Counties used federal funds to help unhoused
Oregon’s 36 counties sought millions of dollars in federal aid to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
From responding to emergencies to running courts to investigating disease outbreaks, critical county services were adapted and expanded to deal with the demands the pandemic created.
Counties, as the local public health authorities, coordinated virus testing and traced the spread of COVID-19 through contact tracing. They also worked closely with local hospitals, said Gina Nikkel, executive director of the Association of Oregon Counties.
When it came to public health, the state coordinated the response, but the counties “are the delivery system on the ground locally,” Nikkel said.
Southern Oregon’s Douglas County, for instance, created a drive-thru testing clinic that reduced the need for protective gear, Nikkel said. And when COVID-19 vaccines started becoming available, counties put in the elbow grease to get mass vaccination sites, like the one at Autzen Stadium in Eugene, up and running.
“We are directed and told by the state what needs to be done,” Nikkel said. “And then we do it.”
Oregon received $1.6 billion in taxpayer funds from the federal CARES Act COVID-19 emergency funding program.
The Oregon Department of Administrative Services has paid about $189 million in coronavirus relief funds through the CARES Act to Oregon’s counties through April, according to state data. That figure doesn’t include relief money that counties received through legislative allocations to other state agencies, such as the Oregon Health Authority.
The state also spent relief money on their behalf on items like protective gear.
Lane, Marion and Polk counties were permitted a maximum combined reimbursement of $34 million in CARES Act funds.
Counties also got money to respond to the pandemic from sources other than the relief funds, like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known by its acronym, FEMA.
Data the counties provided The Register-Guard and Statesman Journal in response to records requests shows counties spent widely on services for people without housing, for county residents adapting to work from home, on protective gear like masks, and to keep workers on their payroll.
Counties also felt, and tried to help with, the many ripple effects of the pandemic.
When Oregonians headed outdoors to escape the monotony of quarantine, county parks systems wrestled with how to keep the high volume of campers safe. When businesses had to curtail operations after shutdown orders, counties stepped in with support. And the shift to remote work for many Oregon workers highlighted the need for more accessible high-speed internet, which counties provided with relief money.
Lane County provided a broad spreadsheet showing reimbursement requests made to the state. Marion and Polk counties provided high-level summaries of how much was reimbursed in broad categories of spending, and later, in response to additional requests, provided more detailed information on purchases and spending related to COVID-19.
According to the data, Lane County got a maximum of $19.9 million in possible reimbursement and had used all of it as of March 26.
Marion County, as of late April, had spent about $10.8 million responding to the pandemic. Of that, the county had sought to get $3.9 million reimbursed by the federal CARES Act funds, according to county data. Marion County’s maximum possible reimbursement was about $11.4 million.
Between March 2020 and April 2021, Polk County spent roughly $2.7 million on pandemic-related goods and services. Polk County’s maximum possible reimbursement was about $2.8 million.
Funds go to housing, broadband
Nikkel was careful to note that each county faced different issues in the past year.
The challenges 2020 presented went above and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, from Jerusalem crickets feasting on cattle feed in Lake County to storm damage in Morrow and Jefferson counties. In the Willamette Valley, wildfires tore through the Santiam Canyon and McKenzie River Valley, turning the sky an ominous shade of orange and forcing counties to confront another emergency.
In Lane County, a significant share of relief money was put toward housing people who needed shelter. The county bought a recovery center and a former federal Veterans’ Affairs clinic to use as a shelter that would allow for social distancing.
Those purchases weren’t on the county’s radar before the pandemic, said Robert Tintle, Lane County’s financial services manager.
The Board of Commissioners approved the purchase of the old VA clinic in direct response to the pandemic as more people struggled with housing and shelters had to limit capacity.
In total, Lane County spent $2.5 million caring for people who weren’t able to shelter in place because they didn’t have a home. In addition to setting up the recovery center and shelter, the county helped people get food, provided Pallet shelters and gave money to social service organizations.
Polk County in its detailed data about COVID-19-related spending did not distinguish between what was funded through the CARES Act and what was funded through other programs.
The county spent money transitioning its workforce to remote work and also put public money toward boosting child care access.
These purchases included about $70,000 on cellphone service, about $19,000 on gloves and about $13,000 on masks and mask-making supplies.
The county also spent public money to increase the number of kids who could enroll in child care and to build high-speed internet infrastructure.
Before the pandemic, there were 74 child care providers in Polk County, said Brent DeMoe, director of the county’s Department of Family and Community Outreach.
By August 2020, 13 providers had closed their doors due to the pandemic, leaving about 200 fewer child care spots available.
In an effort to make up for some of the losses, the county, through a new emergency child care fund, ultimately awarded about $170,000 to providers to open up 75 spots for kids.
Polk County spent relief funds to expand internet service to underserved areas of the county, awarding $1 million to Alyrica Networks, Inc. for the project.
Marion County’s health program received relief funds that were “right in tune with what we needed,” said Ryan Matthews, Health and Human Services administrator for the county.
The money approved by the CARES Act alleviated “immediate” concerns about the financial impact of the pandemic on the community and the health department, which provides not only public health services like contact tracing, but also behavioral health services, Matthews said.
Marion County also provided data that covered all COVID-19-related spending but did not distinguish between what was from CARES Act and what was from other sources.
County-provided data showed line items of about $187,000 spent on testing and about $14,600 on masks.
There was a period when Marion County officials worried they would run out of time to spend reimbursable money by the end of 2020, Matthews said. But at the last minute, the federal government allowed spending to continue into 2021.
“We were extremely nervous because we were still right in the middle of the pandemic,” Matthews said. “And for that funding to have run out at that point in time would have been devastating.”
“I don’t even have any sense as to what our vaccine coordination efforts would have been without those resources, but it would have really set us back significantly,” he said.
Spending priorities changed as the pandemic evolved, Matthews said.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the county hired people who could investigate and track the spread of the disease. County workers also tried to track down protective gear like masks – in short supply in those early days of the pandemic – and distribute it to health providers and first responders, Matthews said. The department also had to figure out how to make its own transition to remote work.
Then the focus moved to testing and then to vaccine distribution. Along the way, the county started using relief funds to partner with local community organizations to do outreach, Matthews said.
Tintle described the funds for Lane County as “welcome news.”
The county already had been spending money responding to the public health emergency the virus created, he said, so it was a “relief” that the CARES Act funds became available to help pay for it.
While the CARES Act was a “big help,” Tintle said, it wasn’t enough to pay for everything.
“The pandemic didn’t know that the funding ran out,” Tintle said.
The biggest cost for Lane County was paying its workers.
The payroll costs covered both new hires and existing county workers.
As of March, the county had asked for $7.3 million in reimbursement related to payroll — $4.76 million for public health and safety employees and $2.58 million for employees whose work was dedicated to addressing the impacts of COVID-19.The county spent another $1.4 million on sick time and medical and family leave related to the pandemic.
All of the money spent on payroll went toward “folks directly dedicated to responding” to the pandemic, Tintle said.
“We’re a public service agency,” he said, and the county provides that service through its employees.
Claire Withycombe is a reporter at the Statesman Journal. Contact her at [email protected], 503-910-3821 or follow on Twitter @kcwithycombe. Contact Register-Guard city government watchdog Megan Banta at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @MeganBanta_1.
