An Open Letter to our State Legislators across southeastern Pennsylvania

We are writing to you because of our deep concern with both the pace and the process of reopening businesses, be it by County-designation or by business industry. We are also writing to re-extend our offers to help—to help the Department of Health; our County elected officials and you in providing information, guidance and materials to our members and the community at large so that we may reopen safely and swiftly.

While the Governor’s announcement on Friday was a step in the right direction; respectfully, it was not a solid commitment and, frankly, his timeline is still too slow to meet the realities of our businesses. Many businesses should be permitted to open now and too many businesses will needlessly stay closed during the “yellow” phase—with no timeline for any of them to reach “green.”

Our concern about the economy extends beyond our members and even beyond our membership footprints. We are concerned that countless businesses in the Commonwealth will never re-open. And, as more and more states re-open sooner, faster and more extensively, we are concerned that Pennsylvania businesses will increasingly lose business to competitors in Florida, Ohio, Maryland, Delaware, and elsewhere. Some Pennsylvania companies may lose business that they will never get back. That turn of events will cause our economic pain to be deeper and to last longer.

Under the Governor’s reopening process—which is still somewhat unknown, almost all of our southeastern Counties may not become “green” for at least a month or more.  As a practical matter, this means that even if a majority of counties become yellow or even green, over 50% of the Commonwealth’s GDP will be in a virtual lock-down. The region of the state that typically grows fastest and is the engine for the state will be moving the slowest, if at all. This will ultimately devastate the Commonwealth’s ability to fund schools, health departments, and roads

We write to you not only because of our deep concerns about our members or even the economy across the Commonwealth. We write to you because we believe the Administration’s standards are keeping too many businesses closed and too many people closed off.  In addition, there is a growing number of medical experts in both the physical and mental health fields that are expressing grave concerns about shelter in place. Citizens are missing physicals and blood tests and children are missing vaccinations; and, depression and anxiety are on the rise.

We are concerned that not only is the advice of medical experts from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia falling on deaf-ears; we are even more concerned that updates and revised guidance from the CDC—e.g., with respect to the lowered risk of transmitting the disease through surfaces— seem to have no impact on the Commonwealth’s plans.