Gov. Wolf’s legacy: lost lives, livelihoods, and abandoning the vulnerable

During the last state budget of his term, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf wants to cement his legacy. It’s Pollyannaish for our governor to think that negotiating for unsustainable spending will cement his legacy. Leaders are defined by how they handle crises, so Wolf’s legacy will be forever defined by his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its lingering impact.

Let’s journey to May 2020, when Wolf so relentlessly ignored the voice of the people. As governor, he has issued the most vetoes in our state in the last 40 years — with nearly half of those during the early months of COVID. For 15 months, Wolf repeatedly extended himself unilateral emergency powers until the citizens of the state amended our constitution to forever bar any governor from repeating such an egregious abuse of power.

Wolf should also be remembered as the man who ignored his auditor general (also a Democrat) who begged the Wolf administration to take seriously his scathing 2019 report on the egregious oversights in state-run nursing homes. The Wolf administration refused to act then, leaving the sick and elderly vulnerable when COVID hit — with deadly results.

As of March 2021, almost 13,000 state nursing home residents died of COVID under Wolf’s watch. Wolf’s famed stonewalling and silence during COVID was so disturbing that even his allies in the media took him to task. Wolf went so far as to oppose a bill that would have given public access to government records during a disaster declaration.

And then there is the price our children paid. His own administration sounded the alarm on the unreported cases of child abuse, neglect, and other concerns — reopening schools is important for reporting abuse because teachers can observe kids in person. But Wolf refused to defy teachers’ union leaders and reopen schools.

We are now just beginning to see the deleterious effects of extended shutdowns on kids. The CDC reports a 31% increase in mental health-related emergency room visits by children under 18 during COVID. Children are still suffering grief, depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts from the extended lockdowns — with children of color bearing the brunt. Adults didn’t fare much better: Suicide rates for men and people of color increased precipitously.

Wolf also can’t escape the stories of people like the Slatterys, who were suddenly homeless after construction ceased on their new home. To make matters worse, Mrs. Slattery was undergoing chemo treatments, forcing her to navigate trying circumstances with a compromised immune system.

Small-business owners and workers across Pennsylvania were financially decimated under Wolf’s tenure. Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office predicts the number of payroll jobs will not recover until 2024 or 2025.

As is so often the case with bad public policy, Wolf’s shutdowns hit businesses owned by people of color — particularly Black-owned businesses — the hardest. During the height of the pandemic, the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that 40% of Black-owned businesses were shuttered. Worse, Wolf’s first statewide loan program all but shut out business owners who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color.

And yet, Wolf violated every one of his shutdown and COVID orders to march with Black Lives Matter. As with so many white proponents of BLM, it seems Black lives only matter when the cameras are rolling. We now know how people of color fared during Wolf’s administration. That, not his virtue signaling, is what will endure.

The governor’s legacy will not be found in budgets or photo ops, but in the hearts and minds of people still struggling to recover from the pandemic. Even now, as Pennsylvanians struggle to cope with inflation and soaring gas prices, Wolf refuses to remove our state from the environmental scheme, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which will increase energy bills by more than 30%.

No amount of overspending in this year’s budget will change the fact that Wolf has never stood for the best interests of Pennsylvanians. He’s a man whose most marked achievement is uncompromising fealty to his progressive overlords, the public sector teachers’ unions and environmentalists, all at the expense of working families, small-business owners, our children, and the most vulnerable in our state.

That is a legacy we will deal with long after he is gone.

Jennifer Stefano is the executive vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation and a fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.