Gov. Brian Kemp’s latest COVID-19 guidelines prohibit governments from enforcing some restrictive local executive orders, Augusta City Administrator Odie Donald told commissioners at their meeting Tuesday.
The guidelines that went into effect April 8 eliminate shelter-in-place mandates and bans on crowds of any size but still require the use of masks, Donald said.
One of the governor’s orders eliminates the ability of law enforcement to close an organization for failure to comply with an executive order, Donald said.
“That’s a challenge in itself,” he added. “That’s the way I interpreted it. It restricts your ability to enforce folks and organizations that do not comply.”
Commissioner Sean Frantom said he wanted an update on where Augusta was on reopening public spaces for events because he saw an establishment during the weekend that had 500-to-700 people in it, having a good time, but not one mask.
“And yet, as a government we’re saying we can’t have a park and rec event,” Frantom said. “Let’s just be across-the-board fair, based on whatever we can do is my thing on how we’re going to move forward.”
“If it eliminates bans of any size, the way I would interpret it is we cannot ban events of any size,” Donald said. “But, again, I am not a lawyer, and I want to make that clear for the record.”
Sylvia Cooper is a correspondent for The Augusta Press. Reach her at sylvia@theaugustapress.com
