Apr. 23, 2020
ALTOONA – In response to Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to slowly reopen Pennsylvania, Rep. Lou Schmitt (R-Blair) issued the following statement:
“The governor’s plan to reopen Pennsylvania is nonsensical. It is totally irrational to assign counties to arbitrarily fabricated geographical regions for the purpose of easing restrictions. This results in counties like Blair with 15 confirmed COVID-19 cases being thrown into the same category as Lebanon County (544), York County (546), Dauphin County (445), Cumberland County (229), and Franklin County (151), all of which have between 10 and 35 times the number of cases.
“It is also illogical for the governor to initially ease restrictions in the so-called northwest and northcentral regions of the state, which are comprised of 25 counties, 14 of which have more COVID-19 cases than Blair County.
“The governor’s program shows how much he has lost touch with the reality faced by the hard-working taxpayers and business owners of Blair County and much of the Commonwealth. I call on him to consider the damage he will cause to counties like Blair with this capricious and ill-considered proposal, and instead, formulate a phased plan that eases restrictions on individual counties based on their number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.
“For instance, the governor could move forward initially with easing restrictions as soon as possible on those counties with less than 50 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Doing so would result in nearly half of all counties in Pennsylvania seeing some relief from the restrictions that, day-by-day, are starving local counties’ economies of oxygen. Further phases of eased restrictions would follow, with counties hardest hit coming last. Any county that backslides in terms of the number of virus cases would see restrictions tightened. Nothing else makes sense.”
Representative Lou Schmitt
79th Legislative District
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Media Contact: Greg Gross
717.260.6374
ggross@pahousegop.com
RepLouSchmitt.com / Facebook.com/RepSchmitt