State Senator Phil Fortunato is running for governor on the GOP side, and joined the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH to discuss why he believes Inslee is taking the wrong approach regarding construction and what’s considered non-essential.

There’s been a little bit of confusion over the course of the last 24 hours on essential workers. The governor has put out a notice saying most construction sites are now closed down. Is that the right move?

“No. This is a difficult time. Everybody’s supposed to be rallying around, we got a crisis. We don’t want to have politics involved. Everybody is in this koombaya mode where you can’t be critical. And and to be perfectly honest with you, nobody really knows what the heck to do.”

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“But as soon as he came out with essential and nonessential, I said, ‘This is where we part company because am I essential? Is your business essential? Who’s going to determine it?’ … Shutting down construction is ridiculously expensive. It’s going to drive up the cost of construction. If you shut it down, you’ve got to winterize your stuff, it’s open to the elements. The impact on the economy is going to be staggering, and we’re gonna have a two to three billion shortfall when you go back in January.”

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Senator Fortunato believes that come January we’re going to need a governor who will be able to manage the shortfall without further damaging the local economy.

“My pitch to businessmen to give me money is: You know why you should give the money to my campaign right now? Because in January you’re going to have to have a governor to deal with this billion dollar shortfall, and you’re going to be looking at a B&O tax increase, income tax and everything else under the sun to fill that hole,” he said.

Are gun shops essential?

As Jason noted, it was a tad surprising on his part to see that gun shops are considered nonessential, impacting people’s ability to enjoy their gun rights.

“Well never mind enjoy your gun rights, protect yourself. We are in a crisis situation. This is like shutting down gun stores when you have some kind of public riot or something or other,” he said. “And you’re saying, ‘Well, you can’t go out and buy bullets or guns in order to defend yourself in an emergency situation. This is an emergency situation where it’s more applicable, not less.”

Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3 – 6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here.

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