WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAW) -- Overnight, the responsibility of overseeing restrictions for the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be in the hands of public health officials around the state after the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned the Safer-at-Home order Tuesday evening on a 4-3 conservative majority decision.
Aerial view of Stevens Point (WSAW Photo)
Public health officials have authority under state law to enact their own orders, according to Governor Tony Evers’ legal counsel Ryan Nilsestuen in a press call with reporters Thursday afternoon Governor Evers said he feared ‘mass confusion’ from a patchwork” of different responses across the state, while Republican leaders said they might leave it up to local officials to determine further rules.
Those officials have been left scrambling on Thursday to develop a response after the state Supreme Court majority chose not to implement a requested six-day stay on the statewide order. Milwaukee, Dane, Brown and other counties have implemented orders similar to the one overturned, but many rural counties are still formulating their response—and determining their legal options.
“It’s hard to make a plan when you don’t know what the ruling is going to be,” Judy Burrows with the Marathon County Health Department said, noting that the county’s corporation counsel needed to carefully review the 161-page ruling and determine what the scope of the county’s response could be. “We want to make sure that whatever we put into place is legal for us to do.”
Marathon County, along with many other counties in central and northern Wisconsin, has issued statements encouraging businesses and the public to maintain safety recommendations for COVID-19; many officials are pointing businesses to reopening guidelines provided by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. But the need for a coordinated response with other public health officers in the central and northern Wisconsin regions, Burrows says, takes time.
“Putting this in the hands of 72 counties is going to create a lot of confusion if we do this 72 different ways,” Burrows told NewsChannel 7. “This virus knows no county boundary. It will go wherever a human being will carry it. And so having something that’s similar across county boundaries is going to be important.”
In the Supreme Court ruling, justices in the majority decision noted more than two weeks had passed since they had begun considering the case, leading to the decision not to include the six-day stay requested by Republican lawmakers bringing the case.
“We trust that the Legislature and [DHS secretary-designee Andrea] Palm have placed the interests of the people of Wisconsin first and have been working together in good faith to establish a lawful rule that addresses COVID-19 and its devastating impacts on Wisconsin,” the decision noted.
But during those two weeks, local officials say they never heard from the legislature on a plan for after the case was decided.
“It certainly concerned me when they put in their order that they trust that the legislature has taken time to do something,” Stevens Point mayor Mike Wiza told NewsChannel 7. “I don’t see that. Here we are, the morning after, and I have yet to receive any guidance from the state legislature on how we’re supposed to keep everybody safe.”
Wiza was taking calls from businesses and constituents until 10:30 last night, and his approach mirrors many rural counties and municipalities around central Wisconsin: providing encouragement to businesses to make safe decisions for their customers and adopt recommendations from the WEDC.
“It’s very, very difficult for our health department, our law enforcement, our economic development,” he noted, referring to the absence of state leadership. The city will be fine, he says—their community team is strong and he says most businesses are making wise reopening decisions. But, “It’s extremely frustrating to try to operate a municipality in that type of environment.”
In a combined statement, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said Wednesday evening that they had asked to meet with Governor Evers last week to begin formulating a plan, but Evers had declined. Thursday morning, Republican legislative leadership met with Governor Tony Evers to discuss new rules in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. Following the meeting, Speaker Vos told the Associated Press that it may be left to local governments to implement rules.
"You're always going to have a few bad actors, but we already know that local health departments have the ability to utilize their power, which is already there to deal with those situations if they feel it's unsafe,” Vos told the AP’s Scott Bauer.
On a call with reporters Thursday afternoon, Governor Evers said the meeting had been respectful, but that he believed the state leaders were comfortable with the idea of ‘mass confusion’ across Wisconsin municipalities.
“I can’t imagine another state in this predicament,” Evers said. “There might be different rules across all the state of Wisconsin.”
Nilsestuen said that the legal grounds that formed the basis for the Supreme Court decision did not apply to public health officers, which Evers said could result in a “patchwork” of different public health orders around the state.
“In terms of legality, public health officers have very broad authority under state law,” Nilsestuen noted. “While legislative Republicans and their allies on the Supreme Court overturned the state’s efforts to do so on highly-technically rule-making grounds, those same standards of rule-making do not apply to public health officers.”
From a medical perspective, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ryan Westergaard said local public health officers developing regional responses is not a bad thing—but that without a statewide order, they face resource limitations.
“The resources required to contain this epidemic at the local level so very quickly outstripped our ability to do the things locally that needed to be done,” Westergaard noted.
In the meantime, public health officials are left determining the legality—and necessity—of local orders.
"We want to try to respond to this in a way that’s going to be easy for people to understand and do what’s right and do what’s practical in order to prevent the spread of COVID," Burrows said. "We want to pay attention to the health, the safety, and the economic prosperity of our community."
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Local officials scramble to provide public health guidance after state Supreme Court overrules Safer at Home order - WSAW
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