New York Phase 2 Reopening Delayed Due To Data Analysis

* UPDATE 5/29/20: Phase 2 officially began as planned Friday for 5 NY regions after a phase 1 data review by experts. *

. Several regions of the state were on track to start Phase 2 of reopening today before Governor Cuomo announced data from Phase 1 will need to be reviewed before that can happen.

After what seemed like a strong couple weeks of building momentum towards phase 2 of reopening, and new requirement from Governor Cuomo to start the next things could slow tings up a bit. According to a Syracuse.com report the Governor said yesterday a panel of "international experts" will review the latest New York state pandemic data and will have to give the go ahead before we move on to phase 2. At this point there seems to now be a little confusion on reopening guidelines, as the Syracuse.com story also reports some have not heard about the new guidelines and still plan to move forward with phase 2 today.

First, this has to be super frustrating for local businesses and officials who have been working so hard so start reopening. The last minute nature of this new requirement has to be especially maddening. Love or hate the Governor and the state's plan, until now it seemed to be pretty well laid as far as the details and everyone was settling in to make it work. And why the last minute change of course on data analysis? We seemed to be doing pretty well on our own in measuring how we were doing against the marks that were set forth.

Lets hope this analysis step is only a quick bump in the road for hitting phase 2 of reopening. You can feel locally everyone is really ready to keep the reopening process moving, and with the various social distancing and mask measures we have in place, it certainly feels safe to do so at our current rate of progress. Which unfortunately from an economics perspective is still not fast enough to get everyone working again.