O’Scanlon: Small Restaurant Victory isn’t Enough

Senator Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth) issued a statement today following news that Governor Murphy would increase indoor dining capacity from 25% to 35% and remove the 10pm nightly indoor dining curfew.

“We are happy to see that the Governor has finally made some forward movement to increase restaurant capacity at this point. Which we have been calling for over the last several months,” said O’Scanlon. “As happy as we are that there is some relaxation here, it is still completely outrageous to continue on with this endless slow drip of restrictions being lifted.”

“Every surrounding state is at 50% at least. We’ve been behind our neighbors in lifting these draconian regulations for months. And the delay hasn’t shown any indication that we are doing any better with our rate of transmission; we are simply still economically killing our restaurant and hospitality industry.”

“It’s outrageous that after all this time with contact tracing showing restaurants are not the nexus for new cases, that the administration will only give them a 10% capacity increase. We have months of hard evidence from virtually every other north east state…we can go to 50% capacity with no negative health/transmission impact! Today is a small victory, but unfortunately not one that’s large enough to make a real difference to save the industry.”