State senator: Greene, Washington counties to reopen next Friday

Two more Pennsylvania counties will reopen late next week, according to a post by Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R-Washington, on her personal Facebook page.

According to Bartolotta, Greene and Washington counties will move from the red into the yellow phase next Friday as per Gov. Tom Wolf’s three-phased plan for reopening counties that are under stay-at-home orders.

Wolf’s office did not immediately respond to questions for comment late Thursday.

Bartolotta’s announcement came hours after Wolf extended the state’s stay-at-home order through June 4 for all counties in the red zone, which currently encompasses all of Southwestern Pennsylvania, including Greene and Washington counties.

On Friday, Wolf plans to make an announcement about the next areas of the state that will move to the yellow phase of the state’s three-tiered reopening plan. The governor said Friday’s update will identify “additional counties moving to the yellow phase at a to-be-determined date.”

Last week he announced that 24 counties in the Northwest and Northcentral regions of the state could reopen Friday — a move that caused push back from several local leaders vying for counties in the southwest region to also reopen.

County commissioners from Butler, Fayette, Greene and Washington counties, along with U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, joined a group of local business owners in a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Wolf’s stay-at-home orders that left businesses shuttered since March.

Bartolotta expressed her support toward the lawsuit on Twitter.

“Governor Wolf closed many businesses in Pennsylvania that could have safely remained open following health guidelines. Now he is pursuing another convoluted and deeply flawed process of reopening counties,” she said in a news release “Every day that we wait pushes more families and employers closer to the edge of the financial cliff.

“The Governor claims to use medical data to reopen counties, yet our Southwestern communities were left out despite having some of the lowest rates of infection in the state. Protecting lives and livelihoods is not mutually exclusive.”

Wolf previously stated he would consider counties for reopening if they had fewer than 50 cases per 100,000 residents over 14 days, although he added that many subjective factors go into that decision.

By late Thursday, Greene County had 27 confirmed cases and one death related to the coronavirus. Washington County had 120 confirmed cases and four deaths.