 You're tuned in to the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm your host, Autumn Labé Renaud, and today is Friday, May 1st. Happy May Day. We're sharing local news and resources, focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. The show airs live at noon on Tuesdays and Fridays and repeats at 5 p.m. both days and at noon. On Sundays, and you can also listen online at kdrt.org. In just a few minutes, Congressman John Garamendi will join us again with updates from Washington. Before that, I have some regional resources to share. So doing a little recap, Earth Day has been celebrated with large public gatherings worldwide for 50 years, and last week on Earth Day, KDRT worked with Davis Climate Strike and a coalition of climate activists from Davis, Yolo, Solano, and Sacramento counties to put together a special Earth Day Sing Out. Project partner, the Davis Independent Music Initiative, is using the hashtag Earth Day Sing Out through May 9th to support local musicians who've lost work during the pandemic. And you can learn more about that at climatestrikedavis.com. You can also find there a link to the Earth Day Sing Out, and sorry, the link is at kdrt.org, and the lyrics to all these songs and links to these recordings made by local musicians in honor of Earth Day are on the climatestrikedavis.com website, along with ideas for taking action to protect our climate for future generations. Yolo County has updated its Shelter in Place order, which was set to expire today. The order has been extended through May 31st, which keeps the county approach to sheltering in place consistent with the state's order. The government health orders are intended to continue to slow the spread of COVID-19, and we are all still required to stay at home except for necessary life tasks or essential jobs and to protect ourselves with the washing of hands and the wearing of masks. The county can allow certain activities to resume if they are also either allowable under the state order or not expressly prohibited by it. Yolo County has assessed the following new activities as low risk for the spread of COVID-19. All construction and drive-in religious services, both of which resume May 4th. These new permitted activities joined those announced last week, which included reopening access to golf courses, fishing areas and boat ramps, gun and archery ranges and hunting areas. Those apply to all of these, mostly of the social distancing variety, and if, like me, you didn't know that drive-through religious services were a thing, you're not alone. There was an awful lot of buzz on social media about that yesterday. The county also reminds us that face coverings are now required while conducting all types of business in Yolo County. Don Shore at Redwood Bar next door was telling me that they had a disgruntled customer who labeled it fascist and Don simply replied with, it's the law and we can be shut down if we don't follow it. County reps add that while there are no plans for the public to be cited for not wearing a mask, businesses can and will turn away people not wearing one. And as I said, enforcement is planned for the businesses who aren't complying. So please be courteous, be smart. Please do not call 911 if you think someone is violating the order. All right. We are getting ready for our call. All right. He represents the third congressional district in California, which encompasses most of Calusa, Sutter and Yuba counties, plus most of Glen, Lake, Solano and Yolo counties and a portion of Sacramento County. It's my pleasure today to welcome back Congressman John Garamendi. Hello there. Delighted to be with the conversation and a lot of things we need to talk about there's a world of hurt, individuals, families, and how we deal with it. Very, yes. First ever lifetime worldwide pandemic. Yeah, I have a lot of questions for you today. First, do you have a virtual town hall here on May 5th? Are you here in the district or are you in DC at the moment? Like all of us, I am at home. You're at home, okay. So we last spoke with you on April 3rd, which was pretty early in the situation. And at one point, or at that point, there had been one stimulus package. And now there have been four, I believe, all bipartisan. So let's walk us through what you've been dealing with there and how the different stimulus packages have come together. Well, the very first one we passed was about an $8 billion program. I mean, it was to get the health system started and to fund health system programs. And that one dealt with significant couple billion dollars for vaccines. Mm-hm. And providers and the like. Turns out that it was like a small wreck in a huge, huge pool of water. Right. The next bill was focused on what we call Families First. And it was basically designed to provide specific benefits to individuals, people who were sick, paid sick, paid family, unemployment insurance, things of that sort. The third bill is what most people talk about now. And that went to a trillion dollars. And that one was the paycheck protection program. Most everybody focuses on that. My personal opinion of it was that there were some serious mistakes in that legislation. It became a golden vault for major corporations to really rip off the public. It was intended for small businesses. The President and the White House refused to put in the kind of guardrails. These were specific requirements that the money go to those who really needed it. Instead, it was left wide open to the discretion of the Treasury Department. And I think most of us are now aware of major league teams whose owners are billionaires. Right. Getting money, big chains, on and on. All that became part of what was, in my view, a fraud and a rip-off. