CARES Act

Last Chance to Apply as Talbot County Allocates More Funds for CARES Grants

December 5, 2020 by Spy Desk Leave a Comment

Those businesses and nonprofit organizations that have not already received a grant of up to $10,000 from the Talbot CARES Emergency Relief Small Business Grant program have one last chance to apply.

“Talbot County has reinvested more than $1.1 million of its CARES funding into the business community,” Cassandra Vanhooser, director of the Talbot County Department of Economic Development and Tourism, said in a statement. “With the files we currently have under review, we are on track to distribute the entire $1.2 million allocated for small businesses by the first week of December.”

By law, funds from the CARES Act must be distributed by Dec. 31. Unused funds must be returned to the State of Maryland.

When county officials recently tallied receipts, they realized that not all of the money would be spent by the deadline. Vanhooser advocated for some of the money to be transferred into the grant program for small businesses.

Additional Grant Funding Available

“I get calls almost every day from business owners asking for assistance, and I was having to tell people that our money had been distributed,” Vanhooser said. “Thankfully, we were fortunate enough to receive an additional $250,000 of the money the county received from the CARES Act.”

Any business or nonprofit with less than 50 employees that hasn’t yet received a grant and can show a 25% loss of revenue caused by COVID-19 is eligible to apply. But the clock is ticking.

If you are planning to apply, you must act quickly. The department began accepting new submissions online Nov. 30. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until 5 p.m. Dec. 11. Every file is dated and time stamped and will be considered in the order received.

The requirements are fairly straightforward, Vanhooser said. But it is absolutely essential that anyone who plans to apply have complete financial documents ready before they apply.

Application Requirements

Businesses must be in good standing with the State of Maryland, and they must not owe any taxes. In addition, businesses must submit the following:

• a completed application;

• comparative monthly profit and loss statement for 2019 and 2020;

• most recent business tax returns; and

• a signed W-9 IRS Form

Grant recipients may use the money to offset business losses caused by the pandemic. Qualifying expenditures include rent or mortgage payments, utilities, inventory, personal protective equipment, enhanced cleaning protocols, and upgrades designed to limit person-to-person contact. Each business that receives a grant must also submit a final report detailing how it spent the funds.

“This money has an expiration date,” County Council President Corey Pack said in a statement. “Talbot County has until Dec. 30 to disperse the remainder of the CARES funding. We encourage any business that still needs assistance and has not yet applied to get their application in as soon as possible.”

The Talbot County Department of Economic Development and Tourism and the Talbot County Finance Office together are administering the program. An online application form can be found at TalbotWorks.org, along with information about other business resources. For more information, call 410-770-8000.

As COVID-19 Cases Spike, Hogan Provides More Economic Aid

November 13, 2020 by Maryland Matters Leave a Comment

As the coronavirus continues to surge across the nation, Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) dispensed more federal money to boost the state’s emergency response to the virus.

“The sad truth is that the next several months will likely be by far, the most difficult that we have faced,” Hogan said in a State House news conference late Thursday afternoon. “Unfortunately we have more tough times ahead of us, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

On Thursday, the state reported a positivity rate of 5.65%, the highest it’s been since May 27, as well as an additional 1,477 cases over past 24 hours. For nine days in a row, the state has reported over 1,000 new daily cases.

Maryland is currently in the “red zone” for COVID-19 cases as designated by the federal government, along with many other states, Hogan said. The average number of cases per 100,000 residents has risen to 22.8, which is a 52% increase in just the last seven days.

On Sunday, Maryland’s coronavirus positivity rate passed the 5% benchmark, a metric set by the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization to track the spread of COVID-19, for the first time since June 25, and has only increased since then.

Half of Maryland’s jurisdictions have positivity rates higher than this benchmark: Allegany, Anne Arundel, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Charles, Frederick, Garrett, Harford, Prince George’s, Queen Anne’s, Somerset and Washington.

In response to the recent spike in cases, Hogan announced an additional $70 million in state spending through the federal CARES Act:

$20 million for a strategic stockpile of personal protective equipment; Maryland currently has a 90-day supply, Hogan said.
$15 million for more staffing support in call centers, customer service and fraud detection programming in the Maryland Department of Labor
$10 million for rental assistance for low-income tenants
$10 million for vaccination planning and equipment, such as syringes
$10 million for food banks
$2 million for the Maryland Department of Human Services for foster care assistance
$2 million to the Maryland Department of Human Services for food (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and energy assistance
$1 million to sample wastewater to test for coronavirus outbreaks in vulnerable communities

Hogan urged the counties to spend their remaining CARES Act funding as soon as possible, emphasizing that the money would be forfeited if not spent by the end of the year. “We have a desperate need right now,” Hogan said.

Hospitalizations due to the coronavirus increased by 53% in the last two weeks, with 863 patients currently hospitalized in Maryland, which is the highest level since June 11. Meanwhile, 199 patients are in intensive care units in Maryland.

