PORT ANGELES — The federal government shutdown is becoming a source of concern for the Clallam County Recompete program.
Board of County Commissioners Analyst Angi Klahn presented to commissioners Monday on the impacts the county is going to feel from the shutdown when it comes to grants.
“Luckily, the grants that are affected first federally are the direct federal grants, and most of the county’s grants are indirect, they’re run through the state,” Klahn said.
A few grants are affected right now, but the one taking the largest hit is that for the North Olympic Recompete Coalition program, which is funded through a U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) grant.
“Recompete is really affected,” Klahn said. “The EDA website went dark in August for the normal fiscal shutdown, and at that time, we didn’t necessarily foresee this thing happening, but with the government shutdown, it is not reopening and it will not reopen until the government shutdown is over.”
With the EDA closed, the county will not receive grant funds to pay the partner agencies or the county’s two hired staff members for the program.
“This is affecting the other partners of Recompete as well, and it’s terrible because right now we’re trying to move things forward and we’re gonna lose momentum if we have to mitigate this slow-moving disaster,” Klahn said.
The Recompete program is designed to invest in economically distressed areas where prime-age employment (25-54 years old) is significantly lower than the national average, according to Clallam County’s website.
“The goal of the program is to close this gap with flexible, locally driven investments to create new good-paying jobs ($26-plus per hour in our area),” the website states. “The strategy includes workforce training opportunities to equip people with the skills needed for in-demand jobs, strengthening industries to support job creation and providing wraparound services to ensure a successful transition into a meaningful career.”
The program has six project leads: Olympic Community of Health, Peninsula College, North Olympic Peninsula Resource Conservation & Development Council (NODC), the Port of Port Angeles, Composite Recycling Technology Center (CRTC) and Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal Capital, Inc.
Klahn told the commissioners that there are a few possible scenarios for the program.
“First of all, with everything full on, what we are holding onto right now is $118,000,” she said. “That is everything including all of my salaries and indirects. As you know, I’m actually the analyst for the BOCC and part of my wages are actually budgeted up here, so when we’re looking at ways to look at this and minimize our risk, if we were to look at removing my budgeted salary from this, I can bring it down to $81,000, and then we take out the indirects, we get it down to $60,000.”
Right now, Klahn functions as the interim regency plan coordinator for the Recompete program. Indirects include expenses such as overhead, she said.
When Commissioner Randy Johnson asked how the Recompete partners are doing with this, Klahn provided a breakdown.
“PC (Peninsula College has a lot of federal funding and they’re looking at having to furlough some people,” she said. “They have just got their new associate dean of mobile workforce. They are able to move some funding around to keep him around right now. That is one of their major things because they will completely lose momentum if they have to let him go.”
The NODC has let its subaward contracts know that, as of November, they will run out of money to reimburse, Klahn said. She received a similar notice from Olympic Community of Health on Monday morning.
“Everybody’s at risk on that level,” she said.
Commissioner Mike French questioned Klahn on what the EDA told her before the government shutdown.
“At that point, they said carry on as usual,” she said. “That was in September.”
French said there are two risks at play in this situation.
“One is cash-flow risk, and for a lot of our partners, that cash-flow risk becomes a much higher priority because they’re smaller institutions that have different cash-flow abilities than a county,” he said. “And then there’s the risk of will we get reimbursed for work that we’re doing during the federal shutdown? From a legal perspective, we are under contract, and our contract administrators told us yes, you can be reimbursed for this, yet there is this tiny risk in the back of a lot of our partners’ minds that the federal government may try to illegally claw back this funding that they’re under contract to pay for.”
Another part of the issue is, if the county puts the Recompete program on hold, it is obligated to provide proper notification to employees and partners that there will not be funding.
With that in mind, the discussion centered around putting the program on hold Nov. 30 and providing notification around mid-November, if the federal government shutdown continues.
Commissioners agreed to pick up the topic again in a couple of weeks, but they did not set a date for that conversation.
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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.
