ST. LOUIS — A proposal to give $500 cash payments to about 10,000 St. Louis residents affected by the COVID-19 pandemic has become a flashpoint at City Hall over how to spend the next round of federal coronavirus aid.
Allies of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones are pressing the full Board of Aldermen to add $5 million for such a program when Aldermanic President Lewis Reed’s $153 million aid package comes up for floor debate as soon as Friday.
They include a group of more than 10 ministers and community activists who held a news conference Thursday outside City Hall.
The $5 million program, rejected by an aldermanic committee Wednesday, is just a small portion of Jones’ overall $81.4 million aid proposal.
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Most of the mayor’s other requests are included in Reed’s bill, along with significant additional spending tacked on by Reed. But Alderman Megan Green, 15th Ward, said the direct assistance idea is “a priority for a lot of us,†referring to the mayor’s allies on the board.
“That $500 can make or break somebody,†said Green, who also is a member of the stimulus advisory panel advising Jones on pandemic aid spending.
But opponents on the aldermanic Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee, which voted 6-3 against the direct payments, noted that Reed’s bill does include millions of dollars of targeted aid to help people pay rent, mortgage and utility bills, and even property taxes, plus food and other assistance. Those allocations also were requested by the mayor.
Alderman Marlene Davis, 19th Ward, added that the federal government later this month to many families with children under a tax credit plan.
“For us to try to determine who’s going to get it, it just doesn’t make sense,†Davis said, referring to Jones’ proposed direct aid. “There’s too much other money coming out.â€
Moreover, Reed said at the Wednesday meeting that only about 3% of the city’s population would get the one-time city payments and that the $500 allotment would be “very, very small.â€
“That’s not going to be transformational the way we need to be,†he said.
Reed’s comments stirred criticism at Thursday’s news conference from the Rev. Darryl Gray, a local civil rights activist, and the Rev. Linden Bowie, president of the Missionary Baptist State Convention.
“If $5 million is going to be held up because somebody does not understand how important it is to put food on the tables of the poorest of the poor ... then we are in trouble,†Bowie said.
Initially, the direct assistance plan was suggested by the mayor’s stimulus advisory panel.
Under the panel’s idea, one-time payments of $350 to $500 would go to an estimated 10,000 city residents facing reduced unemployment benefits due to Gov. Mike Parson’s recent decision to end federal pandemic jobless aid.
The governor, like his peers in some other states, said the continued assistance had given laid-off people an incentive to delay going back to work.
When Jones issued her overall plan on June 15, she included the $5 million allotment but didn’t specify that it would go just to people cut off from unemployment benefits.
Instead, her office began studying other ways to distribute the funds, with Jones’ chief of staff explaining that there’s a more expansive universe of people who need the help.
Further details weren’t available until Jones outlined what she had decided in a letter to Reed on Wednesday.
Under her plan, applicants would have to show proof of economic hardship due to COVID-19, such as job loss, reduced work hours, an increase in child care expenses, funeral expenses due to a COVID-related death or unplanned out-of-pocket medical expenses related to the virus.
Only residents earning 80% or less of the city’s median income could qualify, with the specific amount of allowed income depending on household size.
Homeless people sponsored by a shelter or another organization also could qualify, as could undocumented people.
At Wednesday’s committee hearing, the panel’s chairman, Jeffrey Boyd, 22nd Ward, said while Jones’ proposal has a noble goal, he worried that it would be unfair to people above the specified income thresholds who also lost their jobs.
“They need a safety net as well,†Boyd said.
However, he said he’d be willing to revisit the idea when another round of federal pandemic aid is allocated later this year.
Some in the group at Thursday’s news conference also criticized Reed and aldermen for taking too long going over Jones’ overall plan.
They said the board could have begun its round of hearings on the aid in April, when Jones’ panel began work. Reed has insisted that the board is moving quickly and that Jones could have issued her proposal earlier.
Before the news conference, the group went to Reed’s second-floor office to deliver a letter they said was backed by about 50 ministers, labor officials and others. The letter urged Reed to support Jones’ full plan, including immediate cash assistance.
In response, Reed’s legislative director, Mary Goodman, said the letter “seems outdated.â€
She said Reed’s bill includes most of the requested items cited in the letter, including spending on COVID vaccination efforts, violence intervention programs, care for the homeless and youth jobs.
Meanwhile, Boyd said he, Reed and the committee tried to give Jones as close to 100% of what she wanted in the bill as possible.
“For people to be bickering about what they didn’t get, it’s just being selfish,†Boyd said. “This is politics. It’s all a win-win; it’s not win-lose.â€
Police overtime
Meanwhile, Green said she doubted there will be an effort by Jones allies to delete $5 million assigned in Reed’s bill for police overtime.
That essentially would replace $4 million taken out of police spending at Jones’ request from the city’s regular 2021-2022 budget that went into effect last week.
“At the end of the day, the mayor controls the police department and can control how much overtime†is actually paid in the upcoming fiscal year, Green said.
In the aldermanic committee’s meeting, the police allocation was approved on a 10-0 vote.
However, one member, Sarah Martin, 11th Ward, said in an email Thursday that she had mistakenly voted in favor because she was distracted by her family at that point in the teleconference meeting.
Meanwhile, Alderman Shane Cohn, 25th Ward, said he likely will try to add money to the bill to upgrade city Election Board equipment so residents could vote at any polling place, not just the one they’re assigned to vote at near their residence.
