Economic Development Chief Testifies to Consequences of Pennsylvania’s Lockdown, Refuses to Apologize

At a Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, the panel’s GOP majority grilled the state’s chief economic-development official on the damage inflicted by COVID-related business restrictions.

In March 17, 2020, Governor Tom Wolf (D) responded to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus by ordering the shuttering of all businesses he deemed “nonessential.” The commonwealth phased out most of the closures that summer, though capacity restrictions on restaurants and other gathering places continued into 2021. Republicans in the General Assembly attempted to end the shutdowns but did not have the two-thirds supermajority needed to override the governor.

So devastating were Wolf’s actions that voters approved two amendments to the state Constitution on May 18, 2021 to prevent the executive branch from declaring such a broad and prolonged state of emergency without legislators’ approval ever again. Nonetheless, at Thursday’s hearing, lawmakers emphasized that much damage has already been done and the economy has not nearly seen a full comeback.

Representatives confronted Neil Weaver, acting secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED), with research conducted by Johns Hopkins University concluding that mass quarantines reduced deaths by only 0.2 percent in America and Europe. They also noted that a review of the lockdowns initiated by Democratic former Auditor General Eugene DePasquale and completed by his Republican successor, Tim DeFoor, determined that Wolf’s administration applied his orders inconsistently among the state’s businesses. 

Representative Greg Rothman (R-Camp Hill) reiterated concerns DeFoor expressed last September that the DCED made “questionable decisions” about which businesses it would relieve of forced closure after those entities submitted waiver requests. During the pandemic, the department was run by Weaver’s predecessor, Dennis Davin, who resigned his position last month…. (Excerpt from Pennsylvania Daily Star)