Area counties plead with Wolf to reopen

By DEB ERDLEY

Trib Total Media

County leaders across Southwestern Pennsylvania are trying to convince Gov. Tom Wolf to allow them to begin reopening as soon as possible — regardless of what is going on in Allegheny, the most populated area of the region, which also has its highest number of coronavirus cases.

On Monday, 37 county commissioners and state lawmakers representing the nine counties surrounding Allegheny County met in an online Zoom call to discuss strategies to persuade Wolf. They followed up with letters to the governor.

Commissioners from Butler, Fayette, Greene and Washington said they are so frustrated by the lack of communication from Harrisburg and inconsistencies in its actions that they are prepared to support legal action against the state by their residents and business owners.

“Frankly, our residents are angry,” the commissioners wrote Wolf. “Our phones and emails are flooded with calls and appeals for help.”

Westmoreland County Commissioner Chairman Sean Kertes shared in their frustration.

“I get calls every day from people still waiting for unemployment checks. ‘Can you get in touch with the state anyway? I don’t want to lose my house.’ They have credit card debt, and their creditors don’t care that their unemployment hasn’t arrived,” he said. “It’s just very frustrating when people and small business owners call us with those stories.”

Wolf’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The governor is requiring that counties have fewer than 50 new cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 population per day for two weeks and be able to conduct contact tracing.

He also is requiring that counties have systems in place to monitor infections in institutions such as prisons and nursing homes and have the ability to test those with COVID-19 symptoms as well as groups at high risk for the disease. Population density and demographics such as age also are factors in determining when counties can reopen.

On Tuesday, Wolf held out hope that the Pittsburgh region might be next to move into a phased reopening. With the 10 counties in the region meeting the metrics for containing new COVID-19 cases, other criteria have underscored glaring deficiencies and communication gaps between state and local officials.

Allegheny is the only county in the region with a local health department.

Counties: How do we contact trace?

Local officials in the nine other counties — Armstrong, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland — aren’t entirely sure how the contact tracing requirement would be met.

And officials in Butler, Fayette, Greene and Washington counties said they weren’t even aware of the governor’s criteria for a data-driven reopening until last Friday.

“Commissioners and legislators are thoroughly dismayed that we lack access to critical information to help us ensure that our counties have the proper equipment and data to prepare for and quickly respond to any outbreaks here at the ground level that may occur in our communities,” they wrote to Wolf.

They are among 62 counties across the state that rely on the Pennsylvania Department of Health for contact tracing. The state Health Department stopped general contact tracing in mid-March when the numbers became overwhelming, spokesman Nate Wardle previously said.

State officials said while their staffing was adequate to handle such tracking for most infectious diseases, the department’s budget fell far short of handling the coronavirus. They have been focusing on contact tracing in congregate centers, such as nursing homes, and attempting to bump up staffing to meet needs.

Westmoreland leaders said they’re not sure how local contact tracing is being handled.

“We have not been updated on any of those metrics,” Kertes said. “What we hear is day to day.”

Washington County Commissioner Diana Irey Vaughn said she has been “contacted by several individuals who had (COVID-19), and they hadn’t had any follow up.”

Both took some comfort in Wolf’s comments Tuesday, when he said he hopes Southwestern Pennsylvania can move into what has been dubbed the yellow phase “really quickly.”

Officials point to few recent cases

Westmoreland Commissioner Gina Cerilli predicted Wolf will move to open the region by the end of the week.

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald has said he’s optimistic his county, which has health department staff handling contact tracing, is on track to meet all the governor’s criteria provided the number of new cases stays low.

Allegheny County Councilman Sam DeMarco of North Fayette, the Republican at-large member who is also chairman of the Allegheny County Republican Committee, released a statement today calling on Wolf to “start reopening Allegheny County and allowing those that can, to go back to work.”

DeMarco acknowledged that “changes will have to be made. We realize practicing better hygiene, social distancing and masks may become a ‘new normal’ for the foreseeable future.” But he said that the governor “refuses to lift his stay-at-home order and what’s worse, refuses to provide us with adequate information as to why.”

Officials in the other nine counties have emphasized that they do not have the population density or COVID-19 numbers that some urban areas have and that their health systems have not been overwhelmed by the virus.

“Obviously, we’re not Eastern Pennsylvania,” said Cerilli, a Democrat. “That’s where most of the cases are.”

She joined fellow commissioners Kertes and Doug Chew, both Republicans, in writing Wolf this week and signed off on a second letter from Democratic county commissioners across the region pleading for relief.

In Butler County, where there have been only four new COVID-19 cases in the last four days, 10 Republican lawmakers penned in a letter pleading with Wolf to reopen the region.

“Millions of people across our commonwealth find themselves unemployed — hard-working people who have gone without a paycheck for months, and many without any unemployment compensation,” they wrote. “People need to be able to put food on the table. A delay in action can be devastating for our residents.”