GovWin SLED Coronavirus Recon

General

• States' rushed IT upgrades spark data leaks, transparency concerns
  • As states continue rushing upgrades to their legacy IT systems in response to the coronavirus pandemic, unsupervised spending, data leaks and other technical hiccups are occurring with increasing regularity.
• (Rhode Island) 10k download state’s ‘Crush COVID RI’ app in first day
  • Nearly 10,000 people downloaded the state’s “Crush COVID RI” app in the 24 hours after it was announced by Gov. Gina Raimondo.
• New Jersey, other states, work to fight virus misinformation
  • New Jersey’s top homeland security official received nearly nonstop calls in early March from grocery chains, trucking companies and other logistics firms wanting to know if rumors of an impending national lockdown were true.
• Reopening reality check: Georgia's jobs aren’t flooding back
  • Georgia’s early move to start easing stay-at-home restrictions nearly a month ago has done little to stem the state’s flood of unemployment claims — illustrating how hard it is to bring jobs back while consumers are still afraid to go outside.

Funding & Economic Impact 

• Georgia budget proposals would cut workers, reduce services
  • Many large agencies are proposing two unpaid furlough days a month
• (Pennsylvania) Gov. Wolf: State to Distribute $51 million in CARES Funding to Support Child Care Providers
  • Governor Tom Wolf announced an initial distribution of $51 million of funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding to support child care providers around Pennsylvania.
• (North Carolina) N.C. receives $3.3 million in federal funding for Covid-19 testing in rural areas; cases increase as state reopens
  • North Carolina’s rural health clinics will receive more than $3.3 million in federal funding to bolster Covid-19 testing.
  • In the state, 68 rural health clinics –– those so designated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) –– will split $3,363,377 to expand access to testing in rural communities.
• (Texas) Bexar County, San Antonio asking for more state funding to aid in pandemic
  • Mayor Ron Nirenberg and County Judge Nelson Wolff said they are working to get more funding from state lawmakers.
• (California) City of San Diego to use COVID relief funds to offset pandemic-related deficit
  • The city of San Diego will use federal and state COVID-19 relief funds to offset major budget cuts proposed last month to manage pandemic-related revenue shortfalls, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced Tuesday.
• (Wisconsin) CARES funding announcements show governor is moving on
  • Putting aside a legislative impasse over reconfiguring the state’s defunct Safer at Home order, Gov. Tony Evers this week has been rolling out a series of initiatives to aid sectors of the state economy damaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• (Vermont) Scott administration outlines $400M economic relief plan
  • Gov. Phil Scott unveiled a $400 million economic relief package that aims to ease the strain of the Covid-19 crisis on Vermont businesses, agriculture, and housing.
• (Kentucky) Beshear says $300 million in federal Covid-19 funding is headed to local governments
  • Kentucky will start taking applications this week for $300 million in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act funding that will be used to reimburse city and county governments for Covid-19 expenses.
• Oregon's revenue forecast takes dive due to coronavirus recession
  • The state faces an 11% drop in revenue from the previous biennium as the coronavirus pandemic triggered a shutdown order that caused massive job losses — and a consequent drop in tax payments.
• New Mexico governor outlines budget, special session
  • Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Wednesday a date for the upcoming special legislative session and said she believed the state could shore up a huge budget deficit without making big cuts to key areas.
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott instructs state agencies to trim budgets by 5% to prepare for "economic shock"
  • Texas’ top Republican leaders asked certain state agencies and higher education institutions Wednesday to “submit a plan identifying savings” to reduce their budgets by 5% for the current biennium — an attempt to tighten financial belts amid the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
• (Vermont) Scott proposes $400M business stimulus package
  • Governor Phil Scott Wednesday announced a $400 million stimulus package he is proposing for businesses hit by the coronavirus.
• Pension pain rising for Illinois governments amid coronavirus pandemic
  • Already struggling under the weight of burdensome pension tabs, Illinois and many of its local governments face even more damaging wounds from the COVID-19 pandemic, raising rating, solvency and bondholder risks.
• Missouri CARES Act funding group to meet
  • The state's CARES Act funding group is set to meet and go over an update on the impacts of COVID-19. The state leaders will talk about unemployment and business recovery at the meeting.
• South Carolina Could Spend Millions to Boost Broadband Access
  • The state could spend $100 million on broadband and another nearly $16.7 million to increase the state’s stockpile of personal protective equipment, if lawmakers agree to approve recommendations from members of Gov. Henry McMaster’s COVID-19 task force.
• DOJ allocates $850 million in grants to help communities respond to COVID-19
  • Funds may be used for overtime pay, equipment including law enforcement and medical PPE, hiring, training, travel expenses related to the distribution of resources to the most impacted area, and addressing the medical needs of inmates in state, local, and tribal prisons, jails, and detention centers
• (Tennessee) Memphis officials propose hazard pay for LEOs
  • Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland is proposing a hazard pay increase for roughly 5,400 city employees for the rest of the year, an average pay hike of 3.7 percent. The hike would be handed out in two tiers.

Higher Education

• Most Texas State Agencies, Including Higher Education, Are Ordered To Make Five Percent Budget Cuts
  • State agencies, universities, and colleges were advised to prepare reduced budget requests for the 2022-2023 biennium. The amount of that reduction has not been determined.
• (New York City, NY) CUNY’s Implementation of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) Student Emergency Grant
  • CUNY’s total allocation from the CARES Act HEERF Student Emergency Grant is $118 million with about 190,000 undergraduate and graduate students potentially eligible to receive grants.
• State of Washington filing court challenge against Dept of Education over COVID-19 relief for students
  • A federal judge in Spokane will preside over a case in which the state of Washington alleges the U.S. Department of Education is denying COVID-19 aid to thousands of college students, including those with DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival) status.
  • The lawsuit says this is a violation of the Administrative Protection Act and Article I of the U.S. Constitution.

