County health officials seeking more authority
As the cases of COVID-19 rise, the Trempealeau County Health Department is seeking more authority to enforce health orders, including the department’s recent requirement that county residents wear masks.
Under the terms of an ordinance that is expected to be considered by the county board in December, county health officials would be able to issue citations with financial penalties, limit the size of gatherings and forbid “interference” when inspecting public places. Public places are defined as any place the public is allowed.
If approved by the board, the revised ordinance could go into effect in January.
“The health department is drowning,” said county health director Barb Barczak at the Nov. 10 board of health meeting. “We need to do something.”
At the board of health meeting, Barczak read endorsements of the mask order from public and private schools in Arcadia, Galesville-Ettrick-Trempealeau, Independence, Blair-Taylor, Whitehall and Eleva-Strum; the county Together Against COVID-19 coalition that includes numerous county businesses; Gunderson Tri-County Hospital; and several individuals.
Corporation counsel Rick Niemeier told the board the county’s current ordinance allows the health director to issue mandates, but he or she cannot order penalties. As county regulations are now written, those who violate the mask order may be issued a “directive” to comply and eventually taken to court where they could be cited for contempt.
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Sheriff Brett Semingson, who initially said his department would not enforce the mask mandate, said he has decided to no longer comment on the issue because it has become so divisive.
The revised ordinance gives health officials and law enforcement the authority to directly issue citations. Health workers would be able to inspect buildings to assure they are sanitary and make “reasonable and necessary” rules to control communicable diseases, according to the rewritten ordinance. A copy of the new ordinance can be read on the county web site at https://co.trempealeau.wi.us, under board of health, agendas and minutes, public hearing notices.
In addition to endorsing the ordinance change, the county board of health also backed Barczak’s order that all county residents over the age of five wear masks. The order took effect last Saturday, the day Gov. Tony Evers’s mask mandate ended. It will be in effect for 60 days.
There has been a legal challenge to Evers’s mask mandate. How the state supreme court rules on the governor’s order may or may not affect the authority of local officials to require face coverings, Niemeier said.
The mask order makes exceptions, including allowing mask removal when entering a bank, to sleep or when communicating with someone who might be hard of hearing. The order forbids anyone with a communicable disease from knowingly passing it to another. While it requires masks for those older than five, it “encourages” masks for two-to-five-year-olds.
Under the proposed ordinance, a first violation of a health order could net a $25 fine, a second a $50 fine and a third or more offense, a $100 fine. Each day an order is disobeyed counts as a separate offense.
The mask order covers residents inside buildings, standing in line to enter a building, in cars with non-family members and outdoors if it’s not possible to stand six feet apart.
