Watch the video version of the press conference here.
Thank you for being here, or for tuning in to our live feed.
Anne Arundel County, like the state of Maryland, like our country, and like most of our planet is in the midst of two crises.
One is the coronavirus pandemic, a battle against a virus that has the capacity to overwhelm our health care system and take away the people we love in numbers far greater than most of our nation’s wars.
The other is an economic and humanitarian crisis that has targeted the hard-working families who are the foundation of our economy, the families who are paid the least, who live in the least healthy conditions, whose children have the fewest opportunities, and whose access to healthcare, housing, food, childcare, and transportation depend on a strong economy that can deliver a livable wage, every single pay period, without interruption.
The people of Anne Arundel County and the public servants who work for them have fought back against both of these threats. We have worked hard to protect our people on both fronts, but that’s not enough. We must do better.
I called this press conference to announce two new initiatives: one to combat the virus, an enhanced effort that I am calling Keep Anne Arundel Open, and the other to prevent poverty, a package of three workforce assistance programs including a new Excluded Worker Humanitarian Fund.
Anne Arundel County has done well against COVID-19. We were the only jurisdiction in the state to implement universal contact tracing of positive cases from day one. We did it by changing people’s job descriptions overnight, including our school health staff.
We also were the only county I know of who brought scores of residents together early on to create a Coronavirus Health Equity Initiative, resulting in pop-up testing in locations where residents lack health care access, and wrap-around services to facilitate isolation and quarantine for families with needs identified through contact tracing. We made a decision just this week to invest in a marketing campaign to better reach underserved and hard-hit communities.
And finally, our team at Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation created a small business grant program that funds best practices to protect customers and employees from the spread of COVID-19. So far 628 businesses have been approved for just under $4 million in grants to slow the spread of this virus.
Our county’s positivity rate dropped from a mid-April high of 27% to a 3.5% rolling average last week, the lowest of the big 6 counties where most of the Coronavirus cases are reported.
We were the first county in Maryland to report positive cases by zip code, and have established much more aggressive testing goals than the state.
All of the credit for our success against this virus goes to our Health Officer Dr. Nilesh Kalyanaraman and his team at the Anne Arundel County Health Department, our local businesses who have worked so hard to implement safe practices, and our residents who stayed home when we asked them to, and for the most part have worn their masks and maintained their distance since that time.
We were warned that success would be met with an angry response, that many would say that the threat was overestimated, and that the price we paid to save lives was too high. I will not engage in that debate. The question before us is, what next?
I’ve asked that question of our Health Officer, and I’ve discussed it with our Recovery Work Group and others.
Will there be another surge, one stronger than the first? Will it come in the fall when or if our kids are back in school, when our activities move indoors?
If our numbers increase what will we do? Shut down businesses again? Close our schools again? Lay off our workforce again? Failure comes with options that none of us want to face.
In this county, we will act now to finish the job we started. We will act now to Keep Anne Arundel Open.
First, we have set an ambitious goal of testing 2% of our population every single week, more than double the number we were testing last week. That’s 11,600 weekly tests, with 50% being conducted by our Health Department and the rest by hospitals, primary care providers, and pharmacies.
It’s a detailed plan that Dr. Kalyanaraman will review in a moment, and it will take the cooperation of all of county government, local businesses, and our residents. And of course we will continue our contact tracing and case management for every positive test that results from this work.
Second, Dr. Kalyanaram will sign a new public safety order today requiring face coverings to be worn, not only in public buildings, but also in outdoor public spaces where six-foot social distancing from non-household members is not feasible. Like his existing order requiring face coverings in indoor spaces, this is a public safety order pursuant to the authority granted by Governor Hogan to County Health Officers.
Third, our Health Department will be stepping up complaint-driven enforcement activity in bars and restaurants during evening hours. We cannot allow the actions of a handful of irresponsible business owners to cause an industry-wide shutdown.
