We need a Smarter Stay-At-Home Order.  Gov. Jay Inslee’s current version is causing avoidable collateral damage.

We get it. Flatten the curve, maintain social distance, wash your hands, don’t touch your face and wipe down frequently touched surfaces.

Sure, some people don’t get it and the hunker inside order was necessary. Canceling mass gatherings, getting people out of crowded bars, not requiring people to work in close proximity–an overall throttling back was a good move.

But Jay Inslee has shown that in exercising unprecedented emergency powers he is a very poor central planner.

Let me correct that: he has shown he is just like all other central planners who believe they can run entire economies by deciding what is and is not essential and who should win and lose.

Governor Inslee needs to start getting more of Washington back to work even as he extends his stay-at-home order to May 4. A sick, sputtering economy that devastates businesses and lives for years is looming before us because he has made some quite bad decisions.

In extending his order Governor Insleee did not modify the list of essential businesses, or take any steps toward permitting closed businesses to start resuming or preparing to resume operations. That was a huge mistake. Businesses cannot turn themselves on with the flip of a switch on May 5 and return to the level where they were. They need to start gearing up now.

Anybody who has run a business would know this. Jay Inslee has never run a business, created jobs or steered a business through rocky times.

Take, for instance, construction, one of the most significant sectors of the economy. It has an enormous multiplier effect, positive when doing well, severely negative for everybody in a downturn. And this is not a downturn: it is a suicidal government-mandated nosedive. It’s like Japanese generals chaining pilots to the steering wheels of kamikaze planes. Inslee is the Japanese general; many of the rest of us are chained in our seats on a plane he has ordered to crash.

Governor Inslee could have modified his ban on almost all construction activity by permitting crews limited in size to perform tasks to preserve the job site and work already completed, and prepare for rapid resumption of full activities. Some work can be performed by small teams who need not be in close proximity. Much construction work is done outdoors, where the risk of spreading the virus is much lower than in office settings or Amazon warehouses and pot shops where he is permitting some businesses to continue to operate.

We’ve heard from Inslee that we have a dire housing emergency. But he has shut down all residential construction. Only residential construction funded by government may continue. How does that make sense when the driving rationale is supposed to be stopping the spread of the virus? How is a publicly funded housing project more sterile than one funded by a future homemowner or a bank? Workers do the same tasks, Governor Inslee. But workers on projects he perhaps supports more than others get to continue working.

As projects sit idle, the consequences cascade and multiply. Weather and the turn of seasons are not obeying a huddle-in-place order. “Make hay while the sun shines,” a common sense principle, has been made a criminal violation by Jay Inslee, but not for publicly funded construction work. Or hockey arenas. (You think the Key Arena construction project might have a little more political clout than hopeful homeowners and small contractors?)

Time is money, both in terms of financing and in construction projects’ critical paths, which have now been thrown off course. Skilled labor can be lost if it is not used. Heavy equipment rented for now idled projects can be moved to places where work continues.

Inslee has taken a sledgehammer to construction work. He is imposing maximum damage that use of a scalpel could have avoided.

And it makes no sense.

A person working a piece of heavy equipment is not cheek-to-jowl with another worker. They are alone and isolated in their excavators and cranes and bulldozers. There is no reason for them to be sitting at home while their employer faces bankruptcy.

A man digging a trench is no threat to anyone.

A carpernter on a roof is no threat to anyone.

A plumber crawling under a house is no threat to anyone.

But an economic shutdown that will inflict lasting damage is a threat to everyone.

Look, the Governor is allowing realtors to show properties as long as the house is empty and they are taking only one person at a time. If a couple wants to view the home, one stays outside while the other goes in with the realtor, then they switch. (Realtors and their associations, hmm, who do they support with their vast political contributions?)

Jay Inslee says that buying and selling existing homes, and earning real estate commissions, is an essential activity. But building new homes and apartments is not–unless he’s paying for it.

If Governor Inslee can work out a solution for those buying and selling houses, he can do the same for what is actually a far more critical sector of our economy, one that creates wealth by creating housing from sticks and bricks.

It is easy to take shots at industries and activities the Governor has not shut down, to argue they are not really all that essential, or that they are somehow being favored by the Governor. It is easy because Inslee has made it easy. The point is not to shut them down. If their business can be safely conducted, and they can stay up and running and keep people employed–great, no questions asked.

But I am asking questions about other shutdowns that make no sense, and there are plenty.  Inslee’s errors in judgment are hurting people and will continue to do so for long after he lifts his order.