Kansas City awarded over $2.9 million in stimulus funding to fight lead-based paint in low-income housing

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U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill announced today that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is providing Kansas City’s Lead-Based Paint Hazard Control Program with a total of $2,998,508 in federal grants to help the city eliminate the amount of hazardous lead-based paint in low-income homes and protect young children from lead poisoning. The grant is funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“Without the Senator’s assistance to get the language written in to fund all those applications that were already approved but not funded, we might not have gotten these needed funds,” said Rex Archer, director of the Kansas City Health Department.

Funding to states and localities through the economic recovery package will be allocated through existing federal programs like these, rather than earmarks, in order to ensure prompt distribution and better accountability. Local projects receive funds from these grants by following the process set up by each program. During Congressional consideration of the economic recovery bill, McCaskill worked to put additional accountability measures in place.

McCaskill believes that federal grants and loans are a positive alternative to earmarks, which in the past have frequently had too little accountability.  Competitive merit and need based federal grants and low-interest government loans bring federal assistance to Missouri in an honest and fiscally responsible manner.

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