Good evening. We would like to welcome listeners. We utilize our inclusion requirements which are on the website. The candidates meeting the criteria are here tonight. Welcome. And montanas Lieutenant Governor, democrat mike cooney. Welcome as well. We appreciate having everyone here in person. We are safely distanced and ready for a debate. We have a slightly different format tonight. Each candidate will have an initial 90 seconds to answer the question. Afterwards, there will be an open discussion period with a chance of rebuttals and direct exchanges. We will then finish the debate with a 90 second closing statement from each candidate. The pandemic. Montana is seeing a recent spike in covid19 cases. Just today, the states i record 504 new cases. According to covid act now, a group that tracks Coronavirus Infections across the u. S. , we are currently fourth in the nation for infection rate. If elected governor, with there be aould there be you take more drastic measures to contain
Activity in the Second Quarter of 2020 we are going to see eyepopping forecasts in the third quarter. We cannot lose sight of what that means for people who are struggling, businesses who are struggling, in the fact we still have a deep hole. Recovery,led k shaped and those who do not have options to work from home, is already fading away. We see a hollowed out downtown. [indiscernible] what does that mean for city revenue . In high rent districts employment is still at that 45 of precovid levels. Colleagues and i have a clause looking at what this means for cities and how it depends on revenue structure, industry, and exposure to covid as well as federal and state policy response. If i could get the next slide, please . Go. E we going into this there were a lot of things we thought we knew about city economies and finances. Much of that has been upended by covid. You are thought to be a Success Story if you are a service economy, and now they are under threat. We used to think cities