On Sunday, Nov. 15, Gov. Inslee announced that he would allocate $50 million of the state’s share of the federal Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) for aid for businesses. As I wrote last week, a proposal for use of CRF dollars that the governor submitted to the Legislature on Nov. 17 also included $20 million for residential rent assistance and $15 million for household energy assistance.

Friday afternoon, Gov. Inslee officially announced all of this funding, plus an additional $50 million for business grants. The entire $135 million comes from the CRF. The components are:

• $70 million in business support grants (on top of $25 million previously allocated for this purpose)
• $30 million for business loans (with the expectation that this money will leverage possibly $100 million in private capital)
• $20 million for residential rental assistance (on top of $100 million previously allocated for this purpose)
• $15 million for household energy assistance

During the press conference on Friday, Gov. Inslee also noted that they are “working to find a way to ease” looming increases in unemployment taxes, but they are still working out the details. He said, “the models we’re looking at would achieve measurable rate relief in the hundreds of millions of dollars beginning in the 2021 tax year.”

To date, the state has allocated $2.056 billion of its share of the CRF. By my count, that leaves $110.7 million unallocated. (Click on the chart for the underlying data and more information.)