Coronavirus Update: Emergency Payments to Reach 70,000 Oregonians

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House Speaker Tina Kotek

Coronavirus Update: Emergency Payments to Reach 70,000 Oregonians

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

Kudos to everyone for continuing to move forward to the end of another pandemic week. I hope you have some good things planned for the weekend.

I wanted to let you know that my team and I will be taking next week off for some needed downtime. My next newsletter will be Tuesday, September 1st. If you’d like to stay on top of the Oregon COVID numbers, the best way is to check here each day.

Now to today’s news.


Emergency Payments to Reach 70,000 Oregonians

In my last newsletter on Wednesday evening, I talked about the launch of a new effort to provide direct assistance to Oregonians in need. While we knew that lots of people needed help, we were all surprised by the public response and the effectiveness of the program over the last 48 hours. After just two days, the program delivered payments to nearly 40,000 eligible Oregonians. On the first day of the program, 62% of the $500 payments went to zip codes outside the Portland Metropolitan Area.

This morning, the Senate President and I had to announce that the $500 Emergency Relief Check Program was closing down after its third day, with all 70,000 available payments having been distributed or dedicated to Oregonians in need. Walk-in sites stopped taking new applications around noon today once they reached their final funding allotment cap, and the program is on track to finish up the remaining by-appointment-only applications through the end of the month. No new applications are being accepted.

I’d like to thank the 10 participating financial institutions who have been tremendous partners in this project: Central Willamette Credit Union, Clackamas Federal Credit Union, Columbia Bank, InRoads Credit Union, Old West Federal Credit Union, OnPoint Community Credit Union, Oregon Community Credit Union, Rogue Credit Union, SELCO Community Credit Union, and Umpqua Bank. All of them contributed staff hours and space to the effort without cost to the state.

Through this public-private partnership, all parts of the state will have been served, and $35 million in federal Coronavirus Relief Fund dollars will be in the hands of Oregonians to meet their basic needs.

I spent considerable time, yesterday and today, talking with folks standing in line at the OnPoint branch on North Lombard in my district. (OnPoint CCU alone served more than 20,000 people through their 31 locations.) People talked about the challenges getting their unemployment benefits, the need to pay bills that are due, and the general state of the world. While the overall mood was upbeat, there was a pervasive feeling of anxiety and frustration. When people finally got into the branch and to the application processing itself, they were often out in 15 minutes, check or cash in hand.

Has the program been perfect? Nope. Doing this type of distribution is challenging in a pandemic. The social distancing could have been better. Thank you to Multnomah County for stepping up to provide face masks to the branches. The walk-in option helped people who don’t have good access to the Internet, but the lines were long. The appointments were better for scheduling one’s time, but the appointments filled up quickly.

We knew the money wouldn’t be enough for everyone who needed it. I wish we had allocated more than $35 million. We simply have to do more to help people.

In the end, this was about Oregonians helping Oregonians. (A special shout out to Copy Pilot for discount copying of application forms!)  Bluntly put, we’re on our own until we get more help from the federal government. Congress and the President have the ability to do another round of direct payments to Americans whose lives have been upended by COVID, but they haven’t done it yet. This is incredibly frustrating and disappointing.

Until more help comes from the federal government, I’ll continue to work with my colleagues to make sure unemployment benefits are getting to people, that every assistance program is working well, and we don’t give up on each other.


The Latest News

  • Governor Brown had a press conference today, where she highlighted the need for Oregonians to do more to prevent the spread of COVID-19 or risk going back to the restrictions of Stay Home, Save Lives. Oregon Public Broadcasting has more information here.
  • The Oregonian has details here on the latest modeling from the Institute for Disease Modeling, which can be found in full here. The report includes some good news. It indicates that virus transmission has flatlined. However, we still need to make a lot more progress in order to move the state forward in key ways, such as reopening schools for in-person learning.
  • Governor Brown has updated the state’s County Watch List, which now includes the following eight counties: Baker, Hood River, Jackson, Jefferson, Malheur, Morrow, Multnomah, and Umatilla. Two counties, Marion and Wasco, have been removed from the list. More on her decision is available here.
  • Earlier in the week, Governor Brown announced that Umatilla County has done enough to move from baseline status back to Phase 1 of reopening. The East Oregonian covered that decision here, and the Governor’s announcement is available here.
  • Oregon Public Broadcasting has more information here on universities that are planning to return for classes in the fall, often with online classes, and here on summer camps operating during the pandemic.
  • The Oregon Health Authority reported 259 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, bringing the statewide total of new and presumptive cases to 24,421. Sadly, two more people have died, meaning there have been 414 Oregonians to die of the coronavirus. On Thursday, the OHA recorded 301 cases and four deaths. You can click the images below for links to interactive data tables about coronavirus in Oregon.

OHA COVID-19 Update 8-21-2020

OHA Epi Curve 8-21-2020

OHA County Map 8-21-2020

To read past newsletters, you can go to this link. For up to date information, please check this link to the Oregon Health Authority where regular updates are posted: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ERD/Pages/News-Releases.aspx

Please email me at Rep.TinaKotek@oregonlegislature.gov if you have specific concerns that have not been addressed by the OHA. Our office will do all we can to help and protect all Oregonians.

Thank you for reading! We will get through this together.

Best,

Tina

Tina Kotek

State Representative
House District 44
Speaker of the House

email: Rep.TinaKotek@oregonlegislature.gov I phone: 503-986-1200
address: 900 Court St NE, H-269, Salem, OR 97301
website: http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/kotek