In March the Legislature appropriated $200 million from the rainy day fund for COVID-19 response. Of that, $175 million was appropriated to the disaster response account (DRA). (The rest went to a new unemployment account.) The bill specified that the Office of Financial Management (OFM) will use the $175 million plus $25 million from the general fund–federal (GFF) for COVID-19 response.

Earlier this week, OFM announced the latest distributions of these funds. The Department of Social and Health Services received $15.6 million from the DRA. Of that:

• $12.6 million is for the disaster cash assistance program, to provide assistance to people without children;
• $1.5 million is to reduce non-compliance sanctions for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and to extend the 60-month lifetime limit; and
• $1.5 million is for the food assistance program.

Additionally, the Department of Commerce received $5.0 million from the DRA for the economic development strategic reserve account. These funds will be used to continue the Working Washington Small Business grant program.

(Posts on the previous distributions are here and here.)

With the new distributions, $34.9 million remains of the DRA COVID-19 funds and $11.7 million remains of the GFF funds.