Washington, Oregon, and California unveil new alliance: Western States Pact

The Unit­ed States’ Left Coast gov­er­nors today made it abun­dant­ly clear that they — not Don­ald Trump — will decide when to lift their Stay Home, Stay Healthy orders and allow busi­ness­es that are cur­rent­ly closed to ful­ly reopen.

Wash­ing­ton’s Jay Inslee, Ore­gon’s Kate Brown, and Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Gavin New­som said in a state­ment pro­vid­ed to the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute that they have decid­ed to form a new alliance called the West­ern States Pact.

Here is that announce­ment in its entirety:

Today, Wash­ing­ton Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som and Ore­gon Gov­er­nor Kate Brown announced an agree­ment on a shared vision for reopen­ing their economies and con­trol­ling COVID-19 into the future.

Joint state­ment from the gov­er­nors:

COVID-19 has preyed upon our inter­con­nect­ed­ness. In the com­ing weeks, the West Coast will flip the script on COVID-19 – with our states act­ing in close coor­di­na­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion to ensure the virus can nev­er spread wild­ly in our communities.

We are announc­ing that Cal­i­for­nia, Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton have agreed to work togeth­er on a shared approach for reopen­ing our economies – one that iden­ti­fies clear indi­ca­tors for com­mu­ni­ties to restart pub­lic life and business.

While each state is build­ing a state-spe­cif­ic plan, our states have agreed to the fol­low­ing prin­ci­ples as we build out a West Coast framework:

• Our res­i­dents’ health comes first. As home to one in six Amer­i­cans and gate­way to the rest of the world, the West Coast has an out­sized stake in con­trol­ling and ulti­mate­ly defeat­ing COVID-19.
• Health out­comes and sci­ence – not pol­i­tics — will guide these deci­sions. Mod­i­fi­ca­tions to our states’ stay at home orders must be made based off our under­stand­ing of the total health impacts of COVID-19, includ­ing: the direct impact of the dis­ease on our com­mu­ni­ties; the health impact of mea­sures intro­duced to con­trol the spread in com­mu­ni­ties —par­tic­u­lar­ly felt by those already expe­ri­enc­ing social dis­ad­van­tage pri­or to COVID-19; and our health care sys­tems’ abil­i­ty to ensure care for those who may become sick with COVID-19 and oth­er con­di­tions. This effort will be guid­ed by data. We need to see a decline in the rate of spread of the virus before large-scale reopen­ing, and we will be work­ing in coor­di­na­tion to iden­ti­fy the best met­rics to guide this.
• Our states will only be effec­tive by work­ing togeth­er. Each state will work with it’s local lead­ers and com­mu­ni­ties with­in its bor­ders to under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing on the ground and adhere to our agreed upon approach.

Through quick and deci­sive action, each of our states has made sig­nif­i­cant progress in flat­ten­ing the curve and slow­ing the spread of COVID-19 among the broad­er public.

Now, our pub­lic health lead­ers will focus on four goals that will be crit­i­cal for con­trol­ling the virus in the future.

• Pro­tect­ing vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions at risk for severe dis­ease if infect­ed. This includes a con­cert­ed effort to pre­vent and fight out­breaks in nurs­ing homes and oth­er long-term care facilities.
• Ensur­ing an abil­i­ty to care for those who may become sick with COVID-19 and oth­er con­di­tions. This will require ade­quate hos­pi­tal surge capac­i­ty and sup­plies of per­son­al pro­tec­tive equipment.
• Mit­i­gat­ing the non-direct COVID-19 health impacts, par­tic­u­lar­ly on dis­ad­van­taged communities.
• Pro­tect­ing the gen­er­al pub­lic by ensur­ing any suc­cess­ful lift­ing of inter­ven­tions includes the devel­op­ment of a sys­tem for test­ing, track­ing and iso­lat­ing. The states will work togeth­er to share best practices.

COVID-19 doesn’t fol­low state or nation­al bound­aries. It will take every lev­el of gov­ern­ment, work­ing togeth­er, and a full pic­ture of what’s hap­pen­ing on the ground.

In the com­ing days the gov­er­nors, their staff and health offi­cials will con­tin­ue con­ver­sa­tions about this region­al pact to recovery.

Our team at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute applauds this effort.

It is tru­ly won­der­ful to see the Left Coast com­ing togeth­er in defense of our Amer­i­can val­ues. The health, safe­ty, and well-being of our peo­ple must be our high­est pri­or­i­ty. We need a strat­e­gy for deal­ing with this pan­dem­ic that takes into account our inter­de­pen­dence and interconnectedness.

It’s a relief to see that our region’s gov­er­nors rec­og­nize this.

Some­thing sim­i­lar is being put togeth­er on the oth­er side of the country.

New York, New Jer­sey, Con­necti­cut, Penn­syl­va­nia, Delaware, and Rhode Island have formed a region­al advi­so­ry coun­cil to guide their next moves.

“We can­not act on our own,” said New Jer­sey Gov­er­nor Phil Mur­phy.

“We must be smart and tac­ti­cal in how our region comes out of this, or else we’ll be right back to square one.”

The West­ern States Pact will need to be fur­ther fleshed out, and it sounds like we’ll be hear­ing more very soon. In the absence of strong and sound lead­er­ship at the fed­er­al lev­el, this is just what the doc­tor ordered.

Thank you, Gov­er­nors, for putting this togeth­er and show­ing what states can do. Let’s be a mod­el for the entire coun­try in these dif­fi­cult times.