Fifteen Georgia cities and one county (DeKalb) have issued mandates requiring everyone to wear face masks in public. It appears none are backing down even after Gov. Brian Kemp’s July 15 executive order banning municipalities from issuing ordinances requiring face-mask wear.
Indeed Decatur, in the words of City Attorney Bryan Downs, is “moving forward,” on its own ordinance, originally passed July 10, by proposing an amendment for commissioners to approve during their 7:30 virtual meeting Monday (July 20). To watch go to https://www.decaturga.com/citycommission/page/streaming-video.
The amendment addresses concerns expressed by several commissioners on July 10, prior to approving the original ordinance, that there wasn’t detailed clarity on wearing masks outdoors.
The amendment reads that Decatur is expanding its mask-wearing requirement “to outdoor public places when it is not feasible to maintain at least six feet of physical distance from another person who is not part of the same household. A public place is any place other than a person’s home, yard and personal vehicle. This modification allows the ordinance to be more consistent with the DeKalb County mask ordinance that was adopted on July 14, 2020 and other ordinances in neighboring jurisdictions.”
Downs has said all along that Decatur’s ordinance is consistent with Kemp’s various emergency orders. Kemp has said he “strongly encourages” mask wearing while adding that those municipalities passing ordinances are “more restrictive” by issuing mandates.
Downs believes the Governor’s language is “imprecise because it confuses the standard.
“First and foremost,” Downs told the AJC, “government is supposed to protect the health, safety and welfare of the cities. In this the Governor is failing. It has gotten worse since he [re-] opened the state. Now the Governor is actively trying to keep local governments from stopping the spread of COVID. He is trying to make them do it his way which, again, is failing.”
On April 3 Kemp was among the last of the nation’s governors to impose statewide social distancing, issuing his shelter-in-place emergency order on April 3. Then he became among the first to reopen businesses, with gyms, barbershops, tattoo parlors and bowling alleys opening April 24, and restaurants and movie theaters reopening April 27.
It hasn’t worked. In a document prepared for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Georgia was named a “red zone” state, meaning it’s one of 18 states that had more than 100 new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people last week and had more than 10 percent of diagnostic tests coming back as positive.
Thus far Georgia has set daily highs in confirmed coronavirus cases four days this month, on July 1, July 2, July 10 and Saturday (July 18) with 4,689 new coronavirus cases, according to the state Department of Public Health. The total number of cases in Georgia now stands at 139,872.
On Sunday night Downs sent the AJC an email, saying that after a weekend’s perusal, “I have become even more confident that, not only does the City of Decatur’s ordinance comply with the Governor’s orders, his attempt to suspend local ordinances is not authorized to begin with. His provision is not consistent with federal recommendations, which recommend state governments mandate the wearing of face coverings and allowing local governments to adopt more restrictive policies.”
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