The Ravalli County Board of Health last week acknowledged and agreed to abide by Governor Bullock’s recently issued directive implementing the first phase of a phased reopening plan designed to get the state’s economy rolling again without jeopardizing the public health.
Dr. Carol Calderwood, leader of the county’s COVID-19 Incident Management Team, told the board that the team recommended acknowledging and implementing the governor’s directive and saw no need to add anything more restrictive to the state’s plan. She said the governor’s latest guidelines for implementing the re-opening were extensive and detailed and that her team was working hard on getting that information distributed as widely as possible in the community.
Commissioner Jeff Burrows, who serves as Chairman of the Health Board, questioned the rationale behind the plan. He said the dates for opening different businesses seemed to be chosen arbitrarily. He said restaurants should have been able to open from the day the governor made his announcement because there was no reason to wait.
When it was suggested that it might be to give them time to re-design their seating and make other preparations to meet the distancing criteria that would still apply, Burrows said it doesn’t take 10 days to move some tables to get six feet of distance between them.
“If you could show me some evidence that restaurants and bars are more susceptible to spreading virus than gyms or retail stores or anything else, I could buy it.” Without that, he said, “it’s a coin toss.”
Burrows questioned rationale behind other parts of the plan as well. He said the governor was picking and choosing winners and losers with no reason and delaying the opening for 10 days instead of allowing it now could be the death blow to a small operation.
Calderwood said she assumed there was a good reason behind the plan but that she had not seen any scientific evidence to back it up yet.
Much of the discussion centered around the difference between “adopting” the governor’s directive or agreeing to “acknowledge and abide by” it.
Deputy County Attorney Royce McCarty explained that the Board of Health could under state law adopt its own directive that either mirrors the state directive or makes it even more restrictive, but it could not adopt a directive that was less restrictive than the state’s.
According to McCarty, the directive from the state must be followed, as it is state law. It is enforced by the Attorney General’s office and the local County Attorney offices around the state. Those officers may file a restraining order in civil court to enforce the directive.
However, if the Board of Health adopts its own directive that simply mirrors the state directive, it changes the enforcement capabilities by adding the potential for criminal enforcement as well as civil.
McCarty said that from the county attorney’s perspective, after considering several “pros and cons” involved in each that it was simply at the discretion of the Board about how they wanted to handle it and that his office could deal with it either way.
The final decision was to acknowledge and abide by the governor’s directive.
Dr. Calderwood also made a surprise announcement that the machine used to test for COVID-19 virus that the county commissioners agreed to pay for had been purchased and was being shipped. It will be able to test two samples per hour 24 hours a day.