 You are tuned into the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm your host, Autumn Lab A. Reneau, and today is Friday, April 3rd. We're sharing local news and resources focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. My guest today will be Congressman John Garamendi. We'll be talking about a number of things related to COVID-19 and the economic crisis, and we'll have that interview in just a few minutes. Next Tuesday, my guest are Victor Lagunis, President of the Davis Teachers Association, and Winter City Council member Jesse Lauren. And then the following Friday, we'll speak with Yolo County Supervisor Jim Provenza and Davis Mayor Brett Lee. I've got some additional interviews in the pipeline focusing on Yolo Food Bank, Yolo Housing, Mental Health, and more. This show airs live at noon on Tuesdays and Fridays, and repeats at 5 p.m. both days and at noon on Sundays. You can also listen online at KDRT.org, and you'll find a compilation of resources there as well. I'm going to squeeze in a few announcements before we get to the interview. I wanted to follow up on the discussion we had Tuesday about how nonprofits are faring during the pandemic. And the answer to recap is we're struggling and we're apprehensive. However, today is the first day that nonprofits can apply to the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP. Part of the overall $2 trillion stimulus package, the PPP includes loans for nonprofits as well as for-profit businesses. For nonprofits, the loans are forgivable, essentially treat it more like grants, that certain qualifications are met. We're being directed to visit sba.gov to learn more or to contact our lenders for an application. But I do want to say that news stories today indicates that lenders are struggling with how to implement these loans. So I think a little patience is called for as they bring this online. And again, I'll note that next Friday we'll speak with County Supervisor Jim Provenza who helped formulate the COVID-19 relief fund for nonprofits. So we'll continue to learn more about this important topic. Okay, the Davis Police Department requests that you do not call 9-1-1 to report a person or business violating the shelter-in-place order. Officers are needed to respond to emergency calls as a priority. So you please call their non-emergency line at 530-747-5400 if you feel compelled to report something. The call will be triaged to determine if police response is appropriate. This behavior reached epic proportions this past week when police received multiple calls about the Davis Farmers Market being open. I'll use this opportunity to remind listeners that the Farmers Market is considered an essential business and is an essential part of our food supply chain, much like grocery stores. I chatted with market manager Randy McNear recently, and she said that all physical distancing rules are in effect, and vendors are taking appropriate precautions for food handling. Families, this is new, families or living groups are asked to send only one person to shop for their household. And you can learn more at davisfarmersmarket.org. PG&E residential customers will receive the California Climate Credit on their bills during the April billing cycle. The credit total is $62.91 for residential customers receiving both natural gas and electric service. For those using only natural gas or only electric, the credit will be prorated. It's intended as an offset while many of us are at home under stay at home orders and maybe using more energy than usual. And you can learn more about that at pge.com. And wrapping up this portion of the announcements, losing your job amidst a pandemic is traumatic and launched just yesterday onward California and it's spelled onward capital C-A is a resource that's been rapidly deployed by a broad coalition of companies, foundations and humans who want to help. Help you get money, help you upskill, reskill or refresh. Thanks to Jim Provenza for this tip. And I believe we have our call coming through. Hello, this is John Garamendi. Welcome, congressman. Good to be with you. I'm sorry we're a few minutes late. It's one of those days. You're right on time. I was just going to do a little preface to say that you represent the third congressional district which encompasses Calusa, Sutter and Yuba counties plus most of Glen, Lake, Solano and Yolo counties. And we do appreciate you taking time to speak with us. I know we're speaking to you at a time when, you know, things are just in chaos. Let's start with how are you and your family and your staff holding up? We're all very healthy. We have no infection and no symptoms amongst any of the staff. Very early on, almost a month ago now, I directed my district staff to avoid meetings, do work as much as possible. They were continuing to work in the office in about two and a half weeks ago. We changed that and we basically said everything is going to be remote. We set up a mechanism for people to continue to contact us and to work remotely. And we've been doing that from home for almost three weeks now for sure. And so we're all healthy and thank you and I hope you and your listeners are also healthy. I understand there is infection in the community in Yolo county but at the moment it's not very widespread and hopefully it will stay that way. Thank you. I know you're hearing from folks throughout your district about how businesses have been decimated by shelter in place, workers are laid off, everyone's dealing with an expensive housing market and so on. So let's start by, if you would, walk us through the recently passed economic stimulus package. Basically I want to drill down into who gets what and when are benefits expected. And the Washington Post wrote yesterday that benefits could actually take months to reach people. That is about a 10 hour conversation. I'll try to do it very quickly. Let me, the best way to do this for all of your listeners is to go to my government website and to, on that website there are at least 10 different places they could click on to various organizations that are providing information from the federal government. Right. The most recent one is for small businesses, it just came out today. I was, and this we just put up on our website, garramendi.house.gov. And that's for small businesses. There are a couple of different programs here. One is directly a direct loan program and other is a grant program. Most of these work through SBA mechanism for the application to be made on the website. So that's a government website. The CDC has a website and so the federal emergency management agency has a website. And all of those are constantly