U.S. Washington state to distribute federal funding to local governments

Governor of the U.S. state of Washington Jay Inslee on Monday announced that about 190 million U.S. dollars will be awarded from the state’s federal stimulus funding to local governments that did not receive direct distributions under the (CARES) Act.

The new funding includes nearly 126 million dollars that will be distributed to cities and counties and about 62 million dollars to local health jurisdictions. The governor’s budget office approved the distributions, in consultation with legislative leaders, the announcement said.

“Our local public health jurisdictions, cities and counties have worked tirelessly since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 appeared in Washington to protect their communities,” Inslee said. “This much-needed infusion of funds will help sustain their efforts to stop the spread of this virus.”

The new funding for cities and counties came on top of nearly 300 million dollars that was distributed last spring to cities and counties with populations under 500,000 that were ineligible to receive direct funding from the federal government under the CARES Act, according to the announcement.

The state’s Department of Health will distribute funding for local health jurisdictions. Specific allocations to cities and counties will be released by the Department of Commerce in the coming days. Each county will receive a minimum distribution of 300,000 dollars and each city will receive a minimum distribution of 30,000 dollars from the state.