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As pause nears, Raimondo unveils $100M in aid for businesses, workers

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An additional $100 million of the state’s federal stimulus funding is being made available to support businesses and workers affected by the upcoming two-week “pause,” Gov. Gina Raimondo announced Wednesday.

“The goal here … is significant, quick and easy” relief, the governor said during her pre-Thanksgiving COVID-19 briefing.

Half of the funding will provided directly to businesses through grants of up to $50,000, according to Raimondo. Eligible businesses include restaurants, gyms, movie theaters, bowling alleys and others being forced to close or scale back operations through Dec. 13.

Each grant will be determined based on a business’s revenue from last year, Raimondo said, with the funding provided through checks from the Division of Taxation. She said the application process – which will begin Friday through the division’s website, tax.ri.gov – will require business owners only to attest to the loss of revenue as a result of the pandemic response.

“This is not an onerous process,” she said, while also urging businesses receiving the assistance to “please use the money to continue paying your employees during those two weeks.”

The other half of the additional relief announced Wednesday will be provided through a supplemental unemployment insurance benefit, Raimondo said. The benefit will be available to all workers who are receiving unemployment during the pause, she said, and will provide $200 each week for a total of $400.

The governor said there will be no additional application for the unemployment boost, which will be provided automatically. She said the $100 million announcement also includes “additional supports for low-income Rhode Islanders,” including cash assistance and aid for nursing home and home care workers.

While ineligible for the additional unemployment funding, Raimondo said undocumented Rhode Islanders affected by the pause can receive $400 debit cards through Dorcas International as part of the We Are One campaign announced earlier this year. She also said another $1 million is being provided to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank and Farm Fresh Rhode Island to support their work feeding Ocean State residents in need.

Lt. Gov. Dan McKee and others have long questioned the governor’s approach to providing relief for businesses hurt by the pandemic and its related state-imposed restrictions, suggesting the state has withheld federal stimulus money to shore up its own fiscal standing at the expense of the business community.

Earlier this week, the Cranston City Council approved a resolution calling on the governor to provide an additional $75 million through the Restore RI small business grant program and another $75 million specifically for businesses affected by the pause. McKee testified in support of that resolution, which passed the nine-member council unanimously.

Raimondo on Wednesday defended the new $100 million announcement as a “significant infusion” in the state’s economy, one she said compares favorably to action that has been taken elsewhere in the region and in other states nationally. She noted that it comes in addition to $50 million already dedicated to the Restore RI program, millions for job training, and other initiatives previously announced, such as the Take It Outside program.

The governor also said the $100 million represents the majority of the roughly $185 million that remains available from Rhode Island’s $1.25 billion CARES Act allocation.

“It speaks for the majority of what we have left in our stimulus monies,” she said.

Asked whether more business relief should be expected at this point, she responded: “Probably not.”

Raimondo also noted that under current federal law, the CARES Act funding “turns into a pumpkin at the end of the year.” That, she said, provides additional impetus for the rapid distribution of the funding. She also reprised previous calls for Congress to pass a new stimulus package.

“This is a national crisis … I would like to think this will be at the top of the agenda if and when Congress reconvenes to work on a new stimulus,” she said.

Raimondo also said she would “strongly urge” the General Assembly to take action on an eviction moratorium, saying it is “not clear than an executive order would have much effect” from a legal standpoint. She framed the $100 million in relief announced Wednesday as part of an effort to stave off joblessness and evictions as the pandemic rages on and the holiday season arrives.

Asked about concerns from some that the pause could extend past two weeks if the state’s COVID standing does not improve, Raimondo said: “My intention and goal and desire is to start to dial up the economy … at the end of the two weeks.”

She added: “We’ll deal with it when we get there.”

By the numbers

Raimondo’s briefing came as the state continues to see its COVID-19 case counts, hospitalizations and deaths surge.

According to Wednesday’s data update from the Rhode Island Department of Health, 845 new positive cases have been identified from among 14,978 tests, a positive rate of 5.6 percent. In the last two weeks, the daily positive rate has consistently exceeded the 5 percent threshold held up by state officials as a point of concern, which new case counts have exceeded 1,000 on multiple days.

Ten more Rhode Islanders have died due to COVID-19, according to the latest update, bringing the state’s overall toll to 1,335.

Perhaps the most alarming numbers were seen in hospitalizations, which had reached 357 as of Wednesday update. That is just short of the high point seen during the early days of the pandemic, in the spring.

Raimondo said at this point, existing COVID beds in the state’s hospitals have been filled, forcing those facilities to move to surge plans. The field hospitals in Cranston and at the Rhode Island Convention Center will be ready to accept patients starting next week, she said, with Care New England and Lifespan, respectively, making decisions about when to begin redirecting patients.

“They’re ready … They’re doing everything they need to do to surge in their hospitals. But you can hear the stress in their voices,” the governor said of her conversations with hospital leaders.

Raimondo said the two-week pause is ““primarily aimed to reduce the strain on our hospitals, our health care workers, and save lives.” Staffing is a major source of concern, she said, given that “every state in America is calling the same outsource staffing companies.”

Noting that new hospitalizations have tripled in Rhode Island in the last five weeks – a “scary number” that the state has “never seen” – she said: “We cannot sustain this current rate. We will not have the capacity of beds or staff.”

In a particularly grim portion of Wednesday’s remarks, Raimondo raised the prospect of the health care system becoming so strained in the weeks ahead that patients requiring life-saving care – heart surgery or cancer screening, for example – will have to be turned away.

“If we let COVID get further out of control, it doesn’t just mean that we’re going to lost Rhode Islanders to COVID,” she said. It means we’re going to start to lose Rhode Islanders to other diseases.”

She added: “The next two weeks are going to be tough. I don’t want to pretend that they won’t be … I can’t emphasize enough how important it is, though, that we really hunker down. Because the consequences are going to be, like, worse than we’ve ever seen, and I think that pretty soon, every Rhode Islander is going to know somebody who’s in the hospital, somebody who’s out of work, somebody who’s business went under.”

Elsewhere during Wednesday’s briefing:

* Providence resident Sheila O’Connell spoke at the governor’s request, detailing the experience of her late mother-in-law – who passed away in spring after contracting COVID-19 – and her own mother, who is 89 and in an assisted living facility.

“My mother, at age 89, values her life greatly. And she still has things she wants to do in her life,” O’Connell said, urging Rhode Islanders to comply with social distancing guidelines to help protect vulnerable community members. * Raimondo made a number of announcements related to testing and contact tracing. Acknowledging that a spike in demand for testing had impacted existing operations, she said state officials have worked in recent weeks to “stabilize and improve” the situation.

The governor said officials are “dramatically expanding the state-run testing system,” with a goal of having 11,000 asymptomatic tests available daily. She said a new asymptomatic testing site is being readied at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, while efforts are underway to expand testing in high-density, high-risk communities. She also said a text message notification system for test results has been established, a development she described as a “game changer.”

Much of the expanded testing is being made possible through Abbott’s BynaxNOW rapid test, Raimondo said. The test does not require laboratory processing and produces results in 15 minutes.

“It’s a totally different kind of test. It requires no equipment,” she said. * Raimondo read a letter she received from a 6-year-old Cranston girl asking whether Santa Claus

would be able to visit for Christmas this year, and whether his elves have seen their toy-making disrupted by quarantine.

“It turns out Santa and his elves are immune from COVID,” she said, assuring children that Santa – and only Santa – is exempt from restrictions.

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