Growing number of counties test Gov. Wolf’s emergency powers, saying they’ll decide if it’s time to reopen

"I truly believe, if given the opportunity, businesses and citizens and residents will do the right thing."

• Charles Thompson/PennLive
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  Thompson has covered state government for The Patriot since 1999. Prior to that, he had covered various Cumberland County municipalities and school districts. Thompson lives in Carlisle with his wife, Beth, and their two children.

Gov. Tom Wolf’s control over Pennsylvania’s official response to the coronavirus pandemic appeared to be fraying Saturday as commissioners from at least six counties threatened to take unilateral action to push their constituents ahead of the state’s pacing for reopening business and public life.

Republican commissioner majorities in Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Lebanon and Schuylkill counties have all made public moves in that direction in recent days.

Their argument comes down to this: They’ve seen their residents respond, sometimes at tremendous personal cost, to Wolf’s initial emergency lockdown and its stated goals of buying time against the virus so that the state’s hospitals aren’t overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases. And, as of mid-May, the commissioners say, they feel they’ve won.

Now, it’s time to reward those residents for their patience by starting to let them resume their lives and livelihoods.

“This is the difference between apparently the governor’s office and many county commissioners,” said Dauphin County Commissioner Jeff Haste, who expects his board to take up a resolution Wednesday moving Dauphin into the equivalent of the state’s yellow phase for reopening from Wolf’s statewide business closure and stay-at-home orders.

“I have more faith in the citizens of Pennsylvania and the residents of Dauphin County in doing the right thing. They understand what is going on (with the virus). Their social patterns have changed. I truly believe, if given the opportunity, businesses and citizens and residents will do the right thing, will follow the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) guidelines, and will let the rest of the business go.

“They need to have that choice,” Haste continued. “And if they choose not to, and they’re still afraid to open or they’re still afraid to go out, they have the choice to stay home. The governor has said to everybody: ‘We don’t have any faith in you. We don’t want you to have that choice, and here’s what your choice is.’ And I just disagree with that and I believe I have more faith in the people of Pennsylvania than he does.”

Franklin, Lebanon and Schuylkill County’s majority Republican commissioners made the same declaration of intent in letters to Wolf Friday and Saturday, respectively, and the Berks County commissioners sent a news release out Saturday stating their intent “to develop a responsible and safe plan to reopen businesses in Berks County” over the next several days.

Cumberland County commissioners said they’ve asked county solicitor Keith Brenneman to explore their options.

“We need to do this right,” said Commissioner Gary Eichelberger. “There is a world of difference between action, and effective action; to be effective, it has to be legal. We understand the frustration of our business owners and residents, and we are extremely sympathetic to their plight.”

On their three-member county commissions, the majority party can usually rule the day.

The county leaders’ shared intent marks a significant and growing challenge to Wolf’s authority to manage the public health emergency that has sprung from the emergence this winter of the novel coronavirus, which has hit the East Coast particularly hard. In Pennsylvania, the latest Health Department statistics say 55,316 Pennsylvanians have tested positive for the virus, and its has caused 3,688 deaths.

All six of the counties in question are currently showing an incidence rate of new cases of coronavirus well in excess of the 50-case-per-100,000-resident threshold that Wolf and state Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine have set down as one of their benchmarks for starting a county on the path to economic reopening.

Their case-incidence rates, as of Saturday evening: Berks, 202.1; Franklin, 191.6; Lebanon, 150.2; Dauphin, 109.6; Schuylkill, 89.1; and Cumberland, 69.1.

The following map shows case-incident rates around the state, as of Friday.

But the county officials say those numbers are counter-balanced by the fact that the number of COVID-related hospitalizations are well within capacity of local health care systems, testing is becoming more available and many of the reported cases are in self-contained communities like nursing homes and prisons.

As of Friday, Wolf had cleared 37 counties to move to yellow by May 15, including almost of western Pennsylvania and the north central portion of the state. Eastern Pennsylvania and the south central counties – most of which have had higher rates of transmission during the course of the outbreak – have been held back.

The governor’s office urged caution on restless county leaders in a statement from Press Secretary Lyndsay Kensinger Saturday night.

“The governor believes it is important to save as many lives as possible during this once in a generation pandemic. He also understands that this world-wide crisis has placed pressure on individuals, businesses, and the economy. Because we have banded together, Pennsylvania continues to weather this storm,” Kensinger wrote.

