Fresno County gets C grade on COVID spending, advocates say. Gets F for racial equity
Fresno County got an overall C grade for how it handled the latest round of federal COVID-19 relief funding, but got especially poor marks for not doing enough to promote racial equity, according to an official report.
The county also got dinged for not providing any pay for low-income families, according to the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network report released Thursday on 11 counties and how local leaders spent American Rescue Plan Act dollars.
The statewide advocacy group reviewed four main criteria, including how well county officials engaged community members, whether financial records were accessible online and how the dollars were allocated.
The counties under review each received more than $100 million in federal pandemic recovery funding with Fresno County getting almost $195 million.
The harshest grade came in the form of an F on promoting racial equality, according to the report. The county used the word “equity” in its plan to disperse the dollars to projects, but that didn’t go far enough for the advocacy group.
“Fresno County’s compliance reports as well as stated ‘board priorities’ and ‘guiding principles’ for the use of (State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds) all failed to mention or address racial equity,” the report says. “There have been no explicit considerations of racial equity in its funding allocation criteria or outcomes evaluation.”
The county also took hits to its grades over how it has planned spending. The report noted that “despite urgent health and social needs in the community,” Fresno County has not defined how it will spend its latest round of money.
“The county’s proposed premium pay program was only available for county employees, which included sheriff, probation and jails,” the report notes. “There was no additional support for low-income essential workers including the county’s agricultural worker population.”
The county fared better in its outreach effort, because efforts included a community survey in English, Spanish and Hmong. Leaders also used webinars to announce sub-recipient funding for private groups and community organizations, the report said.
But, the county was criticized for its outreach efforts being too shallow and not bringing the most affected communities into the process, the report says.
The county’s website should have been easier to use and included more information, but the county’s transparency tools ultimately received a B grade.
“Fresno County has set up a dedicated public-facing (American Rescue Plan Act) page to house relevant spending information,” the report said.
This story was originally published May 12, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
