Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth announced Thursday that the Alabama Small Business Commission Emergency Task Force has formed a subcommittee on reopening the state’s economy and plans to present a plan to Gov. Kay Ivey and State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris by April 17.
“Reopening Alabama’s economy and getting businesses back to work will not be like flipping a light switch, but it will more likely be accomplished in stages once the COVID-19 pandemic begins to ease,” Ainsworth said. “The purpose of this subcommittee is to provide a roadmap to reopening the economy that balances the public’s health and safety with the need for small business owners and employees to resume operations.”
The subcommittee will consider issues like how to best ease restrictions on restaurant and store capacity guidelines and how to incorporate social distancing needs with increased commerce once officials decree that the worst of the COVID-19 threat has passed.
State Rep. Danny Garrett, R – Trussville, will serve as chairman of the subcommittee.
The other members of the subcommittee include: Senator Chris Elliott, R – Fairhope, Senator Garlan Gudger, R – Cullman, Representative Joe Lovvorn, R – Auburn, Rosemary Elebash – National Federation of Independent Business, Alabama State Chair, Mindy Hanan – Alabama Restaurant and Hospitality Association, Executive Director, Katie Britt – Business Council of Alabama, CEO, Rick Brown – Alabama Retail Association, President, Tony Cochran of CK Business Solutions in Albertville, and Stephen McNair of McNair Historic Preservation in Mobile.
The state remains under emergency shutdown orders from Alabama Kay Ivey (R) through April 30. All nonessential businesses have been ordered to close and Alabamians have been ordered to shelter in place.
On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said that he believed that the economy can reopen in May.
A number of measures were taken at the national, state, and local levels to shut down the economy beginning in early March in order to stop the spread of the coronavirus strain, SARS-CoV-2, that causes COVID-19.
In March there were estimates from public health officials that over a million Americans would die from COVID-19 without the forced economic shutdown. As Americans have widely adopted the social distancing recommendations of the CDC and the White House Coronavirus task force those estimates have come down to less than 60,000 deaths.
The fear of opening the economy up too soon is that it will unleash the virus as everyone returns to work, restaurants, sporting events, and shopping. The fear of waiting too long to open the economy is that businesses are currently burning up their emergency funds and lines of credit with little or no revenue coming in. The fear is that the longer we wait the fewer the businesses that will survive likely sparking a long protracted recession that will deeply impact Alabama families.
The 22-member Small Business Commission is statutorily tasked with formulating “policies encouraging innovation of small businesses in the state” and advising the Department of Commerce in promoting small businesses within Alabama. The state legislature placed the Alabama Small Business Commission under the authority of the Lieutenant Governor’s Office in 2018.
