Gov. Tom Wolf is fitted for a face mask by his wife, Frances, in a photo posted to the governor's Instagram account in early April.
Gov. Wolf Instagram account
Friday news dump, business waiver edition
Wolf administration releases limited info on business waivers to legislature, public
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Ed Mahon
Gov. Wolf Instagram account
Gov. Tom Wolf is fitted for a face mask by his wife, Frances, in a photo posted to the governor's Instagram account in early April.
Gov. Wolf Instagram account
Gov. Tom Wolf is fitted for a face mask by his wife, Frances, in a photo posted to the governor’s Instagram account in early April.
It was a classic Friday news dump. A week after a Pennsylvania Senate committee issued subpoenas for the information, Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration released limited information about thousands of businesses that received special permission to remain open despite the governor’s March 19 shutdown order.
At 5:26 p.m., the state Department of Community and Economic Development announced that it had published the list online, sortable with an interactive map. The list is about as bare bones as it can be: simply the name of each business that received a waiver and the county that business is based in. The state published the list in such a way that it’s apparently impossible for journalists or legislators to easily download it.
It’s unclear whether the list accounts for businesses that received a waiver and later had it withdrawn. The governor’s former cabinet supply business, Wolf Home Products, received a waiver to operate but had it withdrawn in March after Spotlight PA and PA Post questioned why it counted as a life-sustaining business.
Publishing the list was not giving a win to the Republican-controlled legislature. In a letter to state Sen. Mike Regan (R-York), Wolf indicated he would not release more details about businesses, saying they “submitted confidential, often proprietary, information in support of their requests for exemption.” Wolf told Regan, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs & Emergency Preparedness Committee, that he would not “substantively respond” due to executive privilege.
“These businesses could not have envisioned that this information, which may include trade secrets, customer data, and in some cases, personal health information about small business owners, would be subjected to legislative (and potentially public) review,” Wolf wrote.
In Wolf’s letter to Regan, he said he would make public “the names of the businesses that requested exemptions, and the response that they received.” But the website doesn’t appear to list businesses that had exemptions denied. The map function also displayed incorrectly at times, sometimes switching from a state map of counties to a national map of states.
Overall, the website listed more than 6,100 exemptions. Many businesses and lawmakers have criticized the secretive waiver process, saying that similar businesses, including construction companies, appeared to receive different results when they applied for waivers.
Senate Republicans, meanwhile, say they are considering asking Commonwealth Court to intervene.
“Governor Wolf continues to play games with providing clarity about his decision-making process that shuttered employers and put hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians out of work,” Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman (R-Centre) said in a statement. “I can’t help but ask – why is the administration going to such great lengths to keep this information from the General Assembly and the public?”
See also from WHYY: Crayons, flowers, taxidermy: Wolf releases list of ‘life-sustaining’ business waivers.
—Ed Mahon
Best of the rest
This map shows the counties that began to reopen on May 8 (in yellow) and the counties that will begin to reopen on May 15 (in beige). The red counties will remain under a shutdown order. Click to see a larger version.
Earlier Friday, Gov. Wolf announced that 13 mostly western and southwestern counties would begin to reopen starting next Friday, May 15, joining the 24 counties that moved into the governor’s “yellow phase” yesterday. Pittsburgh, the state’s second-largest city, will be part of that gradual easing of the shutdown order.
While leaders in the newly designated counties had something to celebrate, the governor’s announcement threw gas on an already growing flame of impatience in other parts of the state.
The opening sentences of this York Daily Record story describe it perfectly:
Some central Pennsylvania elected officials are letting Gov. Tom Wolf know they aren’t happy to see red when they look at a map of their counties.
Adams and York officials Friday sent separate letters to Wolf requesting that their counties be allowed to transition from red to yellow on May 15.
Friday night, York County District Attorney Dave Sunday announced that his office “will not prosecute any criminal citations for alleged violations of the [Governor and Secretary’s] orders and regulations … concerning the operation of non-life-sustaining businesses.”
Lebanon County officials took it a step further, telling the governor that they will consider the county to be in yellow status on May 15 with or without his approval.
Cumberland County’s sheriff Ronny Anderson posted to the office’s Facebook page that his office will not enforce any “order” that violates constitutional rights.
Dauphin County leaders also said they would transition the county to yellow next Friday. PennLive noted that counties like Adams and York have few coronavirus cases — well below the 50 cases per 100,000 threshold set forth by the governor weeks ago in establishing how his administration would decide to reopen counties.
“Lebanon’s move was especially stunning … [it] still has a relatively high new case count, with 156.6 cases diagnosed per 100,000 residents over the last two weeks. … the 11th highest of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. Dauphin County – home to the state Capitol – is well over the threshold as well, with a current rate of 106.4 cases per 100,000,” PennLive reported.
Similar frustrations are being voiced in Beaver, Lancaster, Schuylkill and Montgomery counties, as well as in the Lehigh Valley. And even some of the counties that will reopen next Friday are going to court to challenge Wolf’s shutdown order, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
At the federal level, U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (R) says we’ve overreacted to the coronavirus. In an interview with the aggressively partisan Breitbart News, Pennsylvania’s junior senator said: “I think we are not making a good judgment about that right now, because we’re overstating the danger of the virus—that’s not to minimize it. Obviously, it’s lethal for people who are vulnerable to it. But it’s not lethal to everyone and in fact it’s not lethal to the vast majority of people. The danger is we’re overstating the risks of that, and we’re underestimating the damage that’s being done by a closed economy and I’m trying to strike what I think is an appropriate balance.”
A few more must-reads:
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Spotlight PA: Pa. had an early plan to protect nursing home residents from the coronavirus, but never fully implemented it
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Post-Gazette: Pennsylvanians might be eligible for one-time cash payment from the state
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WPSU: COVID-19’s Potential Negative Impact On Penn State Applications, Revenue Reviewed By Trustees
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NBC Philadelphia: Small Reopen Philly Coronavirus Protest Gridlocked by Counter-Protesters
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StatNews: What the world learned in eradicating smallpox: Unity mattered
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The Washington Post: Who is Judy Mikovits in ‘Plandemic,’ the coronavirus conspiracy video just banned from social media?
