POUGHKEEPSIE – A local economic recovery from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic will not be easy, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said on Thursday. He made his comments while on a live webcast with Dutchess County Executive Marcus Molinaro.
DiNapoli said the fact that the stock market is rebounding is great for large businesses but does nothing for small, hometown companies.
“How many small businesses in Dutchess County – it’s not even a question of will they reopen at all, ever, can they,” he said. “You think of the restaurants, the small retailers, and the kind of optimism you are seeing in the stock market with some of the big companies doing well, that to me is disconnected from what is happening in the neighborhoods in terms of real people who may not be able to get back to the kinds of small businesses they own or the small businesses that they worked in.”
The pandemic has “decimated” small business and that will lead to a “slow recovery,” DiNapoli said.
