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April 2, 2020
Dear Neighbors and Friends:
I hope that you and your loved ones are doing well, staying healthy, and looking out for your neighbors and friends.
You may have heard today that the Governor issued a statement today indicating that she won’t be calling legislators into a special session any time soon. It’s a controversial decision, but I think it’s the right one for now. Let me explain why that is.
Given our current declared state of emergency, a special session needs to be convened for two purposes only: (a) to amend our statutes as needed to respond to the pandemic and its health/economic/social effects; and (b) to allocate funds needed to cope with the crisis, either from our reserves or by modifying existing budgets or both.
We’ve come to realize that the Governor has wide latitude in making needed temporary policy changes under her emergency authority. She has already issued a number of executive orders incorporating legislative priorities around evictions, unemployment benefits, business closures, and others. She is currently considering implementing other recommendations from the Legislative Joint Committee on Coronavirus Response. The challenges of the pandemic are evolving on a daily basis, and it’s important that the executive branch be able to respond in a quick, flexible way.
The Legislature will eventually need to come into a special session to make budget allocations. But it’s still too early for us to have a clear sense of what those decisions should be. We’re still waiting to see just how effective the new federal programs will be in getting workers, businesses, families, schools, hospitals, and others the support that they need, and how much federal money will arrive to support our state budget. We want to make sure that state allocations are used to fill gaps, not duplicate.
Because one thing is clear: our state budget is going to be seriously compromised by the economic downturn that we are entering. By the time we receive our next revenue forecast in May, we’ll have a better sense of how much our reserves will need to be reduced or existing programs cut in order to create any new programs to deal with the pandemic. Those potential cuts will inevitably create long-term damage to education and our social safety net.
Unlike the federal budget, at the end of the day our state budgets must balance. I know that there are lots of people out there looking to the state to send them direct financial relief or waive tax payments, but please understand that we have to be very, very careful for now, and first see what will be delivered from the federal government.
The other reason to delay the special session, of course, is that this is not the time for legislators to be leaving their homes and coming to the Capitol. As I’ve mentioned, our ability to hold a session remotely and vote remotely is very limited constitutionally. Yes, we will eventually need to come together physically to pass legislation, but the longer we can hold off on that, the safer it will be—for us as individuals, for our families, and for our communities. (Marion County is already one of the hardest hit of Oregon’s counties, and it can ill afford people gathering there from all over the state.)
In the meantime, our Emergency Board can convene remotely and allocate the roughly $50 million remaining in the E-Fund to cover real, immediate emergencies.
I’ll tell you that this isn’t an easy thing for legislators. We like to pass bills. We like to make tough decisions. We like to feel that we’re fulfilling our oaths of office and making a difference..
But there are many ways to make a difference. Communicating with constituents, trying to fix problems that they might be having with the system, keeping an eye on the agencies AND supporting them as they do this difficult work, interacting with federal and local counterparts, advising the Governor—well, that’s a lot. It’s what’s needed right now.
This Saturday's Constituent Coffee: Digital, with Special Guests
I have missed precious few first-Saturday-of-the-month constituent coffees in my time in the legislature. While the current guidelines mean that we can't gather in person, we will still be able to meet. I'm partnering with my House colleagues Barbara Smith Warner and Alissa Keny-Guyer for a digital constituent coffee via Zoom. Please mark your calendars and plan to join for my first online constituent meeting this Saturday at 9am (I'm afraid you'll be responsible for brewing your own coffee this time around).
The Zoom platform restricts us to 100 participants for this meeting, but we will record the video and make it available for anyone to watch. If you'd like to be a part of this meeting, please pre-register using this link. You will receive details and a link to join the meeting at 9am on Saturday. You can also use the registration form to submit questions and topics for us to cover. Let me know if you have any issues with the registration form.
Zoom Constituent Coffee
Saturday, April 4th from 9am to 10:30am
TODAY’S CORONAVIRUS AND CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE UPDATE
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Positive Cases: OHA has reported that 90 additional Oregonians tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday, putting the total at 826.