K-12 Education

• Texas School Districts Raise Hands For Shares Of $1.29 Billion Federal Infusion
  • Most of the money is expected to go directly to local districts to help vulnerable students during the coronavirus pandemic. But advocates are trying to steer some into controversial policies like expanding virtual schools.
• Colorado Education Association wants to protect education from budget cuts with taxes
  • The largest teachers union in the state of Colorado is proposing an emergency tax relief bill to raise revenue as the state faces a $3 billion budget gap due to the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Along with a tax relief bill, the Colorado Education Association (CEA) proposes cuts to other departments and a pause on accountability systems, like standardized testing.
• (Ohio) Community learning centers will help school districts cope with COVID-19 disruption
  • Through school-based health centers and tele-health services, online early childhood instruction, food pantries filled with donations from community and business partnerships, free Wi-Fi hot spots, legal aid, and more, the Community Learning Center model has given Cleveland Public Schools students and families the resources they need.
  • A starting point for expanding community learning centers would be to provide funding for a community engagement process in every district, and resource coordinators at every school, who would build and maintain partnerships with local businesses and nonprofits.

Health Care

• Three states sign up for new Apple-Google contact tracing API
  • Apple and Google on Wednesday released the API for their jointly developed COVID-19 exposure detection platform that will be used as the backbone of contact-tracing programs as governments try to track the spread of the coronavirus.
  • The states of Alabama, North Dakota and South Carolina said they plan to incorporate the API into the contact-tracing applications they’re developing.
• (North Dakota) Why one US state will have two coronavirus tracing apps
  • North Dakota was one of the first American states to launch a coronavirus contact tracing app, in April. Now, several weeks into the process of reopening the state, the government in Bismarck says it will take advantage of the newly released Apple-Google exposure notification system—but that doing so will require it to run two separate apps.
• (California) Coronavirus: State to close Seton Hospital, other medical surge sites
  • Pointing to California’s relative success in flattening the curve and addressing the initial potential surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations, state officials on announced significant reductions in medical surge sites, including Seton Hospital in Daly City and the Craneway Pavilion in Contra Costa County.
• Early Trends of Medicaid Spending During COVID – and Where to Expect Future Auditors to Pinpoint
  • Without question, the two biggest healthcare exceptions in the time of COVID are expansion of telehealth and mandatory expansion of Medicaid eligibility. These two issues will be the hot topics of Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) and Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) audits in coming years.
• Utah Reportedly Spent Nearly $3 Million On A Contact Tracing App That Less Than 2% Of The State’s Population Has Downloaded
  • Utah's coronavirus contact tracing app cost the state $2.75 million, and will cost it another $300,000 per month to maintain, yet only 45,000 of the state's 3.2 million residents — around 1.4% — have downloaded it.
• Wisconsin Increases Contact Tracing Efforts, State Looking To Hire
  • Of the $75 million dollars Governor Evers set aside for contact tracing, up to $50 million will used by public health departments to hire more people to investigate the disease, contact trace and monitor. The remaining funds will go towards technology resources to help with these tasks.
• Miami-Dade says it won’t rely on Florida for contact tracing, launching larger effort
  • Miami-Dade won’t rely on Florida’s program to trace close contacts of people infected with COVID-19 and plans to deploy hundreds of people to dramatically ramp up the effort in the county, according to Mayor Carlos Gimenez and others in his administration.

Social Services 

• (Washington) Washington sees ‘dramatic rise’ in unemployment fraud claims during COVID-19 pandemic
  • The Employment Security Department stated that the number of fraudulent unemployment benefit claims jumped 27-fold to 700 between March and April and suspected criminals collected nearly $1.6 million
• Additional 2.4 million Americans file for unemployment as states start to lift coronavirus shutdown restrictions
  • More than 38 million Americans have applied for benefits in the past nine weeks amid the coronavirus outbreak that has shutdown businesses across the country.
• Pennsylvania SNAP recipients will be able to purchase groceries online
  • The three retailers available for the program are Walmart, Amazon, and ShopRite
• Three Food Banks To Benefit From $5.7 Million In FEMA Funding In Kansas
  • FEMA obligated the money to the Kansas Adjutant General’s Department, Division of Emergency Management (KDEM) to cover the purchase and delivery of food to vulnerable populations throughout Kansas.

Transportation

• New York MTA launches pilot with UVC to kill COVID-19
  • The first phase of the pilot will deploy 150 mobile ultraviolet-c disinfecting units in train cars, buses, stations and occupational facilities across NYCT, with phase two coming to LIRR and Metro-North.
• Study: Carbon Emissions Drop 17% Globally in April During Coronavirus
  • An analysis published today in the journal Nature Climate Change finds that daily global carbon dioxide emissions compared to global averages from 2019 have declined 17% globally during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
• FMC’s Dye keeps eye on COVID-19-challenged US supply chains
  • U.S. Federal Maritime Commissioner Rebecca Dye said Fact Finding 29’s work will help the American ocean shipping industry better prepare the supply chain for the post-virus economic recovery.
• EV Sales to Suffer in COVID-19 Economy, No More Than Gas Cars
  • After the economic dust settles from the impacts of the novel coronavirus, experts predict electric vehicle sales will finally hit their competitive stride in about 2025. For now, car sales across the board will suffer.

Natural Resources/Environment

• Coal industry will never recover after coronavirus pandemic, say experts
  • The global coal industry will “never recover” from the Covid-19 pandemic, industry observers predict, because the crisis has proved renewable energy is cheaper for consumers and a safer bet for investors.