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we wrote into the bill an oversight mechanism, which the President in his signing document for the bill said, we are going to ignore the oversight requirements of this bill. And here we go. So that money was gone within days, probably less than a week. All of that, I think, $500 to $600 billion was simply gone. And small businesses were basically left out. We then had the third bill, the fourth bill, which was we call CARES 2.0, or 2.5, rather. And this was an effort that has become law to fund small businesses. That is now in place. That actually became law just a few days ago. By most estimates, that money is either soaked up or will be soaked up within a matter of another day or two. That brings us to CARES 3.0, which is now in process. And it will be specifically directed to small businesses and for state and local governments. It is absolutely clear that the many states and local governments, cities, counties, and special districts will be out of money, will be laying off police and fire another public safety and critical personnel to head, because they just won't have the money. I hope to get that done in the next two weeks. We'll see what happens. There is no agreement with the White House on this. Mitch McConnell famously said, let him go bankrupt. He's now backed away from that, probably because Kentucky is one of the states that's headed for bankruptcy. So we'll see what happens on that. Here's a big issue. That's just a quick review of it. There's a great deal of detail that goes in with each one of those pieces of legislation. Right. I'm so glad you brought up that last one, because in talking with local elected officials here, the kinds of structural deficits that cities and counties will be facing, as you said, are immense, because they're dealing with the lack of sales tax, the lack of visitors, the lack of tourism info, all of that. It paints a pretty bleak picture. So thank you for working to address that. At this point, with all the stimulus packages, we're talking about trillions of dollars. And it can't go on forever, right? So I wonder how this chapter will conclude and how we continue to provide this. Really, these are life-saving help, types of help, how we continue to provide that without running out of money and how we move forward from that. Well, actually, we know how to do it. And unfortunately, it has not been done to this day. Way back in Wuhan, infections became known in early January. It was absolutely clear to the intelligence community, to the infectious disease community, that this would become a worldwide problem. At the extent of it was not known at that time. But the alarm bells were ringing in early January. And the Trump administration simply ignored those alarm bells. And by the end of January, as the Americans were evacuated from Wuhan and arrived at Travis Air Force Base, like 20 miles from Davis, I was screaming to anybody that would pay attention. And unfortunately, that was not the federal government, that we absolutely had to have testing. At that time, testing was underway in a very significant way in Korea. And they had immediate testing available in Korea. And I said, for God's sakes, why don't we arrange to purchase from Korea their testing program? Put it on an airplane, we could have it here within two days and we could test these people at Travis. Which at that time, they had not been tested. And we have been at this ever since. To this day, there is no overarching federal program for testing. Yeah, it's a complete failure. At conversations I've had with the administration from FEMA to Health and Human Services and beyond, they have simply said, they supply and demand market system will work to provide the necessary testing. I could use some really rough language to describe it. And of course, it's not just the testing, it's the tracing from the point of contact. If you look at what Korea has done, they've done that very well. And Congressman, I know you introduced some legislation last week to mobilize America's service organizations to help with that effort. Could you talk about that, Bill? Well, we call this the Unite Bill. It has a nice acronym, but basically it is an effort for the federal government to use existing federal organizations that reach across the nation. AmeriCorps will start with the Corporation for National Service. And under that is AmeriCorps and Teach for America. FEMA has a core of people, volunteers that work with FEMA. I think we've seen them in the recent fires here in California where they reach out to