State Sen. Ward says covid-19 induced pain reaches across the state economy
Share this post:
The coronavirus is cutting a swath from hospital executive suites to Westmoreland County residents waiting weeks for unemployment checks, state Sen. Kim Ward told constituents during a teleconference Wednesday.
The Westmoreland County lawmaker said she has reservations about the transparency of some of the decisions surrounding the state shutdown and the impact it is having on those thrown out of work as well as beleaguered unemployment office staffers staggering under the weight of 1.5 million new applications for benefits.
But Ward could offer few answers.
The Hempfield Republican, who commiserated with constituents left unemployed by the state shutdown, nonetheless urged them to observe social distancing and mask requirements.
“I wear a mask because it makes me feel safer,” Ward said. “It makes a lot of sense to protect our most vulnerable. If you can go to work and abide by those protocols, I think it would be fine.”
She told callers that Gov. Tom Wolf’s emergency declaration gave him the power to close businesses and schools without consulting lawmakers. She said Wolf could well extend the statewide lockdown beyond his proposed May 8 date to begin a gradual reopening.
“We actually have no idea what will reopen, when,” Ward said. “The Legislature has not been involved in any of this. When they put us on lockdown, we found out about it 10 minutes before you did.”
Questioned about month-long delays in getting out unemployment benefits, Ward told callers the state Department of Labor and Industry has a backlog of 30,000 unanswered emails and receives another 15,000 a day. She said staffers are working to process the 1.5 million claims residents have filed over the last five weeks.
“It’s not that they are not working. It’s that they are overwhelmed,” she said, adding that the state is committed to providing back benefits when claims are finally processed.
Representatives of Excela Health and Mutual Aid Ambulance joined the conference and assured callers that both the hospital system and the ambulance company are well equipped to serve local needs throughout the lockdown and beyond.
Even so, Ward told callers she’s concerned that the virus is exacting a serious toll on hospitals across the state.
She cited an April 21 letter from Excela Health CEO John Sphon to employees that said the local health system expects to post nearly $30 million in losses for March and April due to canceled elective procedures.
In the letter, Sphon said Excela will reduce executive pay by 15%, effective May 2, and eliminate emergency pay and special paid time-off benefits. He said Excela also will adjust staffing to “low census levels” to staunch the flow of red ink. But he expects to ramp staffing back up “when volumes and workloads return to expected norms.”
“While the size of these losses are not fatal to Excela, they are extremely daunting and unsustainable,” Sphon wrote, adding that federal stimulus funds the hospitals received were not sufficient to cover its losses.
Ward said that raised questions for her about how stimulus funds are being distributed.
“We need to make sure the stimulus money target for hospitals reaches our community hospitals and they get their fair share,” she said.