On rural capacity (or lack thereof) to garner federal grant monies

High Country News reported last week on the struggle for rural local governments to access funds from the "Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a $1.2 trillion bill that funds improvements in transportation, water, energy, broadband and climate resilience projects." Here's an excerpt:

[A]ccording to a recent analysis by the Montana-based research group Headwaters Economics, over half of the communities in the West might not be able to access those funds.

Researchers examined 10 factors that influenced how well-equipped communities were to apply for grant funding, and then used those factors to calculate each county and community’s “rural capacity” score. For instance, Missoula County, Montana, home to the state’s second-largest city and flagship university campus, scored 94 out of 100, while Carter County, Montana, where there is no county head of planning and just 20% of adult residents have attended college, scored just 45, the lowest in the state.

Within the West, Montana stands out: More than three-quarters of its communities have index scores below the national median. The state’s low capacity exemplifies the challenges rural communities across the West face, including a reliance on boom-and-bust industries that create financial instability, and a lack of grant writers, land-use planners and emergency planners that would be helpful in applying for federal funds.

The story quotes Don Albrecht, director of the Western Rural Development Center at Utah State University:  

You go to a rural community, and typically the mayor is almost always part-time.  They don't have the resources or the experience or the expertise to even write grants to get the money in the first place.

A related post is here.   

Postscript:  An NPR story on this subject, from May 2023, is here.