NEW YORK, NY – The following statement can be attributed to Tom Wright, President and CEO of Regional Plan Association:

This afternoon, Governor Cuomo hosted a remarkable press briefing where he was joined by the governors of Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island to announce that their states would be working together on a unified plan to re-open their economies. Each state will be appointing three representatives – the governor’s chief of staff, chief economic development official and chief health official – to a joint task force to collectively plan for the coming weeks and months.

This is a very positive step, recognizing that COVID-19 has no regard for political jurisdictions. Even as our economy and communities are intertwined, COVID-19 exploits those linkages to jump from state to state, community to community, household to household. Nowhere in the nation is this more evident than in the tri-state metropolitan region and the Boston-to-Washington Northeast Megalopolis, where 17% of the nation’s population and 20% of its economy are concentrated on just 2% of the land.

As these six states join together for a common strategy, they should keep in mind these basic principles:

• Protecting the public’s health and restarting the economy are complementary – not conflicting – goals that require a coordinated regional plan.
• The plan must protect the most vulnerable: those most at risk of serious illness and those without the income and support to see this through.
• Nearly 700,000 people cross state lines to work in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut each day, and hundreds of thousands more people travel for school, essential services and recreation on a daily basis. They will need consistent guidelines and policies regarding mass transit, schools, retail and other services.
• Collaboration on the post-COVID-19 recovery can lay the foundation for long-term regional cooperation in economic development, transportation and the environment.