Colorado received nearly $66 billion in federal COVID aid. We tracked where all that money went and broke it down by county and sector in our project, The Big Payout. Read the investigation now:
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post
Denver, Arapahoe and El Paso counties alone captured 44 cents of every federal dollar in assistance that could be localized. A dozen resort counties received as much federal money as the remaining 40 rural counties, even though those rural counties had 186,000 more residents. Pitkin County, home to Aspen, pulled in 5.5 times as much money per resident as Crowley, one of the poorest counties in the state.
The federal money went to a variety of things — providing protective equipment, funding the transition to remote learning at schools, saving thousands of service jobs, helping restaurants and health care providers recover lost revenues, and in a use raising eyebrows,The federal help was unprecedented, massive and will continue to reshape the economy for years to come as the state and local governments work to spend another $5.8 billion in federal recovery funds.
But by itself, state money represented a drop in the bucket. The federal government would need to step in, and it did. Abandoning the restraint shown in prior downturns, the Trump administration and Congress quickly assembled a $2 trillion package known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act in late March 2020.
While comprehensive, the Peterson tracker didn’t include $386 million in support airlines in the state received, child care tax credits worth $1.53 billion and distributions from smaller programs. The “It is not an easy thing to spend money and do so legitimately and in an orderly way,” said Stephan Weiler, director of Colorado State University’s Regional Economic Development Institute, which studies issues related to the rural-urban divide.— were stood up quickly with lax safeguards because of a desire to get as much money out the door as quickly as possible.
Arapahoe County was second overall with $6.85 billion or 12.5% of pandemic funding. The county was a leader in claiming funds to assist health care providers recover lost revenues. Centennial-based Centura Health, a leading hospital group with several subsidiaries and locations across Colorado, claimed a large share of those funds.
Another way to compare distributions is by looking at what counties received per resident. Colorado’s dozen metropolitan counties received localized federal assistance averaging $9,574 per resident, not far from the statewide average of $9,482 per person. At the other extreme, many of the counties at the bottom end when it came to receiving federal assistance struggled with poverty rates above the statewide average and household incomes significantly below — characteristics that would suggest they needed more help, not less, during the pandemic. That group included Crowley, Fremont, Bent, Custer, Conejos, Hinsdale, Delta, Costilla and Moffat counties.
More than a quarter of the federal pandemic assistance dollars in Colorado from the 22 largest programs, $15.1 billion or $2,604 per capita, came through the Paycheck Protection Program. It was a new loan program designed to help small businesses with under 500 employees keep their workers on the payroll. If the money was spent saving jobs, the loans were forgivable.
While Weiler agrees that business and job concentration are part of the equation, they don’t provide a complete answer. Pitkin County may have 20 times more businesses than Crowley, but it received 55 times more PPP funds. Information about the different assistance programs, including the guidelines, wasn’t always timely, said Melody Villard, a commissioner in Moffat County, which lagged when it came to federal assistance.
SBA Administrator Isabella Guzman acknowledged that the smallest of small businesses and those without a banking relationship had a harder time accessing pandemic assistance, something the SBA addressed in its second PPP round in 2021. It leaned more heavily on. It also earmarked funds for micro and disadvantaged businesses.
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