updated. Do keep in mind that the bill is, there are three bills that have been enacted. The first one was the emergency money, $8.3 billion that goes to federal agencies for research, vaccines, various treatment mechanisms, equipment and the like. And also the local government and money for the unemployment and not unemployment insurance. But the second bill was what we call for the workers, for the families and these are programs. Those programs are now taking place. They have to be formed up, unemployment insurance, small business administration, direct loans from FEMA and the like. All of that is now in place. The big one, which is called the CARES Act, and that's the $2 trillion program. And that is very large amounts of money for state, local governments for hospitals for providers, clinics and the like, money to augment the Medicaid program and the money for small businesses. The other part of it was specifically for the airline industry and the remaining huge amount of money went to the Treasury Department to assist businesses, larger businesses, larger than 500 employees. I have a very, very serious concern about that. We had a major fight with Trump and with the Republican senators about how that money is to be distributed to whom a very strong oversight into that legislation because we had concerns. We learned a lesson in 2008 and 2009 that money can be abused, misused and go to the wrong people. We wanted that money to go to employees so that the businesses that got the money would use it to keep their employees employed. The president in signing that legislation said, no, I'm not going to let that happen. I'm going to use the money as I want to use it. So we now have a major brawl with the administration about oversight. To address that Pelosi will make her appointment to the five-member oversight, bipartisan, bicameral oversight board that the president said he wasn't going to pay any attention to, and that Pelosi has taken an additional step and that is she is going to create a special select committee in the House of Representatives to have oversight. This is akin to the Truman commission that was put in place during World War II. So we'll see what happens here. Right, and the issue is we don't want the money to make sure that it goes to employees and not to stockholders, for example, correct? Precisely. So what we found back in 2008 and 2009, there was questions about how the money was used. More recently in the tax bill that the Republicans put forth in December of 2017 without one hearing in either House, more than a trillion, $200 billion went to corporations in tax relief. It turns out that almost all of that money went to the stockholders in buybacks and the like, dividends in buybacks, and we don't want that repeated. This is going to take a lot of oversight and the president is not going to be helpful here. So we'll see what happens. I did forget to mention that a good portion of the money that is going to be in these bills should go for unemployment insurance augmentation. And that's timely, because as I'm sure you know, we had 6.65 million people file new claims for unemployment this month, bringing us to a total of 10 million unemployed. And so I'm aware that there are changes. There's augmentation from the federal government to unemployment insurance, which usually comes to the states. And people who haven't been able to file for it before like self-employed folks can now file and receive some benefits, correct? That is correct. So we've been talking about the huge package, the $2 trillion package and all these associated programs of immediate assistance. But something I don't understand, so I'd like to ask, is there likely to be further legislation at the congressional level to address longer-term joblessness or help with the unstable business environment? Yes, there will be. It's not clear what we will be able to do. Our original thinking, or our current thinking, is that we need to prepare the economy for the return of employees to the jobs. And we were looking at a major, very broadly defined infrastructure legislation. This would be transportation, housing, schools, research facilities, broadband communication facilities, 5G and the like. But I am not sure where we are. That proposal hit a wall. The final said no way, no how. So that's the Senate leadership, the Republican leadership strongly objected to that, followed by McCarthy and the House of Representatives. Nevertheless, the cuts led by the Commerce Committee and the Transportation Infrastructure Committee, of which I'm a member, intends to continue to put forward a bill that would carry out those tasks. Just this morning, Speaker Pelosi changed the emphasis from that longer-term infrastructure bill to a new bill that would support state and local governments and the medical systems across the nation. The information that we're receiving from local governments, I just had a conversation with one of my counties today, is that it won't be long before they're broke. Many of the cities are dependent upon sales taxes, and that's not happening. In fact, states like Florida and Nevada are totally dependent upon sales tax and gambling revenues and the like, and that's not happening. So I'm seeing a shift in emphasis as a result of what we're hearing in the near term in the last several days from states and counties and cities and other local government enterprises that they're going to be out of money very soon. So Pelosi is shifting emphasis, and may very well be our next bill is along the line of assisting governments. That's actually good news. We've been interviewing a number of elected officials at the local level here, too. And I am hearing about serious cash shortfalls in the near term and probable structural deficits certainly within the next year and continued some time after that. So I'll look forward to following that legislation and seeing what happens there, and thank you for bringing us up to speed on it. So when I posted that I was getting ready to interview you, I had a number of people contact me and the theme here, and I realize this is not something that's usually addressed at the federal level, but we're talking about things that often aren't addressed at the federal level. Mortgage relief has been in the news a lot, but what I'm starting to hear from is a lot of renters. And I've actually heard discussion about possible rent strikes locally. And I think there's a palpable fear that more people will end up homeless. So how do we begin to get our heads around that particular issue? Can we? Well, first of all, the rent issues also dovetail with the mortgage issues, which dovetail