BOSTON — One day after naming an advisory board to develop a phased approach for reopening the commonwealth, state officials provided some insight into how they see that board operating.

 

At Wednesday's press availability, Gov. Charlie Baker was asked whether he was concerned that the 17-person panel chaired by Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito might not have a wide enough cross section of the commonwealth's economy.

 

Polito explained that the members of the advisory board will be conduits for information.

 

"For instance, if you are a restaurant owner, you would navigate to the representative on the board who has that experience level," Polito said. "We also have a university president for higher education. She is communicating with her colleagues around what that would like for campuses around our commonwealth.

 

"And there are multiple ways the board is going to consider what would be a safe reopening for an enterprise or organization. They can submit to us what they think they incorporate into their workplace to make it safe for their employees but also the people they do business with, and we can review that."

 

Polito pointed out that the clock already is ticking to May 18, the date when the current executive order closing non-essential businesses is set to expire. Polito and Baker said they designed the advisory board to take input from various sectors of the economy in an efficient manner.

 

And Baker hopes that those sectors can coordinate their input before presenting it to the board.

 

"Part of the reason we would like these different employer groups to talk to each other before they talk to the advisory board is to deal with their own disagreements around how this should work," Baker said. "One of the things about creating these big [boards] is everybody comes into it through a particular funnel or a particular channel and makes a particular set of recommendations.

 

"We've had this happen with some of the big [panels], where you have literally eight or 10 players, all basically in the same industry, who are coming at whatever you're working on from a completely different point of view. And then it's up to us to figure out some way to wrangle them into a set of proposals they can agree on. For time's purposes as much as anything else, we want those folks to simultaneously be talking to each other so they can reach some general agreement on the best way or the two or three best ways they can think of to operate safely. Then come talk to those folks."

 

Polito shared some insight into the board's initial conversations at Tuesday afternoon's briefing.

 

"We really focused on what the public health principles are to trigger a reopening and also that checklist that you're probably familiar with in terms of the basic things that will be needed in workplaces -- safe distancing, hygiene and sanitization and also the types of gear that might be needed both for workers and for the public-facing part of the enterprise," Polito said. "That checklist is being vetted by the industries coming into contact with the advisory board to give us feedback whether these kinds of things can easily be adopted in workplaces. Then we can confirm it would be a safe opportunity to reopen in the commonwealth.

 

"A lot of give and take with the advisory board, and that's how we have designed this."