I predicted this would happen, and it did ...
Oct 9, 2020 11:50:20 GMT
cornhusker, themotherhen, and 1 more like this
Post by willowgirl on Oct 9, 2020 11:50:20 GMT
PA Auditor General Eugene DePasquale (a national treasure!) finds issues with business closures during Covid. Apparently some animals are more equal than others ... especially animals who get elected officials to intervene on their behalf.
More than 500 Pennsylvania businesses that appealed Gov. Tom Wolf’s order to close amid the COVID-19 pandemic received decisions from the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development (DCED) that later changed.
Auditor General Eugene DePasquale called the waiver request process “subjective,” saying it engendered “significant confusion among business owners.” He is calling on Wolf “to provide details on its communication with legislators and lobbyists about waiver requests,” he said in a news release.
Auditor General Eugene DePasquale called the waiver request process “subjective,” saying it engendered “significant confusion among business owners.” He is calling on Wolf “to provide details on its communication with legislators and lobbyists about waiver requests,” he said in a news release.
...“To be clear, our analysis is this was not a level playing field for businesses across Pennsylvania,” DePasquale said. “Some smaller businesses may not have used the correct buzzwords in their waiver justification, or they just didn’t ask their ... legislator for assistance to get a waiver.”
...Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre/Mifflin, said the governor stacked “the deck against mom-and-pop businesses simply looking to continue operating safely.”
The AG's investigation is ongoing. Hopefully at the end, we'll be able to see which businesses and legislators were involved, and how much money changed hands in order to make those waivers happen.
A photo I took a couple of weeks ago of a closed business in downtown Carnegie seems appropriate here ...
