Minnesotans deserve better than the political stare-down that is playing out at the Capitol between Senate Republicans and Governor Tim Walz. They deserve to be informed, trusted and engaged in the discussion over the governor’s use of emergency powers to manage the COVID-19 pandemic and the Republicans’ emphasis on allowing schools and businesses to operate without limits.
The importance of all these goals is undeniable. Instead of having a straightforward debate, however, Minnesotans are pushed to the sidelines as spectators while a proxy battle is fought. Instead of engaging in a partisan side-show that threatens the ability of qualified commissioners to serve the public in an unprecedented crisis, the governor and Republicans should engage in a meaningful discussion on when and how the governor’s emergency powers can be terminated.
Much is at stake
There is much more at stake in this political gamesmanship than just mask-wearing and limits on the size of public gatherings. Many small businesses are on the brink of closing, and some students are losing ground academically and socially. Then there are the health concerns, including the best way to protect the entire community from the virus.
And, there are the hidden impacts that get little attention. Not least of these is the housing crisis that has been made worse by the pandemic. A temporary moratorium on evicting vulnerable tenants who have lost their paychecks and can’t make rent payments, one of the executive orders Walz has implemented, is the difference between housing and homelessness for thousands of hard-hit Minnesotans. If the governor’s use of emergency powers is terminated, how are Republicans planning to protect the thousands of Minnesotans who likely would be added to the rolls of the homeless?
Ultimately, these debates are about Minnesotans and the confidence they have that all politicians are working toward common goals – safeguarding the public’s health, restoring the economy and protecting those who are most vulnerable.
Evidence-based measures needed
If policymakers want to build consensus for action, anecdotes need to be replaced by evidence-based measures that every stakeholder can use to track progress against a shared vision of success. The governor, Republican leaders, health experts and economists should seek agreement on measurable, evidence-based criteria to evaluate when the governor’s broad emergency powers can be terminated and day-to-day life – including returning students to classrooms and customers to businesses – can return to normal.
[image_caption]Tim Marx[/image_caption]
First, an effective vaccine is available and affordable and enough Minnesotans are being inoculated to protect the health of the entire state.
Second, testing with rapid and accurate results is available and contact tracing — the ability to quickly reach those who may have been in the proximity of an infected person — is implemented.
Third, the state shows a consistent downward trend in the infection and hospitalization rates over a period of time epidemiologists determine is meaningful.
Fourth, the state’s economy improves, putting people back to work and earning paychecks sufficient to pay rents, mortgages and put food on the table.
[image_caption]Mark Voxland[/image_caption]
The criteria are interdependent
These criteria need to be refined and tactics created to achieve these goals. They also need to be seen as interdependent. Take the last benchmark, for example. Even while the homeless population has grown during this crisis, there are only around 200 reported cases of COVID-19 statewide among the homeless and, as of this writing, only one death. If the virus spreads among the very highly mobile homeless population it almost certainly will undermine the state’s ability to control its spread in the general population.
There are no easy answers to these extraordinary challenges Minnesota and the nation face. Benchmarks that track progress, like the five suggested here, give Minnesotans the confidence that comes from knowing that the sacrifices they are being asked to make are contributing to success. They give elected officials the tools to adjust their policies. They can help determine when schools and businesses can start returning to normal operations or whether more aggressive social distancing is needed. They address when the governor can relax some emergency orders – easing social distancing, for example, as progress is made in controlling the rate of infections – while maintaining other components, including the moratorium on evictions until the economy is generating jobs and income.
Time and again, Minnesotans have shown that if actions are evidence-based and transparent, measures are well-defined and there is a shared call to action, they will rise to meet any challenge head on. Policymakers of both parties have the opportunity and the need to ask for the best of Minnesota.
Tim Marx is the president and chief executive officer of Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Mark Voxland is the past mayor and council member of the City of Moorhead and owner of Voxland Electric.
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As long as Paul Gazelka see’s South Dakota’s Kristi Noem actions as viable responses by a Governor to COVID 19 he must be kept as far away from any meaningful virus response decisions as possible. Like DJT, Gazelka is incapable of understanding CAUSE > EFFECT.
For months, we’ve been subjected to right-wingers pointing to the Dakotas, Iowa, and Wisconsin as “evidence” that Walz’s restrictions are unnecessary.
But now those states have some of the nation’s highest per capita infection rates.
As usual, it simply took some time for an East Coast and West Coast phenomenon to reach the rural middle of the country. The Twin Cities, as the largest metropolitan region in the five-state Upper Midwest, and an international airline hub, was simply exposed to the pandemic earlier than the more rural areas.
It would appear that, using the five criteria presented, that the emergency powers might be lifted sometime in late 2021. It will be very difficult for the economy to improve until the emergency powers and lockdown measures are done.
As to the merits of the proposal, I doubt that Walz would disagree with using these criteria as a means of terminating the executive orders, as they are quite sensible and, as you say, evidence-based.
I am equally confident that MN Repubs wouldn’t have the slightest interest in endorsing such a bill, since as far as can be determined, all they really want as of Sept 2020 is to have every executive order terminated immediately and begin the charade that there’s “no longer an emergency!” Then we could look like Noem’s SD writ large in 45 days. That’s the “conservative” vision, although Gazelka and his comrade Doubt take great pains to conceal it.
The most pressing problem IMO is how to save small businesses, particularly bars and restaurants, from being destroyed before a vaccine is available. And the most concerning angle is: what if an effective vaccine is never found?
If only our federal government, instead of creating an unsupervised half-trillion dollar slush fund for major corporations, had targeted relief for small businesses, by which I mean those with 50 or fewer employees!
As to the question of “what if a vaccine is never found?” or if the virus becomes as endemic as other corona viruses, we need better and simpler testing procedures. What is the use of testing if you have to wait five days for results, as one of my friends did?
Ideally, there would be a test that could determine if the person in question had had the virus and recovered, not only if the person had the virus currently. Barring a vaccine, the best approach would be a rapid-response test with an effective drug that could be administered immediately to prevent complications.