Now, officials have until the end of 2021 to spend those dollars, known as CARES Act funds.
The county received about $47 million in April 2020 to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, and officials were in a frenzy last fall debating how to spend the money before the original December deadline.
"It is frustrating because, especially with our small business program, we would not have done it in such a rush had we known the deadline was going to be extended," said Commissioner Carrie Blumert. Commissioner Kevin Calvey, who pushed to give all the county's relief funding to the county jail, predicted an extension, but his counterparts said they couldn't rely on assumptions.
"We didn't get any directives," Commissioner Brian Maughan said. "Calvey turned out to be 100 percent correct about it, but we didn't know that was going to be the case until the last minute."
It's likely the Oklahoma County Jail Trust might make an additional request for some of the remaining funds. The county's rental assistance program could vie for some funding, as well.
It's also possible the county might get requests from the Oklahoma City-County Health Department as Oklahoma tries to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of residents in the coming months.
Commissioners have the final vote on where the money can be spent.
"For the remaining $5 million, I don't think any of the elected officials are in a hurry to spend it," Blumert said.
In 2020, over $40 million went toward county jail repairs, additional cleaning crews, working-from-home technology upgrades and programs to provide rental assistance and small business relief.
Of the programs started by the county, the small business relief program was lauded as an efficient use of the roughly $20 million it received.
Less than a week after starting, over 800 businesses and nonprofits had applied. So far, nearly 300 were approved to receive a share of $16.5 million.
Now that there is an extension for spending the money, the program is hoping to allocate the roughly $2.5 million it didn't have time to spend to an additional 100 businesses, according to program coordinator Cathy O'Connor.
County Treasurer Butch Freeman said the program has been "nothing but a success."
The county has already dipped into the $5 million to pay for several months of additional cleaning, said budget official Cody Compton. There has also been preliminary approval to extend paid COVID-19 leave for county employees, which might be covered with the CARES money.
More federal dollars are likely to flow into the county in coming weeks.
Congress approved another $25 billion in rental assistance to be provided to local and state governments, and Oklahoma County applied to receive some of the funding earlier this month.
And President Joe Biden's proposed new $1.9 trillion relief package includes another round of funding for local governments, which is supported by the National Association of Counties. That package has not yet passed through Congress.
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