In March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic erupted, Gov. Tom Wolf declared an emergency. It was the right move at the time.

That does not, however, mean that every step Wolf has taken since has been on firm ground. There have been plenty of errors, both forced and unforced, in the last 18 months. Most — from changing definitions of what businesses were essential to bobbles with contact tracing to nursing home oversight — stem from the same issues. Boil it down and they are all about communication or follow-through.

But the pandemic didn’t drag on. It came in waves like the tide — escalating, peaking and rolling back only to cycle through again. As that happened, Wolf would re-up the emergency declaration each time it was set to expire, until June 2021.

That was when the constitutional amendment approved by voters in November 2020 went into effect, limiting the governor’s powers to a temporary measure that had to get legislative support to continue.

The Republican-backed amendment does close what was a potential loophole in the state constitution. A governor cannot now decide to exert power through ongoing emergency declarations.

But just because the declaration ended doesn’t mean the pandemic did. Those waves are still cycling and right now, as schools are starting back up, the numbers are decidedly higher than they were in 2020 with more restrictions in place. On Aug. 26, 2020, the state had 520 new cases and a seven-day average of 625. A year later, there were 3,333 new cases and a seven-day average of 2,781, with the majority being the more transmissible delta variant.

With vaccines in the mix, however, schools are opening more confidently while concerns about masking or not masking are tearing communities apart. On Wednesday, Wolf asked the Legislature to come back to work and pass a mask mandate for kindergarten through senior high school and for child care centers.

The lawmakers’ leaders promptly said no.

”At this late date, in many of our communities, local leaders have already made important decisions they believe are in the best interest of their residents and are prepared to adjust those decisions as challenges evolve,” Speaker of the House Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, and Senate President Pro

Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre, wrote in a letter.

That is true. It is also true that local leaders take cues and direction from the state and might change their plans if new information was communicated to them.

If the legislators heard information about why a mask mandate could be appropriate for schools and then voted against it, that would be a solid sign for those local leaders about what to do moving forward and a vote of confidence in the plans that had been made.

But Wolf did what the Legislature and the people asked. He followed the new rules as requested and enacted — and the legislative leadership shrugged it off.

After a year of having people call Wolf a king or a dictator, it is interesting to see him bend a knee only to have the Legislature turn away. Do they realize that having done so, they now own the consequences?

— The Tribune-Review, Greensburg/TNS