Alaska, Hawaii, Montana and Wyoming are not epicenters of the coronavirus pandemic. Yet these four states scored big this spring when Congress pumped out direct federal aid, while the two hardest-hit states, New York and New Jersey, got comparatively little given the vast numbers of cases and deaths they have seen.
An Associated Press analysis shows that some states with small populations like these took in an out-sized share of the $150 billion in federal money that was designed to address coronavirus-related expenses, when measured by the number of positive tests for the COVID-19 disease.
Their haul ranged from $2 million per positive test in Hawaii to nearly $3.4 million per test in Alaska. In Wyoming, with less than 600 positive cases, the $1.25 billion it received equates to 80 percent of its annual general state budget.
By comparison, New York and New Jersey received about $24,000 and $27,000, respectively, for each positive coronavirus test. Other states with high numbers of cases, including Massachusetts, Michigan and Illinois, received less than $100,000 per case.
“If there’s a fire, you don’t spray the whole neighborhood. You spray the house that’s on fire,” said Bill Hammond, director of public health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a nonpartisan government watchdog in New York. He said it doesn’t make sense in this case to follow the normal political procedure of giving every state so much in the face of a public health crisis.