PA misses deadline to spend $108M in rent, mortgage relief from CARES Act (it goes to prisons now)

[DeminPennswoods]

13. Contacted my Republican state rep about a related

issue regarding the use of 1.3B of CARES Act funding to balance the budget rather than spending it. I got a very professional reply with a detailed spreadsheet of all various allocations of CARES Act money. The remaining 1.3B was used to on payroll for frontline public safety and public health employees (who had to be paid one way or another).

As I understand it, the application process for the rent/mortage assistance was too convoluted or too complex. I don't know how the application rules were set or who set them, the state legislature, Gov Wolf, PFHA, some combination of the three or was defined in the CARES Act itself, but it is sad that a way couldn't be found to distribute more than 40% or so of the available funds.