The state treasurer notes that Washington’s state and local governments will receive about $7 billion from the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act. He is referring to the amounts from the state and local fiscal recovery funds, which are direct funding for governments that are meant to be used to respond to the emergency or cover revenue shortfalls. (I wrote about usage restrictions here. Other posts on the ARP Act are here and here.)

The state and local fiscal recovery funds are not the only pots of money that will flow to states, however. (We’ll have more about the other pots in future posts.)

The state and local fiscal recovery funds are similar to the Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF, part of the CARES Act). In addition to the fiscal recovery funds, the ARP Act appropriates $10 billion for the Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund. The money will go to states for “critical capital projects directly enabling work, education, and health monitoring, including remote options, in response to the public health emergency.” According to U.S. Senate Democrats, Washington will receive $189.4 million from the capital projects fund.

Additionally, U.S. Senate Democrats have estimates of how much each jurisdiction will receive from the state and local fiscal recovery funds. The state of Washington will receive $4.253 billion. On top of that, counties in Washington will receive $1.477 billion and cities will receive $1.184 billion. (The total to jurisdictions in Washington is $7.103 billion.)

For the CRF, the federal government only made direct payments to the state; the city of Seattle; and King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Spokane counties. This time around, the federal government will make direct payments to every jurisdiction. (Of the state’s share of the CRF, the state transferred $232.7 million to counties that did not receive federal payments and $188.3 million to cities that did not receive federal payments.)

The state of Washington received $2.167 billion from the CRF. After the transfers to local governments, the state retained $1.746 billion. Combined with Washington’s share of the state fiscal recovery fund, the state government will have received $5.999 billion in fairly flexible federal funding for coronavirus response.

The tables below show the Senate Democrats’ estimates of Washington’s share of the state and local fiscal recovery funds, along with what each jurisdiction received from the CRF (either directly from the federal government or transferred from the state’s share).