Kansas suburb leaders want new COVID mask mandates, but want Johnson County to do it
Despite raging COVID-19 case numbers, local leaders even in the city my conservative friends like to call the “People’s Republic of Prairie Village” are loath to bring back a public mask mandate.
But they’re more than willing to ask the Johnson County Commission to do it and take the heat for it.
“Is that called passing the buck?” asks county Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara.
Sounding like they think the county has dropped the ball on COVID-19 measures, Prairie Village city council members Monday quickly abandoned any notion of reinstating their own city mask mandate — but ended up voting 11-1 to instead ask the county to do something.
Exactly what is unclear. The original motion by council member Bonnie Limbird called on county commissioners “to institute some measure of countywide mask mandate.” But subsequent discussion on the motion was more vague, and a letter drafted to the county Tuesday asks only for “more proactive efforts from the Board of County Commissioners to further mitigate the spread of COVID in our community.”
Council member Dave Robinson was less opaque, telling his colleagues of his disappointment in the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment: “I just find that incredibly difficult to believe, that a department we charged with this exact type of area, in a time that I think we’re all calling as serious, is quiet and not being out in front and being more advisory, consulting, and showing some more leadership. I mean, I think that’s what I would expect out of an organization like that.”
In response, the department said in a statement that it “has been very consistent in informing the public and decision makers on what the potential consequences of not taking appropriate actions to mitigate the uncontrolled spread of the virus in the community could look like.” But it said the Kansas Legislature has handed authority to issue public health orders over to the county commission, and that mitigation ultimately “takes all of us.”
As O’Hara and county commission Chairman Ed Eilert both noted, nothing is stopping cities from enacting their own mask mandates. Prairie Village Mayor Eric Mikkelson told the council that it’s unlikely many municipalities, other than “a small handful of the northeast Johnson County cities at most” would agree to new mandates. “I would say that the majority of cities in Johnson County are done with this. Mask mandates are not on the table, and probably won’t be, for different reasons,” he said.
So I guess I’m wondering why they would expect the county to do something they’re not willing to do themselves. “It’s called dodgeball,” says O’Hara.
“We’ve been there before, I’ll say it that way,” Eilert said of others laying the issue at the county’s feet. Indeed, local school districts were more than happy to cheer on the county’s no-opt-out mask mandate for elementary-age students. That way, school boards didn’t have to be the heavy.
“I don’t think that the county has any stomach to do that,” O’Hara says of a new public mandate. “I just can’t imagine that we’re going to try it again.”
Elementary school rules on the chopping block next?
“It would take a new public health order,” Eilert adds. “And that’s not on the agenda.” In fact, commissioners Thursday were expected to consider whether to lift the existing school mask mandate for elementary grades.
Average cases hit a new record in the Kansas City metro on Tuesday, as the region surpassed 250,000 total cases since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. At Children’s Mercy, a record 27 children were hospitalized Tuesday and a whopping 293 staff members were quarantined. Meanwhile, the University of Kansas Health System this week was treating 120 COVID patients, three times the number from Dec. 1, and some 500 staff were sick or waiting to hear if they were.
The bottom line: Masks are undoubtedly still called for. And mandates are the only real way of achieving widespread use. But if mandates aren’t politically possible in Prairie Village — a compact and close-knit community that has been on the vanguard of mitigation efforts all along — then they’re most likely not possible in Johnson County.
The political will just isn’t there to finish this virus off.
