Rep. Joe Neguse talks pandemic, wildfire relief and recovery

Neguse spoke with the Reporter-Herald Thursday about his thoughts on what recovery for his district would look like.

RH: What are your thoughts on the impact the pandemic has had on your district?

Neguse: There is simply no question it has had a tremendous impact on our district. The public health risks have clearly created significant economic disruption across our district, and that includes Loveland. I have talked to so many small business owners on main street who have struggled to stay afloat during this really uncertain time. I believe Congress has a role to play in terms of meeting the urgency of this crisis with another round of economic release. We passed a bipartisan package in late December to extend the enhanced unemployment benefits, nutritional assistance … but in my view that was simply a down payment.

While this pandemic continues to take lives and bring real hardship on our economy we have got to provide the funds and the resources required to help the people in Loveland and across the state weather this crisis. That is something we are acutely aware of and we are working on that now.

I am very grateful for the steps the Biden-Harris administration has already taken in the last week; a series of executive orders that will do a number of things that many of us in Congress have been asking the prior administration to do. That includes, for example, utilizing the Defense Production Act to speedup delivery of PPE and other supplies for our Loveland hospitals and health infrastructure, beefing up our public health workforce and expanding testing and treatment and then obviously, perhaps most importantly, a reinvestment in the vaccine deployment so we can get as many people vaccinated as we can as quickly as we can.

I am more optimistic about our ability to crush the virus today than I have ever been since the day the virus reached our shores.

RH: What do you think it will take to help bounce back from the impacts? What is your long-term recovery plan and hopes for the district?

Neguse: In my view it is a two-pronged approach which is reflected in the relief package we are hoping to enact in the coming weeks. (First) injecting sufficient resources into the system to ensure people can continue to weather the storm. There are businesses in Loveland … that we simply cannot let down. And I think Congress needs to invest in, for example, in another round of a tranche of PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) funding so that businesses can access that capital and survive the disruption that our economy is more broadly experiencing. The same goes for increased SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits, because we know food insecurity is such a huge issue.

The second prong is crushing the virus, which requires a real investment in vaccine deployment. The quicker we can get as many people vaccinated as we can, the quicker life can return to some level of normalcy and we can begin to really bounce back and ensure the economic recovery that follows extends to all Coloradans. We are working hard on that front right now. My hope is in the coming two or three weeks we will be able to really be able to move on a relief package that accomplishes both of those goals.

RH: What is your goal for addressing relief for people who lost their jobs and for struggling businesses?

Neguse: My goal is to do everything we can to ensure they get back on their feet. Our office is always ready, willing and able to assist folks. We have assisted countless constituents who have been forced to navigate the byzantine unemployment system of the state. We encourage you to reach out to our office to the extent we can be a resource. We are certainly happy to do that and our Larimer County office has a very dedicated and talented team of constituent advocates and constituent representatives who are here to help. The same goes for businesses who are trying to navigate the various forms of relief that are available to the Small Business Administration and other related programs.

Again from my vantage point, while that work is critically important and we are going to continue doing it, we have to make more than a down payment in terms of the actual relief we are providing so these programs are scaled up in a way that businesses (and) individuals can truly take advantage of those and be able to participate in them. That is (why) the need for a muscular, substantive, comprehensive relief package from the Congress, signed by President Biden, is such an important priority for us to get done.

RH: During this pandemic, your district also sustained the two worst fires in Colorado’s history: the Cameron Peak Fire and the East Troublesome Fire. At this point both fires have been controlled, but do you have any primary focuses for recovering from them?

Neguse: The wildfire season last year was simply devastating. To have two of the three largest wildfires in the history of Colorado happen in the last six months, both of which happened in my district … is a wake-up call. We have got to get serious about responding to these devastating wildfire seasons and that means significant investments in resiliency and climate adaptation efforts. It means addressing forest management issues. It means having a comprehensive strategy to ensure that we protect human life, businesses and our communities as they face the terrible threat of these wildfires.

Last season we partnered with local and state officials throughout both of those fires; we worked with the county and the state and we are going to continue to do so now as they work to recover.

This last month … we helped the governor of Colorado secure a disaster declaration designation for these wildfires. We led a letter with our congressional colleagues and ultimately the designation was granted by the former administration and hopefully that will bring in needed resources for the state. The Small Business Administration, for example, has already announced new funds to help some small businesses in Larimer County impacted by wildfires.

As I mentioned, we launched this bipartisan wildfire caucus with Congressman (John) Curtis. My hope is that forum will provide us with an ability to really move legislation related to wildfire mitigation but also supporting our firefighters in the new Congress. We will be having a wildfire summit in the next few weeks that is Colorado specific so we can visit with the various forest supervisors for Arapaho-Roosevelt as well as White River (national forests), local county officials, state fire personnel, bringing everybody together at the table so we can really work constructively to come up with some solutions that can address this long term. That is critically important and so that is something we are certainly taking very seriously.