“Prematurely opening up counties, however, will result in deaths, and not just the loss of jobs. The administration is aware of the statements and is hopeful that everyone will act in the best interest of public health. Reopening businesses too early will only extend the length of the economic hardships created by the pandemic.”

In Pennsylvania’s scheme, yellow is not a return to pre-pandemic normalcy, by a long shot.

Its conditions continue to require the closure of bars and restaurants, except for take-out orders; all entertainment venues like movie theaters, casinos and motor racetracks; and all public gatherings are to be limited to 25 or fewer. Personal services businesses like barbershops, tattoo parlors and nail salons area also to be closed, and organized sports are banned

But it would allow many more retailers, manufacturing companies and commercial offices to re-open.

If a county did jump the state’s timeline, early legal interpretations suggest that individual municipalities would still have the power to abide by the state’s status for their area, regardless of what the county commissioners said.

That’s exactly where Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse told PennLive Saturday he is. Papenfuse said he wants to keep the city and its residents following the state’s guidance for Dauphin County – which is still in the pre-reopening, or red, stage – regardless of what the commissioners decide.

“We are comfortable following Governor Wolf’s timeline for reopening. We think it’s responsible and based on science,” Papenfuse said in a telephone interview.

The Harrisburg mayor stressed that he’s not trying to pick a fight with the Dauphin commissioners. Rather, he said, he is just trying to be careful as possible for his own constituents.

“The residents of Harrisburg are absolutely of the agreement that we should follow the department of health’s guidelines and move slowly, in part because of the disproportionate impact that the virus is having on African-American communities and in urban communities where people are living close together. So it would be unwise for us to move as fast as the county commissioners are suggesting.”

At the city level, Papenfuse said, that “would mean we would follow the Department of Health’s guidelines, and consider ourselves still in the red stage, which would mean that in Harrisburg, things that would be allowed under the yellow stage would not be allowed.”

 

But the commissioners’ declarations, if approved, would give municipalities license to relax the rules too, and if enough places did that it could seriously undercut the Wolf administration’s efforts to to lead the state through a phased reopening that state officials say will minimize the chance for new outbreaks.

The county’s fledgling reopening efforts were still being reviewed by the governor’s legal and health teams as of Saturday. But it seems unlikely that Wolf, having asked Pennsylvanians to sacrifice so much to this point, would be willing to cede control of the pace of reopening to local officials now.

Wolf has assumed broad powers under the disaster emergency declaration he signed on March 6, as Pennsylvania reported its first cases of the coronavirus. Since mid-March, he has used those powers to close k-12 schools, order all “non-life-sustaining businesses” to close, make food service a take-out proposition only and ban large public gatherings.

In that time, according to state Labor & Industry Department statistics, nearly 1.8 million state residents have opened unemployment claims.

The governor has already seen his business closure orders upheld in separate actions in the Pennsylvania and U.S. Supreme Courts, so there may be a sturdy legal platform for the state to challenge what the counties propose to do, as they act.

But more than anything, administration officials say they believe firmly in their approach, which they say has led to a per capita case rate in Pennsylvania (458 per 100,000 residents) that is far lower than in neighboring New York (1,740) and New Jersey (1,543), two of the hardest-hit states in the nation.

“We are taking a careful, measured approach to ensuring that Pennsylvanians can resume work and normal routines safely. Regions are moving from red to yellow now because of their size and geography of the population; the low rates of infection and our ability to do testing and contact tracing,” Health Press Secretary Nate Wardle wrote to PennLive via email Friday.

“Successfully moving these regions from red to yellow will give us a good indication as to whether or not we can open other regions safely. If there were to be an outbreak in a county in these regions, we are confident that we could control it through our contact tracing and testing plans…

“The south central part of the state has dealt with some challenges recently in regard to case counts, and there are still outbreaks… We will continue to assess this region, and other regions still red in the days ahead to determine when they can move to yellow.”

It’s also true that many individual business leaders may also be reluctant to open as long as the counties are in conflict with the state.

Commissioners like Haste and Christian Leinbach of Berks County believe their constituents should have that choice.

Haste noted he and Pries are not completely abandoning the governor’s structure: the pending Dauphin County resolution would still suggest that all parties abide by the state’s yellow phase rules.

“We’re suggesting to everybody that they follow CDC guidelines,” Haste said Saturday. “Things have changed, and all we’re saying is: ‘Wake up, governor. We think the people have realized there’s a change. Let them start to make their own decisions.’”

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PennLive and The Patriot-News are partners with PA Post.