Reopenings rise with virus cases
Strap on your roller skates. Grab your laser tag gun. And, for goodness sake, wear a mask.
The season everyone feared — fall — is here, and COVID-19 cases are, in fact, on the rise in Massachusetts. While no one is yet saying the second surge has arrived, some epidemiologists and medical professionals, like Massachusetts Medical Society President Dr. David Rosman, are warning policy leaders to proceed with caution.
That didn’t stop Gov. Charlie Baker from moving ahead with economic reopening plans, fueled by the belief that social and business activities can resume safely in communities that look to have the virus under control.
And that, of course, means distancing and wearing masks.
Despite a week of elevated case counts and a positive test rate that by some measures is approaching 3%, Baker on Tuesday greenlighted the reopening of a host of new businesses, from roller rinks and trampoline parks to indoor concert and performance venues, with half-capacity, or 250 people, limits.
“If people are going to go inside,
which they probably will, I would much rather have them go inside in organized and supervised ways with rules than in unorganized, unsupervised ways with no rules,” the governor said.
The only catch is that those businesses must be located within a community that’s been gray, green or yellow for the past three weeks, meaning less than eight
cases of COVID-19 for every 100,000 people per day.
And that does not include the city of Boston.
Mayor Marty Walsh said his city would not be reopening concert halls and theaters after the capital tipped into the red category with a daily incidence rate of 8.5 new COVID-19 cases for every 100,000
people.
Walsh sounded a lot of the same notes that Baker does when talking about spikes in cases, blaming irresponsible individuals, including college students, for pockets of infection rather than a more systemic problem.
“I do get frustrated because here we are today laying down millions of dollars to open school, we have businesses on the verge of bankruptcy, we have restaurants that need to open up, we have arts venues that need to open up, we have people that have to come back to work and we’re in the process of (being) concerned about do we have to shut everything down again because 25 here, 25 there, 25 people over here decided to get together and have a party and raise the number in Boston to get us to the red point,” Walsh said.
In other words, if everyone just wore their masks and kept their distance…
Because not even the president of the United States can be properly insulated from the virus.
After a debate on Tuesday night with Joe Biden that became memorable for all the wrong reasons, Trump revealed early Friday morning that he and First Lady Melanie Trump — along with senior adviser Hope Hicks — had contracted COVID-19, upending the election in ways a belligerent debate performance never could.
Suddenly, Biden calling Trump a “clown,” and telling him, “Will you shut up, man,” no longer had pundits breathlessly parsing those words.
Even before Trump’s diagnosis attracted the eyes of the nation to the capital, Beacon Hill was watching Washington closely. Everyone from Gov. Baker to Senate President Karen Spilka has been waiting on Congress to deliver another round of coronavirus relief. Let’s hope they’re not holding their breath.
Even after talks were re
suscitated between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, there was no deal to be had. The House wound up pushing forward with a largely symbolic vote on a slimmed down $2.2 trillion version of the Heroes Act that had zero chances of advancing in the Senate, basically leaving Congress where it started the week — nowhere. The new relief bill passed 214-207, with 18 Democrats, but none from Massachusetts, voting no.
Without federal aid, Spilka said the Senate was “guestimating” a $5 billion revenue shortfall in fiscal 2021, and some liberal think tanks and legislators said borrowing should not be part of the long-term solution.
“We need to raise significant amounts of progressive revenue to invest in the programs that will allow people to stay safe,” said Rep. Mike Connolly, a
Cambridge Democrat.
Spilka wasn’t ready to start talking taxes just yet, however, telling local officials in Holliston during a visit with the Board of Selectmen that the Legislature will give Congress a little more time before trying to pass a fiscal 2021 state budget, now not likely until after the election.
In saying that, she basically threw cold water on the suggestion earlier in the week by Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues that completion of the budget before the end of October was not only a possibility, but his goal.
Rodrigues is now saying he hopes to get a budget done “as soon as possible,” and his counterpart in the House, Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, is expecting the Baker administration to update revenue projections for the rest of the fiscal year by Oct. 15, after officials hear next week from econo
mists.
That revenue update, according to Spilka and other officials, could include the filing of a completely revised budget from the governor, which would jumpstart a process that has been stalled since March.
One positive sign for the state’s ability to get through the next couple of years is that Baker was able to file a budget bill to close-out fiscal 2020 this week that did not borrow or draw down on the state’s $3.5 billion “rainy day” fund, despite tax collections ending the year $693 million below expectations.
Instead, Baker is relying on unspecified slowdowns in spending during the pandemic and a proposal to cancel a planned deposit of some capital gains tax revenue into reserves.
The pandemic pain inflicted on the budget last year was not as bad as had been feared, Baker said,
and officials are hoping the same will be said of fiscal 2021.
The economic pain, however, has not been fully relieved, and housing advocates are warning that if the state’s eviction moratorium is allowed by Gov. Baker to expire on Oct. 17 between 20,000 and 80,000 people could lose their homes.
Both the governor and Rep. Kevin Honan, the House chair of the House Committee, said they are talking with the courts about possible courses of action.
In the meantime Honan’s committee advanced his own bill (H 4878) that would freeze evictions and rent increases for a year beyond the end of the COVID-19 emergency, and extend financial protections to small landlords as well.
Need more to worry about? Well, if you live near the Weymouth com
pressor station you were given reason to be concerned.
Because after the second forced shutdown of the brand new natural gas plant this week, Enbridge said it would be pausing operations and the feds ordered it shut down until the company can properly investigate the cause for the latest shutdown and put together a response plan.
Opponents of the controversial compressor station have long said it should never have been permitted.
But in another industry this week, gaming regulators were feeling good enough about their decision to license the fiveyear-old slots parlor in Plainville that they handed Plainridge Park Casino another five years to operate.
STORY OF THE WEEK: A resurgent virus doesn’t stop targeted economic reopening plan