On December 21, Congress passed a $900 billion COVID-19 stimulus package with a strong bi-partisan vote in both chambers. President Trump signed the bill into law on December 27. The bill is a follow up to the CARES and Families First Coronavirus Response (FFCRA) Acts that were passed in March 2020 and whose programs have been expiring since September. The new package extends coronavirus-related relief programs into 2021 and avoids a federal government shutdown by passing an annual federal budget.

The bill, HR 133, extends FFCRA’s existing emergency paid sick leave payroll tax credits and the emergency family and medical leave tax credit for employers to March 31, 2021 to incentivize private employers to offset costs of voluntarily maintaining leave programs. Public employers were not eligible for those tax credits.

The bill failed to extend the actual federal paid sick leave and paid family and medical leave programs that were being used by public employers. Congress did not extend them in any additional legislation, so those programs expired on December 31 and are no longer in effect. However, employers are still required to pay any outstanding FFCRA-authorized paid leave that was taken up to December 31. As a refresher, AWC provided a more detailed description of the federal emergency leave programs when the FFCRA was first passed, available here.

Some other highlights from the COVID-related portions of the bill include:

• Additional direct stimulus payments of $600 per person
• $300 in supplemental unemployment benefits through March 14, 2021
• Extension of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program
• Funding for several other programs, including rental assistance, small business aid and PPP loans, transportation supports, SNAP, and broadband expansion, among others

Unfortunately for cities, the bill does not include direct, flexible relief funding for state and local governments. President-elect Joe Biden has publicly stated that additional COVID-19 related relief will be forthcoming in 2021, and NLC and AWC will continue to advocate for such flexible funding in additional packages that may be introduced.