The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
State should reopen by county
It is not “stimulus” if there’s nothing to stimulate. Most states have been under stay-homeshutdown orders for seven weeks, and only a few are reopening before mid-May, so the “stimulus” bills are really just “bridge” bills — constituting a combined $2.7 trillion bridge to an uncertain future date when 30 million newly unemployed Americans can go back to work and businesses can re-open.
Moreover, the bridge isn’t even fully built. Many citizens have not received their $1,200 “stimulus” checks, and many of the legions of unemployed have not begun to receive their benefit checks. Many small businesses haven’t received Paycheck Protection Program loan funds intended to cover eight weeks of payroll. Many never will, because the program is oversubscribed.
So a bridge designed to span an eight-week gulf isn’t complete, even as the gulf is extending many weeks more. So “stimulus” is a cruel misnomer. Many workers and businesses will not survive or be able to revive. Connecticut and other states that prolong the shutdown based upon “an abundance of caution” are creating an overload of tragedy and danger instead.
For some areas, an extended shutdown may make sense, most obviously the immediate New York City area. In other areas, particularly rural areas where social distancing is inherent, it probably does not.
We should remember that the objective of the extraordinary stayhome-shutdown measures was to flatten the curve, not eliminate it.
Even in hard-hit New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has acknowledged that the curve has flattened. The US Comfort hospital ship sent to New York City never reached capacity and has already departed.
The spread of the virus has been slowed and kept within hospital and medical capacity, so the extreme measures should be lifted — ASAP.
We should reopen the same way we shut down, namely here and there, based on conditions on the ground, except, of course, in reverse sequence, starting where conditions are the best. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID, has said as much in White House briefings.
However logical, this may not be easy. As the crisis has unfolded, a natural and admirable spirit of unity has developed. However, unity should not be misinterpreted as uniformity. The nation is not uniform, nor are individual states.
The president recognizes this, in late March asking all 50 state governors to rate the risk in each county in their respective states as “high, medium or low.”
His county level focus recognizes that there is as much difference within states as between states. Connecticut is a good example. One county out of eight, Fairfield County, has seen about one-third of the state’s positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths. The four relatively rural eastern counties combined have had less than 7 percent.
Eastern Connecticut should reopen sooner than the rest of the state — and soon. It should be governed by a different policy than Fairfield County, where, in fact, the curve has flattened, with hospitalizations falling significantly over the last seven days.
In face of the economic carnage, it is critically important to reopen the economy as soon as possible. Areas fortunate enough to have low risk factors should not only be identified, but also supported with policies to protect them and to accelerate their reopening.
As a nation and a state, we should recognize that the sooner some areas recover, the sooner we all recover. Those first to re-open will provide strength to the nation and to states as a whole — helping to lift lagging areas and ultimately hastening a nationwide recovery.
Last week, Cuomo endorsed the idea of differing policies for different
One county out of eight, Fairfield County, has seen about one-third of the state’s positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths.
regions of his state. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has not. Instead, he has created another layer of bureaucratic delay and red tape in the form of an unaccountable, private committee, namely the 47-member Reopen CT Advisory Group including not a single member of the General Assembly, the duly elected representatives of the people.
There’s no need for a committee, much less such a huge unwieldy committee. In its first action, the group recommended and Lamont announced this past Thursday a phased reopening approach, with phase one starting on May 20, the actual end of the state’s stay-home-shutdown orders, according to the governor’s April 9 pronouncement, when he last extended the shutdown.
In response, state Rep. Mike France (R-District 42) called phase one “much too little, much too delayed, — especially coming on the same day the consensus budget forecast is released showing a $7 billion deficit through fiscal 2023.” He repeated what he said to Lamont on April 9, “We want to see the governor’s county-by-county risk assessments. We are unconvinced that his statewide one-size-fits-all policy is the right approach.”
Remember, until business reopens, the “stimulus bills” are just “bridge bills” — if that, since even a staggering $2.7 trillion can’t span the ever-expanding gulf that Lamont and other governors keep widening with their serial shutdown extensions.