CFAC pulls back unused COVID funding, spends $4,728,933

The Coronavirus Financial Advisory Committee at its Oct. 28 meeting pulled back $15.6 million that the Departments of Labor and Commerce returned to it. The committee then allocated $4.7 million to Information Technology Services to help mitigate the explosion of demand on the state’s aging network due to changed working conditions caused by the pandemic.

Alex Adams, the chair of CFAC, started the meeting with two pieces of news. First, he reminded the membership that CFAC has given state agencies and local governments until Dec. 11 to use allocated funds. “Anything that’s unspent by Dec. 11 can be reallocated by CFAC,” Adams added.

Regarding the second item of news, Adams remarked: “We are talking with the Office of Emergency Management about the need for some temporary medical facilities for Kootenai County and the Twin Falls area — so it’s prudent to start pulling back some of the unspent dollars elsewhere.” Adams told the committee members that the current situation was still in flux but wanted them to know that such requests could be in the pipeline soon.

Jani Revier, director of the Department of Labor, informed CFAC that Labor had used $970,200 of the $15 million that the committee allocated to the lost wages program, which President Trump created by presidential memorandum.

“Idaho applied for five weeks of assistance,” Revier explained. “We completed making payments for the program at the end of September.” The lost wages assistance provided a $300 per week supplemental benefit for those unemployed who met the criteria of the program. For those who did not qualify because their state benefit was too low, in some cases as low as $72, Idaho made up the difference.

Because the program was set up so quickly, the State Comptroller advanced Labor $1,041,900 so assistance payments could go out without any delays. Because Labor only paid out $970,200, that left $71,700 of the advance unspent.

Revier asked what CFAC wished to do with that remainder of the advance: either to pull it back and reallocate it elsewhere or to have Labor add to the unemployment insurance trust fund to help keep unemployment compensation taxes from rising. The rest of the money, $13,958,100, would be returned unused to CFAC.

Tom Kealey, director of the Department of Commerce, told the committee that his agency had $1.7 million left over from the successful rural broadband grant program. That program funded 102 projects throughout the state, which Kealey said: “It’s been amazing to watch.”

CFAC voted to pull back all $15.6 million in unspent funds from Labor and Commerce to reallocate them elsewhere.

Jeff Weak, administrator of Idaho’s Information Technology Services, requested $4,728,933 of CARES relief funding from CFAC to retool the state’s IT infrastructure and services to meet increased demand.

“We need to address some serious issues,” Weak explained. “(Idaho’s) Virtual Private Network users increased 532% due to the demand from people now working from home. Our bandwidth usage is up 320%.”

Weak said the money would go to three areas that needed improvement: To add more fiber optic connections, increase the state government’s bandwidth and to add “zero-touch” configuration capability. ITS asked for $2,309,033.

Right now, every new device that needs to work with the state’s network must be configured by hand by someone in ITS. This in-person task takes four hours per device. The zero-touch capability would “negate the need for a face-to-face interaction, allowing the customer to plug directly into the network with an overall labor savings of 7,000 hours by being able to do this remotely,” Weak pointed out.

An additional $2,300,600 would be for “a massive upgrade of our endpoint security and malware protection,” Weak said. The cost included a new email gateway with improved spam filtering. The remaining $119,300 would be for professional services so that the installation of the new hardware and software would be completed before the end of the year deadline for CARES-relief-fund projects.

Adams asked if any CFAC or members of the public had any questions or comments for Weak. After several seconds of dead silence, Adams remarked: “You put everybody to sleep, Jeff.”

“Yes, that’s how IT usually is,” replied Weak.

Despite the presumed somnolence of the committee members, CFAC approved the ITS funding request with a unanimous voice vote.