Rep. Cris Dush Demands More Accountability from Wolf Administration in Regard to Business Closures


BROOKVILLE, Pa. (EYT) – On Monday, March 30, Pennsylvania State Representative Cris Dush said he was demanding more accountability from Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf in regards to his handling of business closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The Wolf administration needs to release the guidance they’ve been using and to be accountable to the people of Pennsylvania,” Dush said. “He is not a dictator. He needs to be transparent or to be held accountable by the legislature and the courts.”

Wolf, on Monday, extended school closings and non-life-sustaining business closing indefinitely.

“Since March 16, two weeks ago, the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have given Governor Wolf and his administration extraordinarily wide latitude to get a handle on how to balance protecting the citizens of Pennsylvania while not taking actions that will lead to poverty and deprivation that will cause more harm than the virus that came out of Wuhan, China,” Dush said in a Facebook post.

Dush said guidance from the governor’s office on which businesses can remain open and which have to close has been “very vague” and has caused more confusion than answers for business.

According to Dush, when businesses, the media, and the legislature have asked what guidelines the Wolf administration is using to make determinations during this crisis, they have been denied access to those documents beyond what he says are the confusing published guidelines. That is why he made a formal request for documents Monday.

“Today (Monday), in an email detailing a case in which a local business had submitted a request for a waiver due to its support for businesses that have already been deemed as ‘life-sustaining’, I demanded the guidance documents being used to make determinations, both current and prior versions, to be submitted to me by 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday,” Dush wrote. “I’ve copied the Majority Leader, Labor and Industry Chairman as well as the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee which has the authority to issue subpoenas to compel the release of those documents to the House.”

Dush said while Pennsylvanians comprise 3.9 percent of the United States population, as of Friday, March 27, Pennsylvania is now at 11.6 percent of the total employment in the country.

“Businesses are going all out to protect themselves, their employees and their customers,” Dush wrote. “It’s part of why we are not Italy.”

Dush said he, and every Pennsylvanian, want to do their part to slow the spread of this deadly foreign disease.

“We cannot, however, destroy the very fabric of what has blessed Pennsylvania, and the United States, and kept us all out of the deprivation and poverty I’ve witnessed in other parts of the world,” Dush said. “Those deprivations come from top-down government that refuses to be accountable. Those deprivations cause more death and destruction than this virus will ever come close to causing.”


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