initiatives office, as part of DED, oversees nine programs utilizing ARPA money. Information in this section may be considered accurate as of Nov. 21, 2022.

By far, Broadband infrastructure is the largest of the nine programs with a funding level of $265 million.

“We have received more than 300 applications and more than $1 billion in funding requests,” Burner said.

He added that applications are now closed and decisions on allocations should be announced by mid-December.

Gov. Parson signaled the importance of broadband in an August 19, 2021, press conference at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia.

“Investing in our broadband infrastructure is critical to unlocking our full economic potential in this state and will serve Missourians for generations to come,” Parson said. “We expect this investment to increase broadband internet connectivity and access in every corner of the state for hundreds of thousands of Missourians. Quality internet supports learning, health care, business and agriculture in today’s economy, and we are excited to capitalize on this opportunity to truly make a difference and improve lives.”

Burner told B Magazine DED has received 500 “challenges” from those disputing the applications of others.

“Basically, a dispute arises when there is overlap, when two or more applicants say they serve a specific geographic area with broadband. We’ll have to navigate those challenges and try to resolve them. We’ll judge each application on a case-by-case basis to make a determination,” Burner said.

He said a specific process is in place for reviewing broadband grant requests.

“We’ll have an internal review committee and a scoring process in place. The top scoring applications will be funded based on score,” Burner said.

The challenge process for broadband closed Nov. 13, 2022.

Workforce training and growth

Applications have also closed for $30 million in grant funding for this program.

“Businesses can make a specific request themselves or a consortium of companies can do so under the umbrella of a Chamber of Commerce. This is particularly the case if a community had a training need for a specific industry,” Burner said.

He added that more than 100 applications have been received. In total, the requests are for “far more money” than DED has in the workforce training pot.

One possible initiative could provide money to attract workers with certain skills to move to the state. Such a program is in place in West Virginia, a state with a negative birth rate.

According to CNBC, the Mountain State is offering $20,000 in cash and incentives to people willing to move to West Virginia with their families and live there for at least two years in a program called “Ascend West Virginia.” The program hopes to attract more than 1,000 workers to the state over a five-year period, the network reported.

Community revitalization

Applications closed Nov. 30, 2022, for this $100 million fund.

“This program was always meant to be a big community priority bucket for major initiatives within a community that have a lot of local support,” Burner said.

“In the guidelines, we list some ideas for applications — blight mitigation, downtown revitalization, parks, sidewalks, critical community infrastructure vital to redevelopment.”

Local tourism asset development

The DED accepted applications through Dec. 14, 2022, for this grant program funded at the $30 million level.

Among other interested parties in state tourism money through ARPA are the Jackson Area Chamber of Commerce and Uptown Jackson Revitalization Organization (UJRO).

Industrial site development

“We’ve done a focus group on the guidelines and held a public comment period. We’re pretty excited,” said Burner, who notes this program will be funded at the $75 million level.

“This money will fall into two buckets, one for $50 million for sites that have at least 1,000 contiguous acres and one for $25 million for less than 1,000 [contiguous acres]. We’re defining what these buckets look like and the parameters around them right now,” he said. “I think the Cape Girardeau Industrial Park would likely have an eligible application along with most industrial parks throughout Missouri.”

Small business development

Applications are being accepted for this $10 million program, which has proven popular at the outset, Burner said.

“We opened the application process on Nov. 16, 2022, and within five days, we had over 500 requests come with the total ask of more than $11 million. We took over 70 phone calls on the first day,” he said. “Unlike some of the other programs, we consider small business to be ‘first-in, first out,’ meaning we’ll have a 60-day window to review the requests as they come in and then we’ll fund them as quickly as we can and continue until the bucket is exhausted.”

Other

The following three DED grant programs were still having draft guidelines developed at B Magazine press time, Burner advised, with applications expected to open sometime in December.

Entertainment Industry: $5 million.

Nonprofit Industry: $7.5 million.

Cell Tower Grants: $20 million.

Impact

“A lot of these programs are new, so very intentionally we decided early on to create a process where we built these programs in conjunction with the folks who would actually use them,” Burner said.

“We’ve had robust public comment and focus group meetings and the result is we’ve done things a little slower than we might have liked based on the feedback we’ve gotten. Hopefully, this will create a better result in the end. We were willing to sacrifice on the original aggressive timelines to get the programs set up well.”

Burner said all the positions connected to Federal Initiatives, including his own, are temporary — funded by ARPA money that must all be spent before 2027.

The knowledge that his job will dissolve along with the positions of others working with him creates a special set of circumstances, he said.

“It can make it hard to recruit folks when they know at the outset their positions will go away. The ones who come on, therefore, are doing it because, frankly, they’re excited. They’re passionate. I’ve been very, very happy with the folks who have joined our team,” Burner said.

More Information

To learn more about the ARPA grant programs being administered by the state Department of Economic Development through the Federal Initiatives office, visit moarpa.mo.gov.

Burner holds a monthly webinar on the first Friday of each month at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time for those who seek an interactive conversation.

To sign up, visit https://ded2.mo.gov/one-stop-arpa-resources.