Letter to the Hon. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, and Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader - Watson Coleman Leads New Jersey Delegation in Request for Funds that Consider Population and Severity of COVID-19 Outbreak

Letter

Dear Speaker Pelosi and Leader McCarthy:

Thank you for your work in negotiating the CARES Act and for including much-needed
assistance to state and local governments. Unfortunately, the $3.4 billion allocated to New Jersey
in the Coronavirus Relief Fund is inadequate for the tremendous financial challenges facing our
state. For future relief packages, we urge you to include additional funding for state and local
governments that accurately reflects states' respective populations and the severity of each
state's COVID-19 outbreak.

The formula used to distribute Coronavirus Relief Fund money in the CARES Act short-changed
New Jersey in two ways. First, by setting a minimum payment of $1.25 billion for each state:
more populous states like New Jersey were left with smaller payments of only $390 per person
while smaller states with fewer cases received as much as $2,100 per person.

Second, the CARES Act failed to consider the rates of coronavirus infections in each state,
leaving New Jersey without the assistance it needs to address the outbreak here. While New
Jersey has the second highest number and rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases, it received the
second lowest amount of funding per case of COVID-19. We are concerned that New Jersey's
resources are being strained to a greater degree than other states.

Therefore, as you work to develop future relief legislation, we urge you to provide significant
additional resources directly to state and local governments and to distribute these funds with a
formula that is proportionate to each state's population. Without equitable funding that fully
reflects our state's population, New Jersey and its counties and municipalities may not have the
funding necessary to fully respond to COVID-19 while continuing to provide the vital services
on which our constituents rely. Additionally, we reiterate our request that you include at least
$40 billion for states to be distributed based on COVID-19 infection rates as reflected in the
latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracking data.

We recognize that every state and local community in this country is being impacted by COVID19 and in need of additional financial relief, but that relief should reflect the disparate burden states with larger populations and higher infection rates are facing. Thank you for your attention to this matter.