Walla Walla County commissioners voted to use CARES Act funds to cover benefits of employees hired for COVID response and those whose time was previously billed to grants. | Wikimedia Commons
Walla Walla County commissioners voted to use CARES Act funds to cover benefits of employees hired for COVID response and those whose time was previously billed to grants. | Wikimedia Commons
Walla Walla County commissioners voted to use CARES Act funding to pay county employee's benefits.
Walla Walla County was allocated $3.42 million in CARES Act funding by the state of Washington, the Union-Bulletin reported.
Meghan DeBolt, director of community health, started the commissioner's meeting by asking for $169,000 to cover benefits for employees in her department. She explained that many employees usually bill their time to various grants, but since the pandemic has shifted focus to COVID-19 related work, it cannot be billed to other funding sources.
Previous payment of salaries was authorized by the county but benefits payments were not.
Grant work is still being done, DeBolt assured, but less time is being spent on programs including the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program and maternal and child health programs.
“Our team has been really creative about getting the work done, and we are billing out our grants as fully as we possibly can,” DeBolt said, the Union-Bulletin reported.
If all county departments request CARES Act funds to cover their employee benefits, Commissioner Todd Kimball estimated that the total may amount to $250,000. The county has designated $3 million of its CARES Act funds, leaving plenty to cover this possibility.
“There are tons of moving parts here. For instance, the court services right now may be getting a grant of some sort to pay for some of the things that they had requested from us, so there may be some money flowing back into the CARES funding for the county," Kimball said, the Union-Bulletin reported.
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