BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 5, 2020
I do not envy the incredibly difficult decisions Gov. Janet Mills has to make. I am grateful for her steady leadership, and for the smart people she has chosen as her commissioners. But my many years as an innkeeper, and my decades of involvement with Maine’s hospitality industry, compel me to share my thoughts. Maintaining a quarantine period for out-of-state travelers through July and August effectively guarantees that our state’s lodging places cannot book rooms. Visitors will likely not come at all, and the hundreds of people who work in hospitality cannot count on their jobs. I favor non-contact check-in procedures, and tight messaging to tourists, instructing them that they should not travel to Maine if they are ill. Replacing the 14-day quarantine on travelers to Maine with measures we can implement would provide a small amount of certainty in this uncertain time. ~ Victoria Doudera of Camden