The Governor of the State of Wisconsin doesn’t necessarily believe in a regional approach to re-opening Wisconsin businesses that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, days after meeting with Republican lawmakers who have filed suit against his administration for aspects of the current Safer-at-Home coronavirus order, he told WTMJ’s Steve Scaffidi that he is willing to consider ways of re-opening some business operations on a regional basis.
“I don’t (think it’s the answer), but I never say never in this situation. There may be cases where we do it,” he told Steve on Thursday.
“I think we can do a lot of things re-opening that are statewide that impact all counties at the same time.”
The Governor said that he and Republican lawmakers discussed the issue of regionalization.
Evers’ reservation about regionalization involves numerous aspects of what happens when you bring more people into contact with each other, particularly in areas of small population.
“When you’re in a county that has smaller numbers of people living there, you don’t have a real good count of what the virus is, because there is very little testing going on. We’re correcting that right now,” he said.
“(Much) of the success of the economy in rural areas is bringing a whole bunch of people…to those counties to participate in tourism,” the Governor added.
“You’re increasing the numbers; you increase the possibility you’ll be spreading the virus.”
As for the possibility of change to the current Safer-at-Home order’s ending date of May 26, Evers said that due to the lawsuit, such a decision is currently out of his hands.
“It’s my hope not to expand (the order). Frankly, the Supreme Court will decide that soon, whether I would or not.”