Dear WH&LA Lodging Member:
We are doing our best to package the many individual updates that seem to be happening these days. Here are today’s items to share.
NEW WEDC SMALL BUSINESS GRANT PROGRAM
Yesterday Governor Tony Evers announced that he is planning to allocate $75 million from the federal CARES Act funding coming to the state of Wisconsin to create a new grant program for small businesses called
“We’re All In”
. The details are:
- Eligible small businesses must have 20 or less full-time equivalent (FTE) employees, must have been negatively impacted by COVID-19, and and may not have already received WEDC COVID-19 financial assistance.
- The Grants will be for $2,500 each and will be provided to up to 30,000 Wisconsin small businesses.
- The money may be used to assist with business interruption costs incurred during the pandemic, or for health and safety improvements or salaries, rent, mortgages, and inventory
- Grant recipients must commit to safety protocols and using them to protect their customers, employees, and communities, tied in with the WEDC Guidances released over a week ago for multiple industries, which WH&LA sent out May 8 in a WH&LA Capitol Insider
- An additional $2 million in Ethnic Minority Emergency Grants will provide up to 1,000 grants of $2,000 each ethnically-diverse micro-businesses that are sole proprietorships or businesses with 5 or less employees who have not received assistance under the 20/20 program or the federal PPP program, who suffered losses due to the pandemic.
- More specific details on these grant programs will be available later this month and may be applied for starting in June.
The WH&LA has been repeatedly looking for additional state financial assistance for lodging properties unable to get help through the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). While these grants are not each substantial, they are not loans needing to be paid back, and will potentially provide some assistance to a wider net of small businesses in need of any level of help. As there may be a lot of applicants, WH&LA will watch for the release of further information on applying and get it out to members as quickly as possible.
STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL OPINION ON LOCAL AND COUNTY RULES ON GETTING BACK TO BUSINESS
Following last weeks confusion with what the Supreme Court’s decision to stop DHS Order #28 extending Safer at Home until May 26, there were many uncertainties regarding whether a local health department, municipality, or county could issue their own enforceable rules relating to the Safer at Home restriction components. As reported late last Thursday, there were differing legal opinions on this authority or lack of.
State Attorney General(AG) Josh Kaul released
his opinion
, finding that:
- The Supreme Court’s ruling addressed only DHS’s authority, not that of local health officers, addressed in another statute, thus the decision did not impact their powers
- The criminal sanctions in the DHS Order may not have been referenced in the Supreme court ruling relating to local powers, however the AG said it is advisable to limit enforcement to normal ordinance or administrative enforcement authority (not criminal).
- As long as local orders do not threaten criminal penalties, they should also ensure that any measures directing people to stay at home, forbid certain travel, or close certain businesses directly relate to local authority to “prevent, suppress, and control communicable diseases” and “forbid public gatherings when deemed necessary to control outbreaks or epidemics”.
While some local health departments, municipalities and counties felt that this provided them with sufficient remaining authority to adopt their own local orders, others cancelled theirs. This means that similar to suggestions in our
Capitol Insider
last week, properties should check with their local authorities if they have not already done so, to find out if an Order was created, cancelled, or does not exist, and what terms if any, apply as you finalize your plans for opening or returning to business. The lists we have spotted to date of local Orders seemed to keep changing, so local inquiries may still be best.
EMERGENCY RULE PROCESS FOR ADOPTING SAFER AT HOME ORDER #28 COMPONENTS
While DHS had immediately filed a Scope Statement last week as the first step in getting an Emergency Rule approved, and was in the process of finalizing proposed Rules to submit, after discussions with members of the legislature’s Committee on Rules found little or no support for approving the submission, yesterday DHS released a withdrawal of their Scope Statement, ending any effort to get Rules approved similar to Order #28.
AH&LA KEY RESOURCE ON FEDERAL DEVELOPMENTS
The American Hotel & Lodging Association are the experts on federal issues relating to the lodging industry and have published frequent communications and webinars on federal-level developments. You may want to bookmark
https://www.ahla.com/covid-19-resource-cente
r
to visit their website regularly. If you are not a member and wish to get their regular updates, contact WH&LA at whla@wisconsinlodging.org to join.
Stay well,
Trisha
