Excluded workers still excluded under Johnson County “lottery”

When the Johnson County Board of Supervisors voted to appropriate American Rescue Plan Act funds to various efforts back in November, it was quite clear that one of those would be “[p]ayments to workers who were ineligible for previous relief programs.” This was after over half a year of advocacy for an Excluded Workers Fund by an 18-member coalition of local organizations. When the board allocated $2 million to such a fund, those involved considered it a done deal with only the details to work out, but how Johnson County staff worked out those details now threatens to contravene the fund’s original intent.

At an Iowa City Council meeting on January 18, county Grants Coordinator Donna Brooks revealed that the program had been expanded to include anyone of “low to moderate income” who’d suffered a financial setback during the pandemic and that ineligibility for previous relief programs would only be one of many factors considered when applying for the one-time $1,400 payout. This expands the pool of potential applicants by so many thousands of residents that county staff also intend to implement a lottery system, anticipating there will be many more applications than there are funds to provide for.

This appeared to come as a surprise to Iowa City Council member Laura Bergus, who had been working with the county to facilitate the city’s own $1.5 million contribution to the fund. Comments she made during a recent work session indicate a belief that the fund would have a much smaller pool, limited to those who had not received previous federal stimulus checks, and so she advocated for using city funds to bump the payout up to $2,000 per recipient. Other council members seemed to favor this as well but ultimately agreed to a lower payment, due to the changes county staff had made.

Given the nature of government meetings, the exchange between city council and county staff might seem mostly bureaucratic, but what staff have done is fundamentally undermine the fund’s original, explicit intent that our local representatives clearly voted for. With a lottery system, there is a real possibility, even likelihood, that an individual who did not previously receive relief will be passed over in favor of someone who did. In other words, as currently planned by the county, this fund can and will exclude excluded workers.

In a press release dated January 19, coalition member and excluded worker herself, Ninoska Campos, stated, “[e]xcluded workers must be prioritized in the lottery selection process … otherwise Johnson County will re-create the same structural barriers that exacerbated racial inequities in vulnerable populations.”

Excluded workers have been on the frontlines throughout the pandemic, making it possible for those who stayed home to do so. Excluding them again feels like a cruel joke.

What county staff have done is neither what our elected officials nor what the public wanted them to do. In fact, despite the county’s many “listening posts” back in the fall of 2021, staff don’t seem to have heard what the people demanded and thought they had won. It is up to those same staff now to undo their error and quickly, so as not to further delay relief going out to those who have already waited too long for help. Anything less would be a slap in the face.

Nicholas Theisen writes about Iowa City government at twitter.com/city_of_iowa