Special District Grant Accessibility Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. PETTERSEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Special District Grant Accessibility Act, and I thank my colleague, Representative Fallon, for his leadership and bipartisan collaboration on this bill. I also thank the advocates who raised this concern with our office and give a huge shout-out to my team for doing the work to get it to this point.

Special districts are local governments that are created by the people for a community to deliver specialized services. There are 35,000 special districts across the country, and this includes providing services ranging from drinking water and wastewater management to healthcare, transit, natural resource conservation, and much more.

This bipartisan bill will ensure Federal policies better reflect the complexities of local government by creating a Federal definition. I didn't realize that there were so many barriers at the local level to actually drawing down those Federal funds when it comes to community block grants, childcare services, and even transportation needs.

We also saw significant barriers when it came to the pandemic and the ARPA funding that was going down to help support communities through that difficult time. We know that this is a very important and small step forward, but it is going to make a big difference for people across Colorado and the Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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