These initiatives, along with our contact tracing, our equity initiative, and the outstanding efforts of our businesses and residents are what I will now call our Keep Anne Arundel Open campaign. It’s a campaign we must win, to get our kids back to school and our people back to work.
Dr. Kalyanaraman will flesh out for you this plan and sign the new public safety order.
After that I will come back to announce our three new Workforce Assistance Programs, including our Excluded Worker Humanitarian Fund with Kirkland Murray.
*Remarks from Dr. Kalyanaraman*
I said at the beginning that we are combatting an economic and humanitarian crisis. It may not feel that way to workers whose paychecks are still coming, or people whose stock portfolio is doing just fine, but it’s getting desperate for tens of thousands of county residents, and the holes in our safety net are gaping.
The response so far from our health and human services agencies, our churches, and our local nonprofits has been nothing short of heroic.
We are feeding thousands of families through our school system, our senior centers, and a new network of food distribution sites that people can access through an online map or by calling our new food line at 410-222-FOOD.
Our Emergency Operations Center and Health Department combined have taken over 50,000 calls since this pandemic began, and directed people to whatever services they need.
Our Homeless Outreach team has moved people into hotels to allow distancing at shelters, and our Eviction Prevention Program was stood up early and became a model for neighboring counties by not only providing $5 million to keep people housed, but also offering counseling and mediation with landlords.
We created childcare centers for essential workers’ kids in our senior centers and swim centers when the state kicked us out of our school-based facilities, and we are working now on a plan to address what we believe is a looming child care crisis.
But still, it’s not nearly enough.
Today we are announcing three programs that will be delivered through Anne Arundel Workforce Development.
The first is the one that addresses the most urgent need, our Excluded Worker Humanitarian Fund.
While 70,000 county residents have managed to navigate the complex and overburdened state Unemployment Insurance program, thousands more have either been left out due to bureaucratic failure, denied due to ineligibility, or never applied because they knew that they would be excluded.
These laid-off workers have basic needs to meet and bills to pay, and we don’t have the time or the staff resources to decide for them how to distribute their limited funds.
The most efficient help we can provide to these workers is cash assistance in the form of a debit card. Every dollar we spend protecting these people from the harsh economic impacts of this pandemic is a dollar or more that we save down the road in social services.
We will start with an allocation of 4,000 cards at $500 each for a total of $2 million.
When that runs out we will assess the program and make a decision about further investment.
My own view is that whether we look at this program through a humanitarian or an economic lens, it is a sound investment.
By managing our excluded worker program through workforce development, we connect these workers to all of our job placement and training programs.
A second new service that we are launching today is Rapid Re-employment. We will bring on additional staff to not only provide the traditional job readiness and placement services our agency is known for, but also to pay for the cost of occupational training programs in high-growth industries. Specialized services will be offered in this program for formerly incarcerated job-seekers.
And finally, we are launching a Youth Employment Program for 100 young people from age 16-24. Some will participate in a strictly online job readiness program and others will work with our county agencies in the community. All will be paid a stipend of $11 per hour.
I’d like to ask Kirkland Murray, President and CEO of Anne Arundel Workforce Development to provide more details on these programs. When he is done I will make a brief statement of thanks to our Congressional delegation and an appeal to Governor Hogan.
*Remarks from Mr. Murray*
I want to thank our county’s Congressional delegation for their hard work getting county funding inserted into the CARES Act. It is those funds that make all of these programs possible. So thank you to Senators Cardin and Van Hollen,and Congressmen Sarbanes, Brown, Ruppersberger, and Hoyer.
My message to Governor Hogan is simply a request that he take a fresh look at the impacts of this pandemic as he makes decisions about the use of state CARES Act funds and balancing the state budget.
Child care, eviction prevention, and workforce assistance are essential components of an economic recovery. Long-term economic health cannot be achieved on the foundation of a crippled workforce. Please…invest in our people.