- Since Wisconsin's "safer at
home" order was challenged by
Republicans and struck down by
the state Supreme Court, local
health orders were to have been
the replacement.
But one county executive says
that's not working.
Winnebago County Executive Mark
Harris said, "We've run
into significant opposition
from the local Chamber of
Commerce or conservative
assemblymen, WMC,
the local Republican Party,
and community members that
don't believe the health
officer should have any
enforcement powers.
Mark Harris joins us this week.
Thanks very much for being
here.
- Thanks for having me on, Frederica.
- So you have seen how Dane
County has imposed and
Milwaukee County is looking at
imposing
mandates on mask wearing
in addition to other distancing
and capacity orders.
Would you like to be able to
impose those same kinds
of health orders in your
county?
- We have no pressing need to
do any sort of order at
this point in time.
But what we discovered is that
our code won't support
enforcement of any order.
So you've got this situation
where the state legislature,
through the Senate
leader, Mr. Fitzgerald, is
saying we will not take
any action with regard to
Covid-19.
We'll rely on the local health
officers.
But nearly all the counties
have health officers who
clearly have
the authority to give health
orders, but that don't
have language in their county
codes to be able to enforce
them. So we can't we can't make
any order enforceable.
- Why aren't those orders
in your codes?
- I suspect all the counties
have model codes and only the
very largest counties
drafted their own from scratch.
So I believe nearly every
county has the same defect in
their code.
And all we wanted to do is by
resolution, add language
out of the state statute
252.03.
We want to pull language out of
there that's been out there for
decades and
put that in our county code.
And we ran into stiff
opposition from people that
view any
authority in a health officer
as some sort of encroachment on
their freedoms.
- And yet, isn't that exactly
what was envisioned
following the state Supreme
Court ruling?
- That seems to be what they
had in mind. I mean, the
legislature and the governor
could have come together and
reach some sort of compromise.
And in fact, the legislature
initially asked for six
days to put
something in the stay at home
orders place.
And Judge Roggensack,
in a dissent to her own
majority opinion,
said that they should have
given a six day transition
period and that's
when our county discovered-- we
tried to put that six day
period in to allow them to
work together and to substitute
something for the stay at home
order.
And that's when we discovered
we didn't have enforcement
powers.
So we had to withdraw that the
very next day that we issued
it.
- What are your concerns about
the point at which you might
need those kinds of
orders?
- Well, to get something
through a county board
and have it added to our code,
it's a lengthy process.
And if we wait till some action
has to be taken urgently,
it's not going to be there on
time.
And the type of action that I
think might occur
here, there
might be need for a surgical
order. There might be a
tattoo parlor where one
of the tattoo artists is
infected.
They're not responding to our
advice to them to not
allow that artist to work.
Well, that's a case where our
health director could issue an
order that would be enforceable
and we could shut them down
or force that artist not to
operate.
And that's just one example.
Hypothetical.
But the way it is now, we can
suggest that they not let that
artists operate.
But we really can't stop them.
And that could be true of any
number.
Yeah, could be true of any
number of situations.
- What about the argument,
though, on the part of
people who might be offering
some of this pushback
that they have concerns
over, "shuttering the economy,"
as Senator
Fitzgerald said about
these kinds of
public health orders?
- Definitely, there's a tradeoff
between rules
that protect health
and rules that impact the
economy, and quite frankly,
I would advise against any
additional general shutdown
unless the situation became
absolutely horrific.
But if you don't do this type
of shutdown,
you're facing a disaster.
- Is the Wisconsin Counties
Association able to offer any
kind of guidance or help in
this because presumably you're
not the only county that
is experiencing this.
- They're actually talking
about issuing some
guidelines, perhaps some model
language, but
they're going through a
committee process trying to
reach that.
And they suggested that they
won't actually have
language that you can just
adopt. They're going to have
some guidelines to help you
develop your own.
That could take a long time
and it would probably still
raise the same type of
opposition. Basically, our
critics are telling us
they don't want our health
officer to have any authority
to enforce an order.
- So there there won't be.
I mean, is there any-- do you
have any remedy?
- Well, the board could choose
to go ahead and adopt
the necessary code language for
the county
over this active objection.
And I believe this
is just a subgroup
within the total county.
I suspect there's a large body
of people on the other side as
well.
But it's very
hard for a county board
to make a decision if
if one side is very vocal and
very prominent
and they've kind of
kind of been ginned up by
some of the players.
I know a lot of the people were
told that we can invade their
home and that
we could take their children
out of their home if they have
the sniffles.
Those exact words have been
repeated to me numerous times.
Well, the language that was
drafted had a reference in
it. And that reference
talked about having to either
have permission to enter the
home or having to have
an inspection warrant issued by
a court.
But, of course, people, lay
people reading it just read
over those references.
- Well, Mr. Harris, we
we wish you well as you try to
work this out.
And we also hope
that your numbers
will flatten out.
Mark Harris, County executive,
Winnebago County,
thanks very much.
- Thank you.