Editorial: Mistakes were made in Wolf’s early pandemic business waivers
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Sometimes a state audit unpacks surprises. Other times it just tells you exactly what you expected to hear.
This week, Pennsylvania Auditor General Timothy DeFoor released a look into Gov. Tom Wolf’s waiver program that let some businesses reopen amid covid-19 shutdowns in 2020.
It is completely unsurprising that DeFoor found problems with how the program was implemented.
To be fair to the governor, it was a vehicle being built as it raced down the road, so there were bound to be some hiccups. The coronavirus pandemic was not something anyone had laid groundwork to fight — especially not to the extent of mandating masks and restricting indoor gatherings. And some of the issues are a bit nitpicky.
The report’s first finding critiques Pennsylvania’s restrictions as being more stringent than the federal government’s. This is undoubtedly true, but it is also disingenous. The Trump administration openly left daylight there, ceding the authority for more strict guidelines to the states.
But in other areas, DeFoor’s recommendations definitely point to ways in which things could have been handled better than they were.
For example, “the Governor’s Office decided to use its own criteria to determine whether businesses were considered life-sustaining instead of using the guidance issued by (the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency), ultimately limiting the number of businesses allowed to operate,” the report stated.
This prompted the next two findings — that the system had little accountability or transparency and that some of the waivers granted to businesses were red flags. DeFoor’s team examined a sample of 150 requests to be deemed “life-sustaining” out of the 42,380 actually submitted to the state. Of those, 45 were considered questionable. Apply that to the total number and you could have three out of every 10 waivers that weren’t appropriate and could have been potential health risks.
Also of concern was the randomness with which they were applied. Two businesses in the same industry could apply and have completely different rulings despite providing the same service.
The Wolf administration may have had the best of intentions with its plans. But as we have stressed in multiple editorials since the pandemic began, it has been repeatedly tripped up not by its goals but by its lack of transparency and accountability.
The most important takeaway from the audit report for Wolf should be its applicability in light of a fact of which the governor is all too aware. The pandemic is not over yet.