Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By ZACHARY MARANO
Bessemer — Troy Cumings from the Grand Rapids-based corporate law firm Warner Norcross & Judd appeared at the Gogebic County Board of Commissioners meeting on Wednesday via Zoom regarding American Rescue Plan Act monies.
Cumings said the firm has provided legal counsel on ARPA to several clients in the Upper Peninsula including Marquette, Menomonie, Baraga and Ontonagon counties and was interested in working with Gogebic County as well.
Warner Norcross & Judd have been helping the counties find eligible ways to spend the ARPA monies, processes for reaching out to the community and preparing for any financial audits, Cumings said
Cumings said they have a lot of experience with helping local jurisdictions through the process of spending COVID-19 relief funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act under President Trump and ARPA under President Biden. He explained that there are complicated legal processes that go with spending the money.
“It’s not a lot of our time to do that, but it’s very, very important, because if you don’t do some of those things right, there could be some significant penalties going forward,” Cumings said. “There’s not a huge amount of cost because the treasury amended the rules recently to make it a lot easier to spend the money. That streamlined things quite a bit, but there’s still a lot there that we can help with.”
Cumings said that for every single project outside of the county’s calculated loss revenue, the firm would have to subject it to legal analysis to determine if it was appropriate for them to use the money. However, with ARPA funding, Gogebic County could claim all of their funding as lost revenue and the firm would only have to determine if the project was spent on governmental services.
Since they don’t have to perform lengthy legal analyses, Cumings said that the total costs of hiring the firm have been greatly reduced. He said that the firm bills hourly and they have worked no more than 5-10 hours per week with the counties so far. However, he said he did not know the total cost because they don’t know how long the process will take.
Commissioners Joe Bonovetz and Tom Laabs expressed discomfort with not knowing the total cost of hiring the firm. Cumings said that he would follow up with County Administrator Juliane Giackino with estimates for the board to consider at a later date.
The board also authorized:
—The appointment of Deborah MacPherson as magistrate for the 98th District Court. District Court Judge Anna Talaska appeared before the board to request approval. Talaska said that she has been working with the court since October 2017 and this will be her third position with increased responsibilities. “We think (MacPherson) is a fantastic candidate and she’s ready to start assisting us in serving the public,” Talaska said.
—The clerk’s office to advertise the vacancy of the Gogebic County Fair board secretary position.
—The appointments of Sue Roberts, Jerry Eckman, Scott Erickson and Bill Malloy to four vacant positions on the Gogebic County Mental Health Board.
—The Western Upper Peninsula Planning and Development Region office to update its recreation plan.