Empowering Rural Communities Act
Sponsored By: Representative Letlow, Julia [R-LA-5]
Introduced
Summary
2.5% technical assistance set-aside for rural grants. This bill would require the Department of Agriculture to reserve at least 2.5% of each Rural Development discretionary grant program's annual funding to pay for technical assistance and pre-development work that helps rural communities prepare stronger applications for broadband, water, housing, and other projects.
Show full summary
- Rural households: More local outreach, project scoping, and application help aims to increase successful awards for broadband, water and wastewater, community facilities, and housing projects.
- Low-capacity and high-need places: Priority goes to communities with no full-time grant staff, historically low participation, or persistent poverty, and to communities with populations of 20,000 or less.
- State offices and technical assistance providers: Each State office must identify high-need communities and coordinate delivery. Funds can go through cooperative agreements, grants, subgrants, or contracts and are not counted toward program administrative limits.
- Public accountability: The Department must publish an annual report listing amounts reserved and spent, communities helped, measures like application completion and award success, and recommendations for improvement.
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Bill Overview
Analyzed Economic Effects
3 provisions identified: 2 benefits, 0 costs, 1 mixed.
More technical help for rural areas
This bill would require the Secretary of Agriculture to reserve at least 2.5% of each Rural Development discretionary grant program's annual appropriation for technical assistance. The reserved money would fund training, project scoping, application development help, pre-development engineering and environmental review support, outreach, and making grant applications project-ready for broadband, water, housing, community facilities and business projects. Priority would go to places that lack full-time grant staff, have historically low participation, or are in persistent poverty, underserved, or high-need rural areas. State Rural Development offices would identify high-need communities and help deliver services fairly. Reserved funds would not count toward a program's statutory administrative expense limit.
Defines key rural eligibility terms
This bill would set official meanings for terms used to run the program. It would define a "low-capacity community" as a rural place with 20,000 people or fewer or that lacks full-time grant staff. It would define "persistent poverty area" as a county where 20% or more of people lived in poverty for at least 30 years. The bill would also define "discretionary grant program," "high-need area/community," "rural area," "Rural Development," "Secretary," and "underserved area" to guide who gets priority help.
No new required appropriation
This bill would not authorize any new appropriations. The Secretary would be allowed to use amounts otherwise appropriated to carry out the Act. Implementation would therefore depend on how much money Congress provides in future appropriations bills.
Sponsors & CoSponsors
Sponsor
Letlow, Julia [R-LA-5]
LA • R
Cosponsors
There are no cosponsors for this bill.
Roll Call Votes
No roll call votes available for this bill.
View on Congress.gov