Warnick: Hospitals need to reopen, special session likely before end of year

MOSES LAKE — With private residential construction set to restart and outdoor recreation to open up on May 5, Sen. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, says “non-essential” medical procedures should be the next thing to resume for the state to emerge from the COVID-19 shutdown.

Warnick, who is the ranking member of the state Senate’s Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources and Parks Committee, also said she expects Gov. Jay Inslee to call a special legislative session before the end of the year.

“A few people want a special session right away, but I’m not one of them,” she told the Columbia Basin Herald on Tuesday. “We should wait until after the end of June, the end of the fiscal year, when we’ll have a better view of the fiscal situation.”

A recent presentation by the state’s Economic and Revenue Forecast Council — which generates the financial information the state legislature uses to create the state’s budget — projected the state’s economy would shrink by roughly 25 percent in the three months from April to June.

Warnick said tax revenue to the state, counties and cities would take a significant hit, though no one will know how bad until counties start reporting property tax receipts and the state receives March sales tax revenue in early May.

“That gives us legislators the revenue parameters to work with,” she said.

Warnick said that hospitals, “especially on this side of the state,” need to reopen as soon as possible so that people seeking heart surgery and joint replacements can get those procedures done.

“There are just not that many COVID patients,” she said.

Hospitals and clinics that reopen need to do so with proper precautions and enough personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep doctors and nurses safe, Warnick said. Because hospitals have not been doing “non-essential” medical procedures, Warnick said they have not been able to bill anyone, and thus can’t pay staff.

When the Samaritan Hospital directors ordered the hospital closed in late March, they set a date of May 18 to resume “non-essential” medical procedures.

Warnick said she was also glad that construction work on private homes can resume, noting that leaders of construction unions and home builders reached an agreement “two weeks ago” on the procedures needed to get building underway again.

“It should have been done then,” she said, noting that work on her daughter’s house should be able to resume by the end of the week.

It should be fairly easy for construction workers to follow “distancing rules,” Warnick said, since they tend not to work “shoulder to shoulder most of the time.”

While she said that Inslee has listened to legislators and taken their recommendations to heart, she said she’s “not pleased” that the governor “let a whole bunch of people out of prison” and that Inslee’s “plan” to reopen the state isn’t more detailed.

“There’s a lot of frustration, businesses aren’t open and we don’t have metrics to reopen,” she said. “We at least need to know what has to happen before we reopen.”

“When are we going to get back to business?” she added.

A plan released on April 17 by Senate Republicans would require full disclosure of the metrics “that must be met before the business-closure order can be lifted or amended” and would also exempt businesses from business and occupation tax for one year as well as allow “low-risk” businesses such as auto sellers, construction, hairdressers and barbers to resume.

The proposal also calls for a year-long suspension of unemployment insurance payments, one or more sales tax holidays linked to “known shopping promotions” like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, and a suspension of increases in the state minimum wage — currently $13.50 per hour — until the state economy, as measured by the consumer price index, again reaches where it was in January 2020.

Warnick said she is personally being careful and is concerned that if social distancing isn’t maintained even as the state slowly reopens, COVID-19 “will come back with a vengeance.”

“We need to avoid that second wave,” she said. “We’re going to get through this together.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected].