Millions went to nonworking employees in what county calls necessary expenditures

It was March 16, and Kern County leaders had a decision to make. Coronavirus was spreading rapidly across the country, followed by a wake of shutdowns in a variety of business sectors.

The county was two days away from the first confirmed case of COVID-19 within its borders, and Gov. Gavin Newsom would issue his famous stay-at-home order within the week.

Facing an uncertain future, the Kern County leadership team decided to send its workers home — all but the most essential — and those who couldn’t perform their duties from their living rooms would still get paid until the county could figure out how to make it all work.

That decision ultimately cost the county around $32.6 million in CARES Act funding that was paid to its employees who were not working. From April to June, many members of Kern’s 8,000-strong workforce were paid regardless of whether they could do their jobs at home in an arrangement the county compared to the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which funded the salaries for private businesses.

The county says the workfrom-home order was the safest way to protect its employees from coronavirus, and outside observers have credited the county for acting quickly and decisively in a difficult situation.

“As the largest employer, we had the greatest ability to positively influence the spread of COVID-19,” county spokeswoman Megan Person wrote in an email. “Within days, our department heads — with an incredible lift by our ITS division — found ways to connect employees to their work from a distance and we started returning employees ‘to work’ even though sometimes they weren’t physically at their desk.”

A chart provided by the county shows emergency salary pay peaking in mid-April at $8 million over one pay period. The figure steadily declines each two-week period until mid-June. Now, Person said, no employee is receiving a paycheck without working

in some capacity, although some employees may be benefiting from “special circumstances.”

“While our financial outlook is still in the balance, this use of CARES Act funding allowed the county to stay on solid ground when we weren’t seeing tax revenue coming in,” she wrote. “Financial futures for all counties are uncertain but we believe that we managed ourselves responsibly through this pandemic and we were able to maintain services to our residents.”

Mike Turnipseed, executive director of the Kern County Taxpayers Association, didn’t fault the county for paying non-working employees. In the early months of the pandemic, it was difficult to know what to do, and the county faced some unique challenges.

“You just can’t throw your whole workforce away,” he said, noting a decision to not pay employees would likely have been met with labor strikes and other complications. “You’ve got to have that trained workforce come back and really hit the ground running. So that’s really what happened.”

As of Sept. 30, the county has spent around $36.3 million of CARES Act funding on salaries, including $846,086 in COVID-related overtime and $2.9 million for contact tracers. The figure represents nearly half of the $77.2 million of CARES Act funding the county spent by the end of September.

The other biggest expenditure so far is the $29.9 million the county has distributed in forgivable loans to small businesses as part of its Kern Recovers program.

Moving forward, the county must spend the remainder of the $157.1 million it received from the CARES Act by the end of the year unless Congress extends the deadline. While much of the money has already been allocated to specific purposes, the county says funding may be shifted around if new situations develop.

“The overall strategy remains relatively unchanged,” Person said in a phone interview. “However, with everything COVID, it’s a fluid situation and it changes daily.”

Some allocations, like $12 million for emergency nurses, may be reduced if those nurses are no longer needed. Other expenses the county has not yet anticipated may need funding. A $25 million allocation for a COVID-19 surge site at the Kern County Fairgrounds has also largely been unspent, and could be used for other purposes. The county also has yet to spend most of the $5 million it has allocated for food distribution to vulnerable populations and homeless relief.

As municipalities across the nation struggle to contend with lower tax revenues and an uncertain future, Kern County administrators see the CARES Act as a vital resource that at least kept county government’s financial situation from getting worse.

Turnipseed said he has not heard complaints about county services despite the obstacles put in place by COVID-19.

“I think that’s an important thing that the public understands,” he said. “The county has done a very good job going through the financial challenges they had.”

Still, the problems brought on by coronavirus persist, and the county will need to carefully navigate its future to get out of the pandemic without further damage. In the time of COVID, nothing is guaranteed.

“There’s no rules to this game,” Turnipseed said of the county’s CARES Act spending strategy. “It’s a game with no rules, and they’re making the rules as they go.”