SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - Proposals in the Missouri State Legislature are trying to limit the authority of local health departments, months after health leaders across Missouri issued stay-at-home orders and restricted gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic.
Director of the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, Clay Goddard, recently testified in Jefferson City in opposition of several bills, including Senate Bill 56, which look to remove authority from county health boards to make ordinances related to infectious or communicable diseases.
“The governor has consistently said that these decisions are local decisions and now we’re hearing that they shouldn’t be local decisions,” Goddard says. “It’s a little bit of a confusing political environment. Are these local decisions or are they not?”
Goddard says this would impact the future of health departments, even after things go back to normal.
“We still need to have quarantine powers, for example, so if we have a tuberculosis case or a measles case we can protect everybody else,” Goddard says. “We still need the ability to shut down a facility that is putting the public’s health at risk.”
Goddard says there are different formats throughout the state of Missouri when it comes to health boards or departments. He says a board of health can make decisions on its own, but with the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, that’s not the case.
To pass an ordinance here, the Springfield-Greene County Health Department has to get it approved by the cities of Springfield and Republic, as well as Greene County. Goddard says health departments need to be able to keep some of their authority to be able to do their job or there could be deadly consequences.
“Literally people will die,” Goddard says. “I’m not being dramatic about that. These are things where delays in time can mean public safety is put at risk.”
One restaurant owner in St. Louis County, Chris Saracino, testified in support of these bills. Saracino says the public health orders in St. Louis County severely impacted his business.
“It’s still unbelievable today that one man in our county government caused this much destruction and saw no oversite,” Saracino says. “We wrote our councilmen, we wrote our councilwomen and saw no oversight from them.”
However, Goddard says masking mandates allowed the economy to remain more open than otherwise during this pandemic.
“The thought process is that it mitigates disease spread so you’re able to keep some of these bars and restaurants open that otherwise would not be able to be opened,” Goddard says.
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January 23, 2021 at 05:52AM
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Missouri state legislature proposes bills to limit authority of local health departments - KYTV
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