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Total Tests: Today’s reported testing numbers reflect an increase of 1,217 test results from yesterday, bringing the total test results so far to 16,085.
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Ratio: Though the overall numbers are increasing, our ratio of positive results remains around 5%. That’s much lower than the national average (currently around 18%).
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Deaths: I’m sorry to report that two Oregonians died from the disease yesterday, bringing the total number of deaths in Oregon to 21.
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Hospitalized: The number of Oregonians who have been hospitalized with symptoms is now at 188, an increase of 21 from yesterday.
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Other Hospital Information: Unfortunately, there was a glitch in the hospital bed reporting system today, and the OHA doesn’t have confidence in the numbers that they received. So I’m going to leave these fields blank for today. We’re promised corrected numbers for tomorrow.
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Today’s National Numbers:
- The Emergency Coordination Center has changed its platform for centralized volunteer and donations management. It’s more streamlined and easier to use.
- 431 new health care volunteers registered with SERV-OR in March.
- We’ve just learned that FEMA will soon be sending out what it’s calling its final shipment of PPE to the states. We’re hoping that this means that they are sending out all that is currently in the national stockpile but will be continuing to add to that stockpile (e.g., via the airlifts from China that I mentioned the other day). It’s not clear when that “final” shipment will arrive. It better not in fact be the last!
- The Emergency Coordination Center will be distributing all of OUR current state stockpile of PPE to the counties for distribution to hospitals and medical providers by April 6.
- Yesterday I reported that the Governor had just released Executive Order 20-13, a moratorium on commercial evictions during the current state of emergency. I unfortunately included a link to the wrong EO, the earlier order prohibiting residential evictions. The link here is the correct one. Sorry about that.
Lots to Share about Unemployment Benefits
Lawmakers were briefed this afternoon on the current state of UI in Oregon by David Gersenfeld, UI Manager at the Employment Department. As you know, unemployment offices all over the country are being hammered right now with a record onslaught of claims—more than 6.6 million claims nationwide last week. Here in Oregon the number of workers assigned to processing claims has doubled and will soon triple. They are processing more new claims in a day than they were in a month prior to the pandemic. It’s a huge challenge, and we’re hearing from constituents every day about delays in getting through and questions about their eligibility. On top of the challenge of the sheer numbers, the system itself is changing as we speak (in a good way for workers), and states don’t yet know the full details of the new federal support programs. So, we still have a few days of stress and uncertainty ahead of us. But with additional staff and new phone lines coming every day, things will get better.
David was able to give us a lot of very useful information that will help us advise constituents who come to us with concerns. Here is some of it:
- The first formal guidance from U.S. Dept. of Labor on the new Pandemic Unemployment Benefits should be arriving today or tomorrow. Complete details should be available in a week to ten days.
- The Employment Dept website has yet to incorporate information about the new CARES benefits into its Q&As. It will soon.
- UI information (online and via telephone) is or will soon be available in four languages: Vietnamese, Russian, Spanish, and English.
- The website will be changing continually as the new guidelines are incorporated, so you should keep checking. You can also sign up for automatic email updates by clicking the little box at the top of the website that says “Subscribe to Updates.”
- Believe it or not, we’re in better shape than many other states. Our U.I. Trust Fund is among the best funded in the nation. (We were able to emerge from the Great Recession in the black.) It appears for now that employer rates won’t need to go up to deal with the current crisis.
- Some states have had their computer systems crash and been out of commission for long periods of time. So far, ours has held up, but staff are concerned about trying to program in too many changes at once. As I’ve mentioned before, our Employment Department computer system is archaic. It’s in the middle of a complete upgrade, and will eventually have much more capacity, but for now, it’s another challenge.
- As a result of the fragile computer system, the Department won’t be able to waive the one-week waiting period.
- You should be receiving benefits within a few weeks of filing.
