The Jefferson County Health Department Board of Trustees recently approved a standing communicable diseases order so the board does not have to continue renewing the order every 30 days.
The board originally passed a temporary communicable diseases order on Dec. 21, which allowed the agency to maintain its authority to enforce health orders to limit the spread of communicable diseases, except for COVID-19.
That temporary order was renewed on Jan. 20, and then the trustees voted 4-1 Jan. 27 to pass the new standing order, with board member Suzy Davis cast the only dissenting vote.
Health Department Director Kelley Vollmar said the old order applied to the general population, so the agency was required to renew it every 30 days. The new order, however, applies to individual people and not to the general population, so it can be a standing order.
“If there was a situation where we might have to look at a nursing home or a school and make a much larger order that would apply to more people, we would come back to the board and actually have a separate document that they would have to review and vote on,” she said.
Vollmar said the change was made because it was costing the Health Department thousands of dollars to publish newspaper notices for three consecutive weeks each time the order was passed or renewed. She said it cost about $4,400 when the previous order was passed and another $4,400 when it was renewed.
Vollmar said the new standing order, like the previous one, does not include COVID-19, at Davis’ request.
Still, Davis voted against the new order, after arguing that “any future upper respiratory flu-like viruses” or “severe acute respiratory syndrome associated with coronavirus SARS-CoV disease” should also be excluded from the order.
Board attorney Christi Coleman, however, said a “catch-all disease” could not be added, and COVID-19 was already excluded from the order, as Davis requested.
Davis made a motion to have “severe acute respiratory syndrome associated with coronavirus SARS-CoV disease” excluded from the order as well, but no one seconded her motion so it failed.
Board of Trustees chairman Dennis Diehl said the original order was passed in response to the Robinson v. Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services case in which Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green ruled Nov. 22 that all health orders related to the spread of COVID-19 in the state should be lifted because they violate the state constitution’s separation of power principles.
In the ruling, Green said COVID-19 mitigation measures issued by health departments and school districts “place the creation of orders or laws, and enforcement of those laws, into the hands of an unelected official.”
However, school board members and health department board members, who are elected, have voted to put many of the policies in place.
After Green’s ruling, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt sent cease and desist letters to school districts and health departments ordering them to stop their mitigation measures.
The Health Department filed a motion on Dec. 17 to intervene in the Robinson v. Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services case lawsuit. Jackson and St. Louis counties also had filed a motion to intervene in the case. On Dec. 22, though, Cole County Judge Green denied all motions to intervene.
Board attorney Christi Coleman said because of Green’s ruling, the Health Department needs the order to maintain its authority related to communicable diseases.