The number of COVID-19 related hospitalizations in the nation surged to its highest to over 65,000 patients on Wednesday.

“We are experiencing an out of control spike across the United States and we are seeing widespread community transmission here in Maryland,” Hogan said.

Even so, Dr. Jinlene Chan, deputy secretary of public health services for the Department of Health, and Hogan said the state’s health metrics for reopening schools have not changed.

“It [school reopening decisions] ultimately is the decision of the local school board in conjunction with the local health department,” Chan said. She encouraged school districts to balance the needs of education and mental health for children.

As funding from the Paycheck Protection Program and CARES Act trickles out, Hogan blamed Congress for its inability to reach a compromise on the next COVID-19 stimulus package.

“We’re very, very concerned with the continued gridlock, divisiveness and dysfunction in Washington, while people’s lives are at stake and people’s economic lives and their mental health,” Hogan said.

As “people in the White House are focused on fighting elections and the people in the Biden administration don’t have any information…there’s a little bit of a vacuum right now,” Hogan said.

In the spring, the state had to rent an ice rink as funeral homes and morgues became overloaded with people who had died from COVID-19, Hogan recalled. “We do not want to be in that situation again,” he said.

On Tuesday, Hogan reduced dine-in capacity for bars and restaurants from 75% to 50%, advised against traveling to states with a positivity rate above 10% and encouraged telework.

He said his goal is to keep as much of the economy open as possible, but so is preventing the hospitals from overflowing. “Might we have to take more restrictive action over the coming weeks or months? Absolutely, we might,” Hogan said.

By Elizabeth Shwe

After Delay, Md. to Release COVID-19 Funds Intended for Smaller Counties

May 5, 2020 by Maryland Matters Leave a Comment

It took weeks of prodding, but Maryland’s small counties will soon begin receiving federal COVID-19 funds from the state.

Department of Management and Budget Secretary David Brinkley informed county leaders of the Hogan administration’s decision to release the funds on Monday afternoon, in a memo obtained by Maryland Matters.

The decision means $182 million in federal funds intended to help local health departments and hard-hit small businesses will begin to flow to Maryland’s smallest counties.

The CARES Act, the federal legislation providing novel coronavirus funding to the states, stipulated that counties with populations of 500,000 or more would receive aid directly. The measures mandated that small counties apply to their governor.

That requirement left 19 Maryland counties wondering whether — and when — they would receive federal funds, a development that caused weeks of tension between local leaders and the Hogan administration, a reliable source said.

“I don’t understand why the smaller jurisdictions are treated differently than the larger jurisdictions,” said Montgomery County Executive Marc B. Elrich (D).

Although Montgomery, Prince George’s, Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties received federal funds directly, the leaders from all five subdivisions signed a May 1 letter to Hogan urging him to release bottle-necked funds to their smaller brethren. (Officials from 22 of Maryland’s 24 subdivisions signed on, in a show of unity.)

CARES Act funds are intended to reimburse local health departments for personal protective gear and other items related to the COVID-19 epidemic. They can also be used for grants to businesses impacted by the crisis.

According to the Maryland Association of Counties, which coordinated the letter to Hogan, the state received $1.29 billion from the CARES Act, of which $364 million was intended for the counties.

In his letter to local leaders on Monday, Brinkley said counties with populations below half a million people will receive half their eligible funding now. They can seek the second half of the funding down the road, he wrote.

Harford County Executive Barry Glassman (R) said the monies will help his health department buy PPE and it will allow Harford to offer grants local businesses need to make modifications in order to reopen.

“This will allow our local economic development departments to set up some programs to set up some programs to get funding out to the community, which we think we can do quicker,” he said.

In a call with General Assembly leaders on April 22, Glassman said it was unfair to make smaller counties jump through an extra hoop to get federal funds when all governments are facing the same challenges.

“We’ve been working on this for about three weeks now, just pushing and pushing against the reimbursement method,” he said in an interview on Monday.

“Most smaller counties do not have the capacity to forward-fund programs and then come back and ask for reimbursement. The spirit of the CARES Act was to get that to us so we wouldn’t have to forward fund.”

Glassman said Harford business owners have been asking why the county isn’t offering programs similar to those that have been launched in neighboring Baltimore County.

Under the federal formula, a county the size of Harford qualifies for $44.6 million in aid. The Hogan administration’s decision will release the first $22.3 million.

“They’re just as trustworthy,” Elrich said of the smaller counties. “They deal with [grant] money all the time. There’s no reason to treat them differently.”

Local leaders said it’s unclear why small counties had to press so hard to get the Hogan administration to release CARES Act funds.

“I never got a good answer,” Glassman said.

“There just seemed to be some kind of disconnect that somehow Maryland’s medium and small counties were not able to handle these kinds of funds,” he added. “That’s the only thing I can think of.”

By Bruce DePuyt

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