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St. Johns Avenue is busy with people supporting local businesses Tuesday, and if money is received from the CARES Act, these businesses could get extra financial support.
By Sarah Cavacini
Palatka Daily News
scavacini@palatkadailynews.com
Putnam County could receive more than $4 million from the federal government to benefit small businesses and COVID-19 expenditures.
The money would come from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.
According to the Florida Association of Counties and the Florida League of Cities, more than $8 billion was given to the state as part of the CARES Act. Of the money, 55% was reserved for the state and 45% was reserved for local governments.
The two groups sent a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 1 requesting he look into the money distribution because only 12 Florida counties received funding. Money was given to counties with 500,000 or more people.
Putnam County’s population, as of July 2019, is 74,521, according to census.gov.
“FAC and FLC jointly propose that all municipal and county governments that did not receive direct or indirect funding as a result of the CARES Act are deemed ‘eligible’ local governments to receive distribution from the total requested allocation,” the letter stated.
Florida counties should receive $4.3 million, cities should receive $5.9 million, $2.5 million would be kept as “contingency purposes” and about $1.3 billion would be the “total local government allocation,” according to the letter.
Representatives also claimed 466 local government bodies have not received any CARES Act funding because of their small populations.
In a document on the league’s website, officials outlined the act’s guidelines and said “the text of the legislation is silent with regard to local government jurisdictions with a population under 500,000. However, it is assumed that these local government jurisdictions would be eligible sub-grantees to their respective State and its use of its share of allocated funds.”
The document also said the act does not direct state officials to share funds with the local government bodies that didn’t qualify for the act.
Although state Rep. Bobby Payne, R-Palatka, has no direct involvement with CARES Act designations, he said he is working indirectly with the legislation through re-employment assistance.
“Money has been slow due to the overwhelming number of initial requests and a failure of the system in place. I am sure the Legislature will have some follow up critique and audit request to determine those reasons,” Payne said in an email.
Unemployment requests being denied or the website crashing are issues frustrating state residents as well as his staff, Payne said.
“Recently, we have seen fewer complaints and believe the system is functioning much better,” Payne said. “Yet many still have not received a notification but will receive full compensation from the time they were furloughed. Unfortunately, it is taking much longer than expected.”
There are several programs under the CARES Act, such as Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation.
People who are still looking for unemployment compensation should visit floridajobs.org/cares-act to explore all their options under the CARES Act, Payne said.
According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, funds should only be used “to cover expenses that are necessary expenditures incurred due to the public health emergency with respect to the Coronavirus Disease” and occurred March 1 through Dec.30.
There have been no recent confirmations whether local governments could receive benefits from the CARES Act.
Putnam County Commissioner Larry Harvey said he would want the money to go small businesses that have not received any federal help.
“We’re trying at the local level to get the money back into local hands,” Harvey said. “Wouldn’t that be a godsend?”