- If you’re already on unemployment, you won’t need to do anything additional to receive your CARES Act pandemic premium of $600 a week. Once the new program is set up, workers will receive it each week in a separate check from the state. You’ll be entitled to accrued pandemic premium benefits going back to April 1, 2020.
- As I’ve mentioned previously, the CARES Act extends unemployment to those who are self-employed. They also will qualify for the $600 pandemic premium
- It’s not clear yet if there will be a separate application form for the self-employed. It’s advisable that you hold off on filing for now. If you do go ahead and file a claim before the new rules are incorporated, you’ll probably receive an error message. If that happens, Employment Department staff will try to reach out to you and get you into the right system, but they’d prefer that you wait.
- People who wouldn’t qualify for regular unemployment because they haven’t worked long enough in this state will likely qualify for Pandemic Unemployment in a similar way as the self-employed.
- The CARES Act also beefs up the current WorkShare Program, which provides UI benefits for those who are still working but have had their hours reduced. The federal government will pick up the full cost of the benefit. Unfortunately, for now at least, there are a couple of restrictions that would require legislative action or a Governor Executive Order to change: workers must have been employed at the company for at least six months and there must be at least 3 workers participating in the program.
- The CARES Act provides a benefits extension of 13 weeks. Our current economic conditions will likely automatically trigger other extensions as well.
- If you do file and receive an error message, don’t panic. There are glitches in the system. The website will explain some of these error messages, or you can email them, and it will likely be worked out. They are going to be flexible with deadlines.
- Finally, as I mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, for now at least, it’s best to contact the de.partment by email (OED_COVID19_info@oregon.gov) and not by phone. Their response time, either by email or by phone if you prefer, will be much faster.
Help for Non-Profits
Yesterday, I provided information on help for small businesses, via grants and loans. I know that many of you out there work in the non-profit sector, doing a variety of good and important things. But you too are confronting huge reductions in the revenues that support your work, either from donations or public contracts or other sources. It’s important that your organization be in a position to keep doing its work or at least to be able to pick up again when the state of emergency is lifted.
There are resources out there for you. Here is a chart from the National Council of Nonprofits showing loans available for nonprofits in the CARES Act.
More on Loans for Small Business
Technically, the new SBA loans are supposed to become available tomorrow. Obviously, businesses and non-profits both are impatient to begin the application process, and many would like to work with their banks and credit unions to do so. However, banks and credit unions aren’t really in a position yet to move forward. Given that the bill passed less than a week ago, the detailed explanations and instructions that banks need aren’t available yet.
BUT, I’ve just learned that the first set of guidelines for the Paycheck Protection loan program came out a couple of hours ago. Here they are. They’re 31 pages of technical information, and it’s going to take credit unions and banks a little time to digest. Not sure about tomorrow, but you should be able to begin the process soon.
Someone also just sent me this easy-to-read Small Business Guide and Checklist for Coronavirus Emergency Loans from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
And, I'm pleased to report that Business Oregon has set up a one-stop navigator site for small businesses. Check it regularly, as it will be changing continually.
More Details on the Direct Payments
Details about how the $1200 direct payments will be made has come out today. Just received a communication from Congressman Earl Blumenauer with some great detailed information. As you’ll see, the first wave of payments will be made mid-April via direct deposit to those for whom the IRS has direct deposit information. Checks will follow.
You can see Earl’s explanation of how those checks will be sent out and in what order here.
Thanks for the info, Congressman!
AND FINALLY,
Here again are some resources that you will find useful:
If the above links are not providing you with answers to your questions or directing you to the help that you need, please consider me and my office to be a resource. We’ll do our best to assist you or steer you in the right direction.
Best,
 Senator Michael Dembrow
District 23
email: Sen.MichaelDembrow@oregonlegislature.gov
web: www.senatordembrow.com
phone: 503-986-1723
mail: 900 Court St NE, S-407, Salem, OR, 97301
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