Pressley to Baker: Slow your rollout
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley is doubling down on her criticism of Gov. Charlie Baker’s reopening plan, stressing that moving too quickly will cost lives and scare customers from returning to hard-hit small businesses already struggling to hang on.
“The governor’s reopening plan was rolled out on the heels of a briefing that myself and other members of Congress received by epidemiologists from throughout the country and from the Massachusetts seventh, who offered much more strident metrics when it comes to widespread testing and contract tracing, and the decline of infection rates,” Pressley told reporters Thursday.
Pressley said she immediately began hearing from small business owners and faith leaders worried about their health and safety — and about securing the supplies needed to meet the state’s stringent new workplace safety requirements. She also cited the state’s COVID-19 death toll, which crossed 6,000 Wednesday, as cause for pause.
Pressley urged Baker to “re-evaluate his timeline” in a tweet Tuesday. After joining volunteers at Food for Free to pack groceries for Cambridge residents in need Thursday, Pressley said she hadn’t talked to Baker directly this week, but that their teams have “kept the lines of communication open.”
Baker held off reopening until he saw declines in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations — despite complaints from industry leaders about the pain the prolonged shutdown was inflicting on the state’s devastated economy.
But Pressley said public health must continue to come first.
“We have an economic crisis because we have a public health crisis,” she said. “If we reopen prematurely, and we don’t get this right, then what you will see are surges. And those are not just data points on a piece of paper. Those are lost lives. And so that will affect what people are willing to do in terms of even supporting local business because it affects people’s confidence.”
Pressley is teaming up with U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., on the Saving our Street Act, a $124.5 billion fund to provide micro businesses grants of up to $250,000 to help pay workers, rent and utilities, and secure personal protective equipment.
If small businesses — especially those owned by women and people of color being hard-hit by the crisis — “don’t remain viable, we only stand to exacerbate the racial wealth gap,” Pressley said.