2020 Thurston County Fair canceled in response to COVID-19

OLYMPIA — The 2020 Thurston County Fair is officially canceled due to concerns regarding COVID-19, following a unanimous vote by the Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday.

“This was a very difficult decision for us, as the board, to make,” said Commission Chair John Hutchings in a prepared statement. “We support the fair and look forward to the pancake breakfast each year when we connect with the community. It saddens us deeply that we cannot hold this community event this year but had to make the decision. The protection and well-being of our community is paramount.”

The decision aligned with a recommendation from the local Fair Board.

In a letter to commissioners, Fair Board President Ann Shipley wrote that reasons behind the recommendation included financial considerations, with revenues plummeting in the absence of off-season rentals, and that many of the usual participants and volunteers fall in the 65+ age bracket and wouldn’t be attending.

Fair staff are working on a plan to still hold youth market animal sales with a virtual auction and social distancing precautions in place, according to discussion at Tuesday’s meeting and the news release.

Already, anticipation is building for next year, which marks a significant milestone for the event.

“2021 is the 150th birthday of the county fair and we plan on doing it up proud,” Fair Board President Ann Shipley wrote in a letter to commissioners.

— The Olympian

Jobless claims up in Washington; so are fraudulent claims

OLYMPIA — State officials are seeing an influx of fraudulent claims for unemployment benefits as they continue to deal with record numbers of claims from people forced out of work by shutdowns from the COVID-19 epidemic.

Employment Security Department Commissioner Suzi LeVine said the agency is cracking down on imposters who are claiming to be unemployed Washington workers. The people filing fraudulent claims may have harvested personal information from earlier breaches of private or government databases, although she emphasized the state’s database has not been hacked.

To help weed out fraudulent claims, the department will hold payments for two days to validate recent incoming claims as authentic.

Washington became “an attractive target for fraudsters” because it is among the first to start paying federal unemployment benefits tied to the COVID-19 relief packages, and because it has suspended the regular practice of delaying the payment of new claims for a week as a way of getting benefits to recipients faster, LeVine said.

Victims of the fraud will not be required to repay the money and their benefits won’t be affected, she said.

The department is notifying workers and businesses who may be victims of the fraudulent claims, and asking them to go to a special section of the website at esd.wa.gov/fraud. It is also warning them to beware of any online correspondence about fraud that doesn’t come from esd.wa.gov, to avoid attempts by scammers to collect their information.

The increase in fraudulent claims began in early May. The department does not yet have an estimate on how many have been filed or how much has been paid, she said.

Because some of the benefits being paid to unemployed workers come from the federal government, the department is working with federal as well as state law enforcement officials.

The number of new unemployment claims filed in Washington rose in the week ending May 9 from the previous week. The state had 109,425 new claims for standard state unemployment benefits, up about 9%, and slightly more than 103,000 new claims for federal aid.

Some workers are able to file for more than one type of benefit, and not all claims are immediately verified. The state has 751,149 people receiving some form of benefits and has paid out $767 million in total benefits last week, up about $130 million from the previous week.

Since the pandemic began to take an economic toll 10 weeks ago, the state has paid a total of $2.9 billion in claims.

The ESD is beginning to see increases in regular unemployment claims, rather than claims for pandemic-assistance programs. It’s unknown if claims in the county will continue to increase or remain steady in coming weeks, Tweedy said.

— The Spokesman-Review

US retail sales fell 16.4% in April, worse than March record

U.S. retail sales plunged in April, shattering the prior record set just a month earlier, as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered businesses, spurred layoffs and kept Americans at home.

Revenue at retailers and restaurants fell 16.4% in April from the prior month, almost double the 8.3% drop in March which was previously the worst in data back to 1992, according to a Commerce Department report released Friday. That compared with the median projection for a 12% decline.

While government shutdowns only marred part of March, the shutdowns —and their impacts on spending — were felt to the full extent in April. With most Americans stuck at home and unemployment the highest since the Great Depression era, people sharply reduced their spending in the month.

All but one of 13 major categories decreased, led by a 78.8% drop at clothing stores and a 60.6% decline at electronics and appliance stores. The only category to record a gain was nonstore sales, which include online sellers such as Amazon.com and increased 8.4%.

Food and beverage stores, which saw sales surge in March as Americans stocked up on essential goods, fell 13.1%. Restaurants and bars were down 29.5%.

A sharp drop-off in consumer spending is one of the main drivers behind estimates for gross domestic product this quarter to post the sharpest drop in records dating back to 1947. With states starting to loosen some business curbs, though, spending will likely pick up in the coming months.

— Bloomberg News