with the banking issues. Part of the, one of the purposes of the response that was put forward with the CARES Act, we completely went by the $1,200 per person issue, but that was a very small stop-gap measure to try to deal with the issue just raised. How do people pay the bills this month? Assuming they get the money this month, which apparently they will if they are, they've written notified the IRS that they use direct deposit. I believe the IRS will soon have a mechanism for people to file a direct deposit communication with the IRS if they've not yet done so, because if a handwritten check, excuse me, a check, a paper check, could take several months, at least two months before it arrives. And my understanding is that they intend to prioritize the paper check based upon income level, which is the right thing to do, but I would hope the IRS would allow people to file a direct deposit statement immediately. And we're going to pursue that piece with the IRS. I sort of lost track of where your question went here. It was about how do we help renters in this? Oh, the mortgages, renters. My understanding that some of these in the state have already implemented programs that would protect renters by giving them a month or two. And I think locally, I know the city of Davis was considering that the state of California also has the authority or the ability to do that. I'm not sure that it needs legislation. I know that the governor has talked about this, and I know some cities in California have also talked about doing this. I'm not aware of exactly where they are. At the national level, there is an effort to get the, and some banks have doing this already, saying, OK, you can not pay your mortgage this month or next month and we'll add it at the back end. I know some of the big banks have already done this. Some of the credit unions are doing this. At the federal level, the FHA and the Fannie and Freddie May are considering that. I don't believe that action has taken place yet. Yeah, both the county of Yolo, the board of supervisors there and the Davis city council did pass ordinances that prohibit landlords from evicting renters at this time. I think the issue is, although mortgage holders have the ability to add mispayments to the back end of the mortgage, renters don't have that. So there's a real and building fear about how many people might eventually be displaced. They sure they can't be evicted right now, but how are they going to without employment? How are they going to make up that rent down the line? So I'm just I'm planting a seed there that that's a growing concern in communities here in Yolo County. So thank you for that information. I do know that at the federal level, the trust of the legislation that we have passed thus far, particularly the second piece of legislation was specifically to support families, workers and then once again, I would really, you know, we're looking at unemployment insurance, which may be a significant percentage of those renters. I do know that students are also renters and for the most part, their contracts are short-term. So that may be a piece of this puzzle. In any case, the city of the Davis and the county, perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent, is keenly aware of the renter's situation. I'd be interested in hearing specifically from them and I suspect I will momentarily. I suspect you will too. So I'm sure that both your district office and your your offices in DC are flooded with questions and comments and you did list at the top of the interview, you listed your web page. Can you give us that resource again so we have that? Garamendi.house.gov. Okay, and listeners, Congressman Garamendi did say that there's answers to a lot of these questions we've talked about about the economic stimulus bill and unemployment insurance and the SBA loans and things like that at the website. If someone is having trouble navigating some systems, what's the best way, how do you suggest that they reach out to your staff? Or what kinds of questions are fair going to bring to your staff? I guess that's my rephrase. I don't, so what do I, what if we've not heard? We hear it all. We don't get many 911 calls. But we do get, we do get numerous calls on virtually every subject, healthcare issues, social security. We deal, we have a major effort and have forever, what we call constituent issues. They, before this crisis, it was social security, veterans administration, Medicare, Medicaid, or Medi-Cal in California. Excellent travel. We're still getting calls. There are several dozen of my constituents that are stuck overseas. So we get calls from families working with the State Department, getting those people back who want to come back to the United States. So all of that is taking place. The telephone numbers, I haven't, which ones should they use? They should use the office in Davis. Washington DC office will take messages in Washington DC. We take messages in Davis. We check those messages daily. And I was just looking for the very best number for people to call. I'll, I'll get it as this conversation proceeds. Okay, we have just a couple more minutes. And I did want to, diverging from the COVID-19 discussion just a little bit, the Democrats have postponed the convention till August. What are your thoughts on that? Absolutely necessary. It would be a foolish thing to push this thing into early July. For two reasons. It's possible that the epidemic and the infection is continuing on into the summer. And so we don't want to, we got a plan long ahead and therefore it's been changed to August. Let us hope that by August we're all back on track. I don't know if that's a safe bet or not that we're all hoping for that. And others have told me that hope is not a good strategy. We'll see. I think at this moment it's put one foot in front of the other and just keep moving through the days because everything's a moving target and everything is changing. So I want to thank you so much for making time to call in. You've always been very accessible here to community media and Davis. We appreciate that and we wish you well. Thank you for fighting the good fight in Washington. Well let's make this a, if not weekly then every other week let's do it. There'll be updates along the way and I really urge people go to our website. It's the best, it is a place. Also the city of Davis, the state of California have great websites that are providing specific information from the community, the county, the state perspective. And I urge people to use that to the maximum extent possible. Right. We will thank you so very much. We will definitely have you back. Thank you.