Management of the health crisis by counties, and the responses from municipalities, NPOs, businesses and citizens has been exemplary these past months. In fact, it has been extraordinary how orderly and peaceful COVID compliance has been up until this weekend of the George Floyd killing protests around the country. As the length of this state of emergency extends, nothing about it feels short-term any more, yet the manner and mindset of management of the crisis remains mired in short-term thinking.
This is not a criticism of the response to date. We have many people and teams to be proud of in the high country. In many ways, Counties in the NWCCOG region have paved the way and literally written the Road Maps (Pitkin County, and Summit County) or Trail Map (Eagle County) for a staged recovery based on public health metrics now being used by others. From interviewing those at Eagle County who developed that template, I know that it required a second team to come in which could look out beyond the intensity of crisis response to what emerging a month out would look like. Because of that Eagle County was the first in the state granted an exemption from the Governor’s health orders. That work required a mid-term strategic mindset.
Those same crisis response teams are already allowing hand-offs to other teams who focused on steering communities along the next phases of those pathways to recovery from the economic and mental health crises. The gradual re-opening with distancing is a tactical challenge that many accept as a necessary half-step to a full re-opening.
Like on any long road trip, what if leadership is too exhausted to be focused beyond the next fast food meal or bathroom break? What if we all are. It takes a kind of stamina, vision and courage to look beyond the current state of affairs, especially when it is as unique and absorbing as our current crisis. What if the idea that the road “back” to a pre-COVID state is a false premise?
Expressing something no one WANTS to think about, a Washington Post article asks, “Coronavirus may never go away, even with a vaccine: Embracing that reality is crucial to the next phase of America’s pandemic response, experts say.” Perhaps we should step back, look beyond quick fixes of an extended crisis-response mindset to a strategy that re-evaluates the policy structures that exacerbated by this cultural stress test. Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve was uncharacteristically outspoken in May about structural inequality in our economy. It was only a year ago that it was reported that most households could not absorb an unplanned $400 cost. Powell reported that as of May, 40% of households earning less than $40,000 include at least one earner who has lost a job since February. Unemployment is 14.7%. He said what few leaders in Washington are admitting, that this crisis is especially vicious because those at the bottom were just about to climb out of 10 years of hard times since 2008. His comments may have implications for our resort economy and the workers upon whom it relies.
How different would local recovery strategies look if next winter’s tourist season looks more like June 2020 than last winter? What if versions of a gradual “re-opening” and retrenchment are a pattern for many years? That is to say, what if we never really do get back to what was normal?
On a recent call to Summit County leaders, Alan Henceroth, CEO of A-Basin, the first ski-resort permitted to re-open through a reservation system with 600 visitor slots reserved per day made it clear that this business model will not work financially next winter. What if it had to?
Unlike the farmers and snail-mailing leaders of our past, we seem incapable of collective long-term strategizing. If Coronavirus becomes endemic, as the Washington Post article suggests, on the continuum of responses scaled from a Tweet to The Marshal Plan or The New Deal, we will need more leaders driving us toward the latter type of big-picture strategies that are more meaningful than throwing money at problems. We are going to need the thought-leaders to step forward.
We used to be a nation that thought big. Securing vast tracts of land for the future federal leaders through purchase or war or motivating citizens to homestead expanded the nation from the Eastern Seaboard to another ocean; think Louisiana Purchase, Alaska. Then we built the railroads, roads and then electricity to connect them. Today even the most humble jurisdictions enjoy a vast public health infrastructure for clean water and wastewater. The system of dams across the West, though much maligned for their environmental impacts, also enable a desert population to flourish from Denver to Phoenix to Los Angeles. These cities would not exist were it not for dams on the Colorado and other Rivers. If you have time to read these days, and want some reminders of what America has been able to do with focused public policy and our can-do spirit, three of my favorite reads include If We Can Put A Man on the Moon by William Eggers and John O’Leary which reminds of various thought traps including lately maligning “big government” which prevent policy progress. I also recommend Bold Endeavors: How our Government Built America and Why It Must Rebuild Now by Felix Rohatyn who argues that we could fund rebuilding our infrastructure if leadership really wanted to—lack of funding is not the problem. Last, I recommend Out Where the West Begins: Profiles, Visions & Strategies of Early Western Business Leaders by Philip Anschutz who profiles a long list of individuals across various sectors whose visions were audacious enough to define the future in which we now live. Stories in all three are not namby-pamby rhetoric like what we hear today in the hollow “America First” or “Make America Great…Again” folks. Real advancement didn’t come from snowflakes or loud mouths. These are stories of how what has been great was accomplished when we had leaders at all levels of government, not least in Washington D.C. who had vision and tenacity.
In the nearly complete absence of such vision, strategy or leadership at the federal level (in both branches charged with strategy, policy and action), and not much more from the State of Colorado which like many others states appears to be completely consumed in budget austerity—and will likely remain so for many sessions to come, can there be a high-country version of long-term thinking? It may have to include living with COVID for years to come. Will there emerge a strategy on the order of magnitude our future requires?
Let us hope so.
