Heated discussion on Hill County mask order but no vote

No official action was taken at a special meeting of the Hill County Board of Health Monday discussing the local mask order that was voted for last month.

Hill County Commissioner and Health Board Member Mark Peterson said Friday he called the meeting for members of the board to discuss the direction the county had taken regarding COVID-19, but did not say that they would specifically discuss the mandate or vote on anything.

No agenda for the meeting was released.

Health Board Member and Secretary Kristi Kline said this lack of clarity to the public meant the board couldn't legally vote on anything, especially with the lack of legal counsel present.

In Montana, public bodies are required to publish an agenda listing any items on which the body will vote 48 hours before the meeting.

The board voted 3-1 at a meeting last February to enact a mask mandate for Hill County after Gov. Greg Gianforte rescinded the mask mandate in place for the state.

In his order, Gianforte said local governments could enact their own restrictions.

Along with Hill County, counties including Missoula, Lewis and Clark, Gallatin, Butte-Silver Bow and Cascade and the city of Whitefish have enacted their own mask mandates after Gianforte rescinded the state order.

Hill County's order requires universal mask wearing except for children under the age of 5 as well as other specific exemptions and was scheduled to last for 90 days or until the county sees a per-capita spread of COVID-19 of 10 per 100,000 people or fewer for two consecutive weeks, after which the board will review all other factors and determine whether the order is still needed.

Neither of these conditions have been reached, though the rate of new cases in the county has decreased significantly in the last two months.

The order was drafted shortly after it was voted for in February, but was never signed by board chair Peterson.

It is unclear whether it has or has not been in effect as a result.

Peterson said after the meeting that he didn't sign the order due to his concerns regarding enforcement, which he said was the primary reason he called the meeting.

Larson said in an email this morning that, as an order of the board, it does not require her signature.

Debate on a need for a mandate

During Monday's meeting, Peterson said people in the county need to wear masks as the order states, but suggested that the order be changed to a recommendation.

The meeting in February where the order was voted for was primarily a debate as to whether the county should issue an order or recommendation, and Peterson was among the three members who voted for the order, along with Kline and Board Member Erica McKeon-Hanson.

Hill County Commissioner and Board Member Diane McLean voted against the order, and Commissioner and Board Member Jake Strissel abstained.

McKeon-Hanson said Monday that the order that was drafted provides direction to the county and specifically included language stipulating when it would be reconsidered as part of a correctly data-driven approach.

She said the order signals that the board is doing everything the can to protect the public health, which is the reason the organization exists, and there is little point in trying to rescind it now considering that based on the way things are going the stipulated time for the order to be reconsidered will come soon anyway.

"That sends a message that, as public health, we are protecting people and preventing the spread," she said.

She said this is especially important given the amount of Native Americans that live in the county, a group of people hit very hard by COVID-19 with a disproportionately high amount of infections and deaths.

Kline said the emergence of vaccine resistant variants of COVID-19 becoming more wide-spread is another reason to keep the order for masks.

Hill County Sanitarian Clay Vincent said Hill County could very easily spike back up despite the increasing availability of the vaccine.

Cases have been spiking in countries across Europe recently and Italy just imposed new lockdowns to curb the latest variant-fueled wave.

Despite the decline in new cases and deaths in Montana in the last few months, Department of Public Health and Human Services said in a report it released today that COVID-19 was the third-highest cause of death in the state last year, behind heart disease and cancer.

The report says Montana saw a 14 percent increase in the death rate in 2020 over the five-year average.

McKeon-Hanson said the end zone is in sight, and this order is just something to get them there.

"Let's not spike the ball on the five-yard-line," she said.

She said it's critical that the spike Vincent mentioned does not happen considering what she has heard talking to hospitals recently about whether they could withstand another surge.

"'We have the capacity, but we don't have the morale. Everyone is exhausted,'" McKeon-Hanson said she was told.

McLean said an email she and the board received from Larson indicates that the health officer is against the order and the board should follow her and Gov. Greg Gianforte's lead.

"We want a healthy community that is open and supporting our local economy," McLain read from Larson's email.

Gianforte has rescinded most of his predecessor's COVID-19-related restrictions since taking office in January, and has promoted personal responsibility instead.

McLean, reading from Larson's email, said the current circumstances Hill County finds itself in does not justify a mask order, and that any action the board takes must balance its duty with peoples' civil liberties.

McLean said people should have the right to decide whether they want to live with with the small chance that they will die from COVID-19 by not wearing a mask and protect those who believe their freedoms are being taken away.

While some evidence has been found that masks protect the wearer from contracting the disease, their primary utility is to prevent the wearer from spreading the disease and officials across the U.S. including in Montana have said throughout the pandemic that individual liberties do not extend to the right to get other people sick, and possibly die, by not wearing masks.

Kline further argued that while Gianforte's mandate does promote personal responsibility over orders, it explicitly states that local governments can issue mask mandates that people in those communities are obligated to follow.

She expressed exasperation over the fact that this seemingly minor mandate is has become such a serious issue when other local health orders last year have gone through with little issue or concern regarding their enforceability.

Enforcement

Enforcement was one of the key concerns at the meeting, and McLean said an email from Hill County Attorney Karen Alley calls a local order into question.

The email, read by McLean, said Alley's reading of the recently passed Senate Bill 65 is that people can choose to wear a mask or not and be considered in compliance with the governor's order.

Kline said the intention of the local order was to be primarily supported through education anyway, and many complaints made against private citizens for not wearing masks are obviously unenforceable, but the order still has utility.

Vincent agreed with concerns raised about enforcement and said it would be very difficult, if not impossible, but said the county is in desperate need of direction and there don't need to be consequences for every offense for something to be effective.

He said people can get away with blowing through a stop sign 99 times out of a hundred, but the thought that this might be the 1 in 100th time still causes people to be cautious.

Business concerns

The concerns of local businesses was also a topic of discussion at the meeting, with McKeon-Hanson saying Gianforte lifted restrictions on business hours of operation and capacity and Hill County is not considering putting any of those back in place locally, and added that masks are a small imposition for the sake of public health.

"It's just one small thing," she said.

She said, she's received calls from establishments that are struggling to make people wear masks because the order was never signed and they don't have a document to support them. She said they want to have an actual piece of paper they can show to people saying the mandate is in place.

Vincent and McLean raised the concern that people in the county are actively refusing to patronize businesses that try to get them to wear masks in favor of ones that don't.

Peterson said these are difficult questions and the health board is doing their best to serve the people of the county right.