All of us in Baton Rouge are facing a multitude of life-altering decisions as we get closer to the end of the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, writes Business Report Executive Editor JR Ball in his new opinion piece.
For most of the past month, the only coronavirus concern has been public health. Nothing else mattered. All the things pretty much key to our everyday life have taken a stay-at-home backseat to mitigating the spread of this deadly virus, Ball writes.
But now the all-important infection rate curve has flattened in many areas of Louisiana and is creeping toward flat in others, including Baton Rouge. As it does, the clamor to reopen the economy and return to something resembling normalcy grows.
No doubt, a Baton Rouge economy that wasn’t great pre-pandemic has taken a sledgehammer of a hit. Yet as bad as it is, according to the latest Brookings Metro Monitor, many other metro areas across the country are hurting far worse. Yes, there’s plenty of economic pain, but we’ve been spared the worst of it—so far—because 1) the double-whammy of the oil and gas downturn hasn’t had the same impact here as in southwest Louisiana and 2) we’ve got an enormous number of public-sector jobs—what with Baton Rouge-based state and city-parish governments along with LSU and Southern University—and, to this point, there have been few layoffs. So far.
Transitioning from shutdown to economic reboot is far from a simple switch flip, Ball writes, and every action taken to boost one economic sector will have an opposite reaction elsewhere in our combined public-private economy. What trade-offs are we willing to make?
For example, big business can ask for significant short-term tax breaks to help it recover from the shutdown, but granting them adversely impacts revenue flowing into already cash-strapped state and local governments. It’s a tough public policy conundrum, and it’s just one of the areas of concern the Baton Rouge community must navigate in the near future.
Read Ball’s full column. Send comments to editor@businessreport.com.
