If you controlled the State of New Jersey, how would you spend $1.4 billion in federal funds that’s just sitting in state coffers? You can now have at least a little say in it.
State officials are taking suggestions about how $1.4 billion in unspent funds from the American Rescue Act should be allocated. New Jersey received a total of $6.24 billion from the legislation, passed in response to the outbreak of Covid-19 in the U.S., and has already spent or allocated around $4.7 billion of it.
The remaining $1.4 billion? Nothing has been decided on how to spend it.
So far, some suggestions for how to use it include youth mental health, boosting higher education, $1,000 payments for full-time in-person frontline healthcare workers in the early days of Covid and $500 for part-timers, prevention of hate and bias crimes, among others.
If you have a suggestion for how the $1.4 billion should be spent, you can email it to outreach@nj.gov.