Gov. Tom Wolf called on members of the general assembly on Thursday to help protect Pennsylvania residents from the threat of COVID-19 by allowing his mitigation efforts to continue.
“The driving force of the mitigation efforts in Pennsylvania and other states is to save lives,” Mr. Wolf said at a press conference. “Everything that my administration has done is based on the most up-to-date research on COVID-19, and it is working. We must not allow these Harrisburg political games to distract us from fighting this virus, wearing masks, avoiding crowds and social distancing.”
This call to the assembly comes a day after it passed a bill to loosen restrictions that had been placed on bars and restaurants by the Wolf administration.
In terms of the recent legislation being passed by the general assembly, Mr. Wolf remarked that it seemed as though they were “pretending that they have the unilateral power to suspend the virus.”
“Seems to me the Legislature could be dealing with things like hazard pay,” Mr. Wolf said. “We know that we have to do more in hazard pay. We’re talking about making our democracy work better. Let’s actually put out things that people really need that’s going to make them safe. What they did here I don’t even know what the point was.”
The governor went on to warn that based on a study done by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, if Pennsylvania were to ease mitigation efforts too quickly, daily infection rates could double within a month, especially with the possibility of a fall resurgence of the virus.
“The general assembly has sent a great deal of dangerous legislation to my desk. Rather than bolstering the commonwealth's efforts to deal with a possible resurgence, legislators have repeatedly tried to deny my administration the critical tools I need to try and continue to fight this effort,” he said.
In addition to trying to maintain the current mitigation efforts, the governor also called on the general assembly to pass a government reform plan.
The plan has three areas, which include banning gifts for public officials, enacting new campaign finance laws and increasing transparency surrounding outside income.
Members of the Wolf administration have been banned from accepting gifts since he first took office, but Mr. Wolf would now like to expand that to all public officials in the state.
The campaign finance reform would place limits on contributions to candidates and place “sensible restrictions” on political action committees.
The governor hopes that by changing campaign finance laws, it will “strengthen reporting and disclosure requirements across the board to restore confidence in government, and curtail the role of campaign spending in our political process,” his news release said.
The new reform plan would also require public officials to disclose information about outside income such as the sources, the type of work and the amount of income that was received.
First Published: September 24, 2020, 7:50 p.m.
