Did they send a Referral like all the other referrals that haven't seemed to be mentioned again.
Hearings, investigations, referrals, crickets
A COVID-19 Relief Fund Was Only for Black Residents. Then Came the Lawsuits.
Black civic leaders in Oregon heard the alarm bells early in the pandemic.
Data and anecdotes around the country suggested that the coronavirus was disproportionately killing Black people. Locally, Black business owners had begun fretting about their livelihoods, as stay-at-home orders and various other measures were put into place. Many did not have valuable houses they could tap for capital, and requests for government assistance had gone nowhere.
After convening several virtual meetings, the civic leaders proposed a bold and novel solution that state lawmakers approved in July. The state would earmark $62 million of its $1.4 billion in federal COVID-19 relief money to provide grants to Black residents, business owners and community organizations enduring pandemic-related hardships.
“It was finally being honest: This is who needs this support right now,” said Lew Frederick, a state senator who is Black.
But now millions of dollars in grants are on hold after one Mexican American and two white business owners sued the state, arguing that the fund for Black residents discriminated against them.
The dispute in Oregon is the latest legal skirmish in the nation’s decadeslong battle over affirmative action, and comes in a year in which the pandemic has starkly exposed the socioeconomic and health disparities that African Americans face. It has unfolded, too, against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement, with institutions across America — from corporations to city councils — acknowledging systemic racism, and activists demanding that meaningful steps be taken to undo racial inequities.
Politicians, social scientists and jurists have long clashed over how far the government and institutions should go to repair the harm caused by racial discrimination — and the extent to which past racism should influence today’s decisions. In creating the Oregon Cares Fund, lawmakers took the rare step of explicitly naming a single racial group as the beneficiary, arguing that Black residents have been subjected to unique discrimination that put them at a disadvantage during the pandemic.
Over the decades, various remedies to address discrimination have been met with legal challenges. Supreme Court rulings have established that race-based policies are constitutional only if they achieve a compelling governmental interest and are narrowly tailored to do so. The court has most notably allowed race to be used as a factor in college admissions to achieve student diversity. But the court in recent decades has also sided against one of the original rationales for affirmative action policies — to undo past discrimination and its lingering effect.
“You have to show that there’s this really close nexus between why you’re using race and the outcome you’re seeking,” said Melissa Murray, a professor of law at New York University. “And I think here it’s going to be a real question as to whether funding just Black businesses through this Cares fund is actually the only way that you could address the problems that Black Oregonians have experienced during this particular period.”
In Oregon, the stakes are dire. Nearly $50 million worth of grants have been awarded, but a court has frozen $8.8 million, the remaining amount minus administrative costs, until the litigation is resolved, a process that could take years.
With the Dec. 31 deadline having passed for states to spend their CARES Act funds or return what remains to the federal government, the litigation could mean the money is lost for good. The fund’s administrators say they hope the Treasury Department grants them an extension for disbursing the money.
Oregon’s long history of anti-Black racism has fueled much of the advocacy for the state’s fund. And while other racial groups have said they supported it, critics have argued that Black people are not the only ones who have faced discrimination in the state.
Some Black residents, who make up about 2% of the state’s population, said that argument was a distraction.
“As a state, as a country, it is unusual for us to provide adequate resources to Black people,” said Nkenge Harmon Johnson, president and chief executive of the Urban League of Portland. “For some folks, it’s shocking, it’s distasteful.”
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https://news.yahoo.com/covid-19-relief-fund-only-173204099.html
House getting ready to listen to nominations for Speaker.
Moron speaking now, blah, blah, blah, Pelosi, blah, blah blah