With just weeks left before the deadline, tribes face a dilemma. Should they hold onto their COVID-19 relief money and hope Congress extends the deadline, or spend it all now and risk not having funds in 2021?
With just weeks left before the deadline, tribes face a dilemma. Should they hold onto their COVID-19 relief money and hope Congress extends the deadline, or spend it all now and risk not having funds in 2021?
“Hopefully the date is going to be extended,” says Stephanie Elkins is acting CEO of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians. The small tribe received $11 million from the federal CARES Act of 2020.
“We’re very conservative in our spending right now, just because we don’t know what the future’s going to hold. We’re definitely conservative in our reopening protocols and procedures, and we’ll maintain that until it’s determined that our communities are safe.”
“Conservative” is a recurring word tribes are using to describe their response to a pandemic that’s killed nearly 300,000 Americans, including over a thousand in Oregon. When $8 billion in funding was approved for tribes, it was hoped that the pandemic would be contained. But contrary to repeated assurances by President Trump, COVID-19 has not “gone away”, and cases are hitting record levels everywhere this holiday season.
“It feels like we’re back to where we were in March,” says Chris Mercier, vice chair of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde. They received roughly... Read the entire article here.