provide services. So there's already a structure within the federal government. And many state governments have a similar program. We call it very well in California, the California Conservation Corps, the Urban Conservation Corps, and there are other programs. The governor has set up a health corps of retired and healthcare workers. Los Angeles has set up a tracing corps. And these exist in other states, but they don't have the money. The states are going to go bankrupt. These programs are not going to be expanded. So basically the Unite program is designed to fund existing programs at the state and federal level and ramp up to two or three, four hundred thousand people across the nation that can do testing and tracing. Without that, we're not going to solve the problem. We're not going to be able to get the economy back in full operation. It drives me crazy that the Trump administration, through this day, refuses to take the bull by the horns and get this done. But it can't be. Anyway, the bill is out there. We hope to put it in the next CARES Act as one of the elements and provide the funding. Probably in the range of a few billion dollars to fund these programs. Right. I saw that it was introduced in the Senate by Senators Ed Markey and Chris Van Hollen, too. So we'll hope that that proceeds so that we can get moving. We are woefully behind on testing and contact tracing and it's really going to boomerang back on us. I fear as some of the city, some of the states start to reopen this next week. Well, it's guaranteed. Yeah, I've seen it. If you don't have this mechanism in place, but you've not gotten rid of the infection, the viruses still there. And so you've got to cast and trace. And let's be real, how many of us are going to go to a restaurant and sit down in a restaurant in Davis? Unless we have some pretty high assurance that the people at the next table are not infected. Exactly. Or the waiters, which is not going to do it. So this pandemic is doing a great job of illustrating just how many frailties there are in our system. Do we lose you? Are you still there? I'm here. Okay, good. I heard some distortion and then it ended. And I was afraid we'd lost you. One of the things we touched on just briefly at the end of our last conversation was the issues with broadband in this country and the issues with everyone being on Zoom, everyone having now to do school on remote platforms. And so I think the situation is doing a bang of job of illustrating how poorly situated we are in that direction too. Well, you're absolutely right. And I think maybe you actually use, are you still there as a segue to this question? Actually, I am at the end of my tether. And if I move this phone two feet in either direction, I am likely to lose my connection. Well, don't move. I'm not moving the phone. So if it is a very real problem, we just got off a call with the agricultural community in California. And you talk about ground zero for the lack of communication. You see it in the rural areas. You see it in agriculture. Modern agriculture could be far more efficient, far more water efficient pesticide, herbicides, everything else. If they had better access to broadband systems that are available or are not available, but could be utilized, and you're absolutely correct about the education system, you might add to that telemedicine. And the bottom line of this is in the next, in the last CARES bill, and actually in the first and second bills, there was money for telemedicine. Not so much for the infrastructure, but for the training and utilization of telemedicine. In the CARES Act, the first CARES Act, there was significant money for broadband. The next one will clearly have even more money for broadband. And if and when we ever get to a broad infrastructure bill, one of the elements of it will absolutely be broadband across both urban and rural. You can go into urban Sacramento and you find areas that do not have broadband services. And even more so, you'll find families, students, and others who do not have the iPad or the laptop to connect even if there was service available. So these are things we absolutely have to deal with. I've been around long enough to remember Al Gore, the Internet Highway. Yeah. Here we are, and that was 20 years ago. Right, it was. And here in Yolo County is a perfect example. We have larger communities like West Sacramento and Davis and Woodland that, you know, they have their own issues, but we do have access here. But we are surrounded by ag land and farming communities in what is geographically a very large county and has incredibly poor broadband penetration. So I'm really glad to hear you're talking to the farmers and the ag workers about this issue because it's sorely needed. Needed is. So you have a town hall forum coming up on May 5th. Let me give you a few minutes to talk about what that's going to cover and how people can tie into that. Well, for my work, we've always used town halls as a way of communicating. And they've been very, very well received. This one is going to be for small businesses. Okay. We'll be folding the agricultural community into it, which has both small