WA Rep says Inslee gives ‘anecdotal evidence’ on restaurants and COVID

Senate bill 5114 would essentially reopen the economy in Phase 2 of the Healthy Washington COVID-19 plan if it were to pass, expediting the process for businesses like restaurants, but that still may be a ways down the road. Sen. Ron Muzzall, Republican from the 10th Legislative District, joined the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH to discuss the evolution of the bill and what he says is Governor Inslee’s inconsistent application of data on restaurants.

“Well, I think you have to go way back to the governor’s emergency declaration, and then the lack of any special session, and then the fact that the Legislature was left out of any of the process when it came to the pandemic and the state’s response to it,” he said.

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Muzzall says the bill is not a threat to public health during the pandemic, but more so a mediated approach that gets senators on record about the reopening process.

“We’re going to be in a position where we have to make a stand there, and we have to vote our conscience, and it’s going to be very visible how we vote. … Phase 2 isn’t a wide reopening — and I’ve got a lot of emails to my office in the last day about how this is a threat to everything that we stand for on the pandemic — and this is not,” he said. “This is a very mediated approach.”

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“But it is going to separate out the responsibility, who is responsible for what when it comes to that vote,” he added. “… Are you for trusting people? Are you for letting restaurants get back to serving people inside to a relative degree of 25%? Or are you on the on the Inslee team that wants to drive them to a point that they’re never going to be able to recover?”

Muzzall believes Inslee has overreacted in his handling of COVID-19 and taken an approach to businesses, especially restaurants, that Muzzall says isn’t supported by data.

“I talked to restaurant owners who couldn’t provide Christmas for their kids, who feel terrible about the fact that they put their employees out of work. Well, it wasn’t them, but they still feel that responsibility. It was the governor’s overreaction, one that wasn’t backed up by data,” he said.

“He gives anecdotal evidence, but he doesn’t have real tracking data to show that the restaurants are responsible for anything but less than 1% of the COVID cases.”

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.