I welcome the reports of interstate pacts, like those among California, Washington, and Oregon or among New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island and Massachusetts mentioned in this article at CNN:
States on the country’s East and West coasts are forming their own regional pacts to work together on how to reopen from the stay-at-home orders each has issued to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The first such group to be announced came Monday on the East Coast. Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island and Massachusetts each plan to name a public health and economic official to a regional working group. The chief of staff of the governor of each state also will be a part of the group, which will begin work immediately to design a reopening plan.
Later on Monday, the West Coast states of California, Washington and Oregon also announced they are joining forces in a plan to begin incremental release of stay-at-home orders. Governors of the three states will collaborate on their approach to getting back to business in “in a safe, strategic, responsible way,” as announced by California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
I don’t see them as indicating some grave failure of the federal government but rather as indicating that our system is working as designed. States with common interests work together to pursue those interests. Could that pursuit be facilitated by the federal government? Maybe. It could also be impeded by the federal government.
There will be many lessons drawn from our experience with SARS-CoV-2. I would hope that one of them is that redundancy within limits is beneficial and conducive to resilience.
I am happy to see these states working together. We have been heavily impacted by commuters to NYC and New Jersey. What they do affects us. Also, our governor made much better decisions so hopefully he influences the others.
Steve
I can see a little tiff coming up concerning the ‘interstate commerce’ clause. Supply lines are so intertwined these days that states banning and blockading shipments from non-compliant states would keep the economy from recovering. Not to mention the effective blockade a continued partial lockdown by the northeast + the west coast would have on international shipping. BTW, the local Coast Guard commanders are ultimately in charge of the various seaports. That hasn’t mattered until now, but it could matter soon.