BOISE, Idaho —
During a press conference on Monday, Gov. Brad Little called on local health districts to take more action in their communities. The governor stopped short of announcing a statewide mask mandate but said it’s imperative that everyone do it.
“Believe me I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and having a discussion about it, we all know that if somebody locally asks us or tells us to do something the compliance rate is a lot higher than if it is from somebody at a higher level of government,” Little said.
Local government has the authority to implement a mask mandate as seen in July with Boise, and a handful of other cities in Ada County issued mask mandates.
The process from a local level is more convoluted than a lot of people think and often of times mask mandates are voted on several times before they actually get approved.
South Central Public Health District oversees seven counties. COVID cases are climbing in Twin Falls, Minidoka, and Cassia counties, while hospital capacity is shrinking. Public information officer Briana Bodily said last week the district brought a mask mandate request to their board of health, but the board didn’t approve it. And she said there’s not much else the district can do.
“As a health district, we support anybody who is willing, however, we are not a policy-based government institution so we cannot push for it in any aspect, we can only continue to encourage and ask for it,” Bodily said.
Health districts are only able to bring a request for a mask mandate to their board of health, the board then votes yes or no.
Ada County has been under a mask mandate since July 14. The process to get a request for a mask mandate approved isn’t a quick or easy one. Brandon Atkins with Central District Health says each board member works under a county commissioner, so board votes can be politically driven.
“Public health employees may feel one way but a board of health often executes thing a different way. Again, remembering some of the board of health contains largely elected officials, commissioners for counties saying what their constituents want them to say or do and maybe not look at what the science says they should be doing,” Atkins said.
Atkins said he does agree with Gov. Little that people would rather hear a mask mandate come from local health officials rather than Idaho’s governor.
“We have a better idea of what's happening in our local jurisdictions, we have a better idea of what the populations look like, so the hope is that we would have a better buy-in because we work and live in these communities. So people that we know, this messaging that we are sharing has more impact,” he said.
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