PENDLETON — Umatilla County government will be receiving $15.12 million from the most recent federal stimulus bill in response to the economic impact brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition, Umatilla County cities in total will be receiving approximately $11.36 million, according to a database provided to the EO Media Group. Funding will be distributed to each city by population, with the largest amounts going to Hermiston, $3.62 million, and Pendleton, $3.42 million.

Umatilla County commissioners said that plans have yet to be made for how the funds will be used on the county level. The first half of the funds are expected to reach the county in May, with the remaining half coming about a year later, the commissioners said.

“I was kind of blown away when I first saw how much we would be getting as a county,” Umatilla County Commissioner John Shafer said. “We can do a lot with that kind of money. We can make a lot of positive changes.”

The Umatilla County commissioners said that discussions about where to direct the funding have hardly begun.

“We’re really getting definitions right now about how it could be spent,” Commissioner George Murdock said, adding that the funding will be coming directly to the county, rather than going through Salem, “where we may get some of it and may not.”

The funds come from the American Rescue Plan, which Congress approved on March 10. At $1.9 trillion, it’s one of the largest anti-poverty efforts in American history, intended to boost economic recovery in response to the pandemic and help vulnerable Americans. Republican lawmakers largely oppose the bill for its liberal policies, according to the Associated Press.

In addition to providing hundreds of millions of Americans with one-time payments of $1,400 and jobless benefits in the form of $300 per week, the plan is estimated to cut national poverty by a third this year, according to the New York Times. It is also expected to cut child poverty in half through a variety of measures, including expanding rental assistance, food stamps and tax credits for Americans with children.

“We have the opportunity now to lift up Oregon families and businesses, by immediately investing state and federal resources to help them recover from the devastating economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Gov. Kate Brown said of the plan earlier this month.

Oregon’s state and local governments are slated to receive more than $4 billion from the plan. Brown has laid out principles saying that, on top of helping economic recovery, the funds should address existing disparities made worse by the pandemic, particularly those relating to gender and racial disparities.

Though concrete plans of any kind have yet to be made in Umatilla County, the commissioners had a few rough ideas in mind for how the funding might be used, like improving infrastructure and taking care of public health payments that have accumulated throughout the pandemic.

“The cost of operating public health in Umatilla County over the past year has been significantly larger than on an ordinary basis,” Murdock said, noting that the health department has over twice as many employees on staff currently. “We’ll be able to use some of this money to offset those costs that we’ve had.”

Murdock said that COVID-19 vaccinations in particular will be a “monumental task” for the county when all Americans over the age of 18 become eligible on the Biden administration’s goal of May 1.

In regards to infrastructure, Murdock and Shafer said the county might be able to make modifications and improvements to heating, ventilation and air conditioning in older buildings, which Murdock said is “specifically outlined in those funds.”

“It will be able to help us do some modernization that we generally don’t have funds to do that will make this a healthier environment,” he said.

Shafer said that past budget talks have looked at the central water project near Hermiston, a pipeline that will deliver water from the Columbia River to farmlands near Boardman that could allow for economic growth. Shafer added that mental health services are also likely to be a “key factor” in discussions around the funding.

Commissioner Dan Dorran said that he largely wouldn’t speculate on ways the funding could be used, emphasizing that “we have no money until it’s in the bank.” However, Dorran said he’s received calls from special districts inquiring about the money.

“We need to have that discussion of, ‘What does stimulus mean to the commissioners,” he said, adding that the commissioners “have no idea what the technical constraints are going to be on (the funding). We’ve heard that it’s going to be flexible, but we don’t know that until we see the guidelines.”

Both Shafer and Murdock said they don’t want to use the money to add personnel because the money is temporary.

“The (county) will not be using the money to hire more staff,” Murdock said. “This is one-time funding and, obviously, if we hire more staff then next year we go, ‘Oops we don’t have that revenue.’ And that doesn’t make sense. Whatever we do, it will not be to incur expenses that will come home to roost when the money isn’t coming in.”

Shafer said he wants county residents to know the commissioners “want to be good stewards of the money and that we get the most bang for our buck out of the deal.” Shafer said that discussions regarding the county’s use of the funding will most likely begin in mid-April.

“We don’t want to spend it frivolously,” he said. “We want it to benefit Umatilla County as a whole.”