Question: Many upstate county executives are looking for the state to reopen the golf courses and also Mayor Bill de Blasio saying that beaches and pools should be shut for the rest of the season, do you think this is too soon to say?
Gov. Cuomo: Look, I’ve talked to a number of upstate officials. Everyone has their own ideas. I get it. I respect it. We have 700 school districts. We have 699 opinions on when to open schools and close schools. The school district officials feel that their opinion matters most, and I understand that. We have upstate county executives who want to open beaches, want to open parks, et cetera.
These decisions are all interconnected, right? This is the conversation I have with them. You open your schools as one district, well then what does it do to the next door district? If we don’t coordinate this, it’s going to make a situation worse for everyone.
Same thing with beaches. You open your beaches, but I don’t open my beaches. My people are all going to go to your beach. Right? We’re two counties, let’s say. What you do with your beaches affects me. One of us does something and the other one doesn’t, now we have a problem. It can be beaches, it can be parks, it can be hiking trails, it can be schools, it can be any of these things.
Normally, it’s up to you. But in an emergency what you do with your park can affect what everybody else does with their park, because you have all sorts of people dying to get out of the house. I find out your parks are open, you’re going to have people coming from across the state to your park. Now maybe you want that or maybe you don’t want that. But I get a lot of calls from people in the Adirondacks. They don’t want a lot of people coming from downstate to the Adirondacks and flooding their community right now. What one does affects everyone. Schools, opening businesses, parks, beaches, all these decisions need to be coordinated on a statewide basis.
I then have to turn around and coordinate with New Jersey and Connecticut and Massachusetts and Delaware and what are we all doing and how does it work together. What I do on my beaches in New York makes a difference to New Jersey, makes a difference to Connecticut.
They just called today. We have an issue. We have different policies on marinas. People from New York are going to other states because other states have their marinas open and we don’t have our marinas open. We’re then flooding their marinas with our people. Sounds like a silly small issue, but these things are all interconnected. They want to know, even on like marina openings, we should have the same policy. Otherwise, people want to get out of their house. It’s now summer. They want to go boating. Well, you can’t do it in New York. They all go to Connecticut. Connecticut then says, "Well, this doesn’t help us. We don’t want all these New Yorkers coming up here to do boating." They have to be coordinated.
I understand it’s inconvenient, but every decision has an impact on everybody else. I’m not crazy about having to coordinate every decision with New Jersey and Connecticut, et cetera, because it’s always easier to make your own decisions and everybody can be on their own. That’s not where we are. No one can make a decision without the state signing off. I don’t make decisions without talking to my partners in New Jersey, Connecticut, and the rest of the alliance. That is the best way for government to operate right now. "Well, it’s a pain in the neck." Yeah, I get it. "Well, I like the old way where I do whatever I want in my county." Yeah, I know. I understand that. We all want to get back to the old way, but we’re not at the old way right now.
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