Baker: ‘We’re not yet out of the woods’
Companies with limited face-to-face interaction likely to open first
There are more questions than answers for Massachusetts businesses hoping to reopen next week — but won’t know if they will be allowed to unlock their doors until Monday, when Gov. Charlie Baker’s order banning non-essential business operations is slated to expire.
“The folks that are most likely to be able to operate successfully on the 18th are going to be many of the folks that are currently operating — the essential businesses,” Baker said, speaking after a tour of MatTek life sciences lab in Ashland on Tuesday.
Baker left some hope that companies with limited face-to-face interaction would be able to reopen next week.
“The second group that’s likely to come up earliest are going to be people who work in ways and in spaces that don’t have a lot of face-to-face interaction with customers as part of their regular business,” Baker said.
Baker’s sparse elaboration came a day after he released a four-phase reopening plan — scant on details — intended to guide businesses ahead of May 18. Most businesses were ordered to close in late March in an effort to curb the spread of the highly infectious virus.
Baker said businesses that have a higher level of direct face-to-face contact with customers would not open until the second and third phases of his plan. He provided no timeline. The four phases are titled “Start,” “Cautious,” “Vigilant,” and “The New Normal.”
Baker has repeatedly said he will allow reopening according to where the state is in its coronavirus response and only after the state sees continued downward trends in the number of hospitalizations, positive tests and new cases.
Recent numbers “have been encouraging,” Baker said.
“We’re not yet out of the woods and we should all remember that and it’s important that we continue to stick together and work together,” Baker said.
Baker also said he filed a supplemental budget bill on Tuesday which, if approved by lawmakers, would authorize up to $1 billion in coronavirus response spending.
The money would cover the cost of personal protective equipment purchasing, health care rate adjustments, national guard pay and incentive pay for essential workers, building temporary field hospitals and homeless shelters, the statewide contract tracing program and “a whole bunch of other stuff as well,” Baker said.
Despite the high price tag, Baker claimed the bill would have a “net-zero” effect on the state budget.
“The bill gives us the leverage that we need to utilize federal financial support, like from the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, which can only reimburse state spending resulting from eligible disaster response activities. The supplemental budget would also ensure that adequate state spending has been authorized to allow the commonwealth to continue to support our communities until additional federal reimbursements are provided,” Baker said.