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BELLEFONTE -- It's not easy being green.
During his daily news conference Tuesday, Governor Tom Wolf announced that Centre County will move to the green phase on Friday, May 29. Centre County will bypass the full seven-day waiting period since Wolf was already willing to announce them to enter the green phase this past Friday.
The vote to ask Wolf to turn Centre County green capped a wild 72-hour period over the Memorial Day weekend.
After Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said last Friday that Centre County would not move to the green phase because the Centre County commissioners said they wanted to stay yellow until after election day due to COVID-19 concerns.
However, after giving the green light second thoughts, the commissioners at Tuesday's meeting voted unanimously to approve a request to Wolf that Centre County move to the green phase this Friday, along with other north central and north western counties.
"I just want to say that I, as well as probably commissioners (Mark) Higgins and (Steve) Dershem got many calls, many emails, many social media messages. Some were helpful and were constructive criticism," chair Michael Pipe said.
He said that he received one message that really resonated with him.
"It brought me back to my senses on this and informed me that we're not part of the final decision-making process. A lot of things go into the sausage making in Harrisburg. I don't necessarily want to stick our fingers in the end before it comes out the meat grinder," Pipe said.
Pipe said that he and Higgins had concerns about poll workers on Election Day, which is scheduled for Tuesday, June 2 throughout the Commonwealth.
"If there wasn't an election, we would have gone to green. I think we all would have agreed we would have gone to green on (May) 29th. We were ready for it, our businesses were ready for it. But the fact that we had a concern about the election, was, personally, the thing that held me up on it," Pipe said.
Now that Centre County is poised to go green, Pipe is hopeful that the county does not backslide into yellow or red.
"We would hope to be green until vaccine, that's what I believe," he said. "Let's do that as a community. However, I don't trust the virus. The virus sets the timeline as Dr. Fauci has said. As we go forward, if we move back to yellow … if we god forbid, go to red, from the emails that I saw, from the phone calls that I got … everybody is concerned, worried and scared. If we admit that and we recognize that as we approach each other, and we look out for each other and care for each other, I think that is going to matter a whole great deal as we move into the future."
Higgins explained why there was some miscommunication about the county going green on his Facebook page.
"Last Friday afternoon, the Governor gave the commissioners less than 90 minutes to prepare for, and communicate, our views on moving to the Green Phase," Centre County commissioner Mark Higgins said in a Facebook post. "Based on the information we had at the time, we were concerned about our poll workers and an increased possibility of the election becoming a super spreader event if the County moved to the Green Phase before the Primary Election. After careful reconsideration, during the Commissioner's meeting on Tuesday, I support the board urging Governor Wolf to consider moving Centre County to the Green Phase on Friday, May 29th."
Centre will now be one of 18 counties that will move to the green phase at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, May 29.
In addition to Centre, the other counties moving ahead to green include: Bradford, Cameron, Clarion, Clearfield, Crawford, Elk, Forest, Jefferson, Lawrence, McKean, Montour, Potter, Snyder, Sullivan, Tioga, Venango and Warren.
Dershem said the commissioners are now on the same page as far as the county turning green.
"To my fellow commissioners' credit, there was nothing nefarious about anything that occurred. It was genuine concern for not only our poll workers, but the citizens of Centre County. We can agree to disagree on many things … the one thing I knew was that we would be sitting in this room on Tuesday morning having a discussion in public," Dershem said.
He said that while the process of turning green was not a smooth one, he doesn't put that on the county's shoulders.
"It was not helpful the way it was presented at the state level," Dershem said. "I'm not going to beat anybody up about that. What was presented and what was discussed were two entirely different things. That all being said, we have a business community and a county to get back to on Friday."
The commissioners will meet again at 10 a.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, June 2. That meeting will be televised live on C-NET.