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WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — A document with guidelines for potential public health ordinances is close to being finished.
The Wisconsin Counties Association put together a workgroup in June to look at what local municipalities could do regarding a public health ordinance. The workgroup was formed shortly after the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Governor Tony Evers’ “Safer at Home” order. The workgroup has been working for three months on a document to help guide counties when creating public health ordinances in the face of COVID-19.
Marathon County Health Department Health Officer Joan Theurer is a member of the workgroup and gave an update on the document to Marathon County’s Health and Human Services Committee. She said the document with best practices will be ready for release later this month.
Theurer outlined what is included in the document, calling it a white pages approach. “That’s going to do an overview history of public health authority. And then it’s going to break it out in terms of types of orders under isolation and quarantine of individuals for outbreaks. And then more general they are those measures to control large scale outbreaks.”
The best practices document also includes a section on how counties can enforce a potential order. While state statutes are clear on the authority of who releases ordinances they aren’t as clear when it comes to enforcement. The document will help fill in those gaps when it applies to orders of isolation, quarantines, and outbreaks.
When discussing the contents of the document, Theurer says there are three main guidelines that potential ordinances would need to keep in mind. “Orders need to be specific always, time-limited, and I think the area where we are still trying to get alignment around is the oversight role. I think there is a sense from the suit [lawsuit against DHS secretary-designee Andrea Palm] and the Attorney General’s opinion there needs to be some form of oversight in issuing an order.”
Theurer says there are a few different ways oversight can be used with an order. Those include having a health officer brief the county Health and Human Services Committee on an order or having the county board approve a potential order. Other options for oversight are still being discussed by the workgroup but are expected to wrap up later this month.
The full best practices document is expected to be released by the Wisconsin Counties’ Association the week of August 17th. From there, individual counties and municipalities can use the guidelines to craft any potential orders in regard to communicable diseases like COVID-19.
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