Late last week, the President signed the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 into law. As we reported last week, the bill includes significant increases in some key municipal priorities.
We want to thank all of you who reached out to your colleagues in Federal office on this long-awaited, bipartisan compromise. We also want to thank our friends at the National League of Cities (NLC) for their advocacy, on our behalf, day in and day out, in our Nation’s Capital. And especially, we want to thank all the Members of our State’s Congressional delegation for their efforts to protect and strengthen the Federal-State-Municipal partnership of service to our citizens and businesses.
We’ve come a long way from last March, when the new Administration proposed a FY 2018 budget that would have eliminated $54 Billion from programs that municipalities use to better serve their citizens and businesses. In response to that proposal, NLC launched its #FightTheCuts campaign. After six months of stalemate and a series of Continuing Resolutions, Congress rejected the austerity budget and approved The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, which increased the overall amount of federal funding available for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 by nearly $300 billion.
As reported last week, the FY 2018 Omnibus includes:
- CDBG: First meaningful increase since 2010, from $3 billion to $3.3 billion.
- Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER): Increased by $1 billion.
- Airport Discretionary Grants Targeting Small and Rural Airports: Increased by $1 billion.
- Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Funds: Increased by $300 million each.
- Transit Infrastructure Grants: Increased by $834 million (including $400 million to help communities modernize their bus systems and $400 million for capital assistance to transit systems).
- Rural Broadband Infrastructure: $600 million in new funds.
- State and Local Law Enforcement Grants: Increased by $1.2 billion for a total of $2.9 billion in 2018. This includes a total of $446.5 million, an increase of $299.5 million more than Fiscal Year 2017, in DOJ grant funding to help state and local communities respond to the opioid crisis.
- State Opioid Response Grants: $1 billion in new funding for grants to states to address the opioid crisis (this funding is in addition to the $500 million provided in the 21st Century Cures Act).
- National Pre-Disaster Mitigation Fund: Pre-disaster mitigation funding increased from $149 million to $249 million to build infrastructure that prevents loss of life and mitigates risks, reduces damage from future disasters, and lowers flood insurance premiums.
- HUD-VA Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) Vouchers: Increase funding of $40 million for new vouchers, while also protecting VA resources providing case management for homeless veterans.
Specific funding level changes are located on NLC’s FY18 Budget Tracker here.
Please thank Senators Menendez and Booker and your Congressperson for their efforts on this matter.
Contact: Jon Moran, Senior Legislative Analyst, jmoran@njslom.org, 609-695-3481, x121.
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