Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Capitol Comments by Peggy Bennett

 

As you know, an extension of the stay-at-home order has been issued by Gov. Walz until May 4. Since this is an executive order, the governor is the sole entity in our state who is ultimately deciding — with the help of staff and advisers — when we can begin to return our lives back to normal.

I agreed initially with the governor taking emergency control of our state for the first 30 days of dealing with this pandemic emergency. That was necessary, and I know his heart was in the right place in the decisions he made.

However, now that we have the first 30 days under our belts, I believe it is time to bring the Legislature — the voice of the people and a co-equal branch of government — back into the decision-making process to come alongside the governor with additional perspectives.

I’m not looking to criticize the governor’s past actions.  He’s done what he needed to do. However, now the debate needs to be taken to the people and to the co-equal branches of government, along with the governor and his advisers.

Here are some of the questions that we should all be debating, as a people and as a government, as we move forward — working together — and not just one person deciding what is best for our state:

How can we safely begin opening our businesses and bringing back people’s jobs?

How are we going to protect our senior centers and nursing homes?

How will we protect people with underlying conditions?

How will we keep our food system operating as some processing plants are shutting down?

How can our hospitals get back to business and at the same time remain prepared for COVID-19 patients?

How can we make sure Minnesota has enough of the drugs that are showing promising results in treating COVID-19 patients?

Should we be treating rural and metro Minnesota the same as we establish our plans?

It is time to pivot from our current stay-at-home intervention. We need to carefully and smartly open our shuttered businesses and let people have their jobs back — before there are no jobs to go back to. We have already lost some local businesses (and the jobs that go with them) — for good. Many of our other local businesses are on the edge of the breaking point. 

We have people waiting for mastectomies, cancer treatments, pain-saving back surgeries and more. Hospitals need to be able to deal with these important surgeries which have been deemed nonessential (but abortion is essential?) while at the same time making sure that they are COVID-19 prepared.  Many of our hospitals are currently headed toward bankruptcy and doctors and nurses out of work due to a lack of patients.

The latest modeling information provided this week by experts at the Minnesota Department of Health and the University of Minnesota indicates that by protecting the vulnerable and continuing to observe social distancing, we can begin the process of gradually opening the economy with no measurable impact on mortality or ICU demand.

It is clear. We can both keep people safe and open our economy at the same time.

It’s time to open up the debate and get our lives and our economy moving. I call upon the governor to remove his additional 30-day peacetime state of emergency and bring more voices into the decision-making process: the Legislature, businesses, hospitals and the people.

We can do this, and we need to do it together.

State Rep. Peggy Bennett, R-Albert Lea, represents Minnesota House District 27A, which includes almost all of Freeborn County, along with parts of Faribault, Mower, Steele and Dodge counties. She can be reached by phone at 651-296-8216 or by email at rep. peggy.bennett@house.mn.