and large, but mostly in our areas, relatively small businesses. And the processors, the food processors, of which is a huge part of the agricultural and small business community. So we're going to focus on that. We'll be talking about everything from unemployment insurance, how to access that, and how to access the existing CARES 2.0 and 2.5. And we will have representatives from the small business community as well as from the support, business support communities that will be there. We'll have a representative from the governor's office to talk about the work that they're doing to reopen the economy and the steps that are necessary, or the steps along the way, and the support that's necessary to meet those steps, which takes us back to testing, hand tracing, all of those things. So we'll be talking about reopening, we'll be talking about the unemployment insurance, we'll be talking about the support programs, we'll call it the broad PPP program and the LN program, the emergency loan programs. Okay, and that looks like that's on Tuesday, May 5th at 3 p.m. And I'm going to go ahead and give the call-in number for that. If you want to participate, you can call into 855-962-1140 at the time of the event. You can also stream it online at Facebook or at garamendi.house.gov. Again, May 5th. Hey, thank you for all of that. I was desperately searching for those numbers. I've got you covered. Thank you. Okay, well, I really want to thank you again for taking the time to be accessible to your constituents here and for, you know, just fighting the good fight in Washington for us. And I would love to hear how the bill to employ the service corps pans out. We'd love to hear more about that. So I hope to talk with you again in the future. I have a few additional thoughts on that. I was contacted this morning by one of our Republican colleagues on the Transportation Infrastructure Committee. Senate email to me is that we love your bill, the Unite bill. We want to run one that is similar, a little bit different, but similar. And I said go for it as long as I can be a co-author. There's no perfect idea here, but the whole notion is to really fund the mobilization of organizations existing and some that would be created at federal, state, local level so that the testing and tracing can get underway. It is bipartisan now and bicameral, and hopefully we can get it done. Everybody talks about it. What drives me crazy is everybody, oh, we got to do testing, we got to do tracing. I said, fine. So here are some ways we could do it and put some money behind it and get it done. We don't have to create something new. We just have to fund it and authorize the expansion. So we'll see. It's got to be done. All right. Well, we look forward to hearing more. And thanks again for making the time to call in today. Please stay well. Stay at home. Stay at home. Thank you so very much. And thank you for the program and helping all of us understand what's going on. You bet. Thanks for participating. Take care. Bye-bye. That's been Congressman John Garamendi. And I forgot to mention to him I drove by the area where he lives, which is in Portland out in the California Delta recently and kind of waved in his general direction. He is, as he said, as with all members of Congress, they are at home and managing to try to help run the country from their remote perspectives. I'm going to take just a minute and give you a little bit of music and I'll come back and wrap up. All right. I want to talk a little bit about my upcoming guest. I'll be back next Tuesday with Davis Mayor Brett Lee and Jessica Hubbard of the Yolo Community Foundation. They have both been on the show and they're both coming back to give, as Congressman Garamendi just did, give some important updates from what's been happening in their respective areas. There's always a lot happening in city government and Brett will talk to us about that. And Jessica will be updating us on the Yolo County, the relief fund for nonprofits, that the Yolo Community Foundation and the Yolo County Board of Supervisors and others are partnering on. So we look forward to hearing from them. And then next Friday we'll have Senator Bill Dodd in the house by phone, of course, and I look forward to talking with him about broadband too. Got to get it from his perspective. All right. Finally for today, submissions are starting to roll in for life in the time of COVID, the Yolo County Community Diary Project, which, well, it's my personal brainchild and it's something that Davis Media Access is rolling out. It's an interactive community storytelling project designed to highlight what we're all experiencing right now. Short videos can be uploaded to davismedia.org slash diary. And you'll find instructions there. I do want to say we're finding, it takes, it takes a few minutes to get it uploaded. So, so be patient. But please come lend us your voice and your images and help us tell the story of this time that we're all weathering. I am going to fade out here from for the day from the KDRT studio. I'm Autumn LaBea Renault. Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the COVID-19 Community Report Episode 14.