“Whitmer’s office gave the ‘green light’ for a COVID-19 contact tracing ‘arrangement’ she denied knowledge of and canceled amid outcry over a contractor with Democratic ties.”
May 29, 2020
Michigan Headlines Critical of Gov. Whitmer’s Handling of COVID-19 Contracts and Reopening
Today, Nolan Finley, the Detroit News Editorial Page editor, wrote, “There’s a difference between creative spin and willful deception” in a piece criticizing the now-canceled contact tracing contract Governor Whitmer’s administration handed over to Democrat campaign vendors.
Whitmer previously said she ordered the contract canceled when she found out about it but emails recently obtained by Bridge Michigan show “Whitmer’s office gave the ‘green light’ for a COVID-19 contact tracing ‘arrangement’ she denied knowledge of and canceled amid outcry over a contractor with Democratic ties.”
Finley writes the contract “appears to have been crafted, with the help of the executive office, to hide the partisan aspects of the deal” and Whitmer’s “administration engaged in an elaborate bait-and-switch aimed at directing a nearly $200,000 no-bid contract to a Democratic operative at a time when the governor was competing for the party’s vice-presidential nomination.”
In addition, Chad Livengood, the senior editor at Crain’s Detroit Business wrote: “Whitmer’s disjointed reopening strategy undermining her coronavirus curve-flattening success.”
“After a precipitous drop in the COVID-19 infection curve, there’s a growing sense here that most residents are over the governor’s stay-at-home orders, even if they supported her original actions nine weeks ago to protect public health.”
“…as deaths, infection rates, hospitalizations and ventilator use has plummeted, Whitmer has continued to extend her lockdown order and provided a disjointed reopening strategy.”
Whitmer’s administration is also under fire from Democrats and Republicans on the state’s handling of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Fox 2 Detroit reports a “new state bill would stop Gov. Whitmer’s housing of coronavirus patients at nursing homes” after Detroit Democrat Rep. Leslie Love stated that Michigan’s policy was the “most idiotic thing we could come up with.”