Montana’s rural towns can often struggle to afford large projects like water and sewer pipe replacement. They mostly rely on state and federal grants.
Drummond Mayor Gail Leeper has been working on a $9.5 million wastewater infrastructure project for 20 years. That project is now in its final phase.
The town’s population of 300 means there weren’t enough local dollars to fund that work, so they turned to grants.
"Drummond has 10 different funding agencies for this one wastewater project," Leeper says. "So they have to report to 10 different places, and it can just be amazingly time consuming."
Leeper’s small staff juggles reporting requirements for each grant. She says it’s cumbersome and redundant. Leeper and other members of the National League of Cities and Towns are pushing for a federal bill that would simplify the federal application and reporting processes.
The bipartisan Streamlining Federal Grants Act proposed in January would increase interagency coordination when towns have grants from different departments.
Montana League of Cities and Towns Government Affairs Director Jennifer Olson says passing the bill is a priority.
"We want to see how those federal changes up here could actually get translated and not add more burden at the state level, but rather just flow down." Olson says.
The bill is currently under review by the federal Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee.
