Local leaders had various interpretations of warning from governor's office

GRANT COUNTY - In a message to Grant County commissioners, the governor’s office reiterated that it currently has no plans to revoke the county’s Phase 2 status, according to a Thursday press release from the county commission.

The statements from the governor’s office come in response to a Herald story quoting Moses Lake Mayor David Curnel in a Tuesday meeting of the city council. During that meeting, Curnel introduced a proclamation in support of a county-wide face mask campaign and stated that the governor in August had given the county one month to level off its cases or risk getting pushed to an earlier stage of the state’s four-step reopening plan.

“Basically he was looking to push us back because of the surge of COVID cases we’ve had,” Curnel said at Tuesday’s meeting of the city council. “The governor’s going to give us one month for improvement of our coronavirus numbers.”

The governor’s office then said that while the state could push a county back into an earlier phase if the coronavirus wasn’t under control, there was no plan in place to do so with Grant County, nor was there a timeline set for the county to get its numbers under control. Instead, officials said, the state was looking for ways to assist counties with high rates of coronavirus infection, though they had had an “honest and frank discussion” with Curnel and other local leaders about where the county was lagging earlier in August.

Local elected and business leaders who spoke with the Herald had various interpretations of the sentiments being expressed by the governor’s office earlier this month. In interviews, some who listened in to the conversation stated that a plan to push Grant County to Phase 1 or 1.5 was already being considered, while others stated that the state simply wanted to lend aid to a county hit hard by the pandemic.

Still, all agreed: the county still needs to reverse its coronavirus trend or risk having businesses closed again.

Commissioner Cindy Carter, who said she didn’t attend the same meeting as Curnel, said that the governor’s office at the time had been “threatening” to close the county if it couldn’t lower its high rate of coronavirus transmission.

The governor's office on Wednesday rejected any characterization of its statements as a threat.

Commissioner Tom Taylor, who did attend the meeting, said that a representative of the governor’s office had said in no uncertain terms that the governor was actively considering pushing Grant County back into an earlier phase of reopening.

“Quote, ‘Grant County is sitting on the governor’s desk right now for consideration of being rolled back,” Taylor said.

But there was no hard-and-fast timeline set for the county to turn itself around, Taylor said. He also disagreed with characterizing the warning as a threat, but rather considered it a call to action, he said.

“I didn’t take that as a threat, I took that as, we need to get our stuff together here,” Taylor said.

Debbie Doran-Martinez, director of the Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce, who was also on the call, agreed with Taylor.

“They were thinking about rolling us back. We kind of made the case that we can’t go back, we have to keep moving forward, and we showed the spread of it is not happening in businesses, it's happening at house parties,” Doran-Martinez said. “We encouraged them to keep us moving forward.”

Local and regional organizations had been putting together ad campaigns to encourage residents to wear masks, she said, many of which had only recently been launched. Those campaigns needed time to start changing public attitudes, Doran-Martinez said she told the governor’s office.

Doran-Martinez added that the only reference she heard about a deadline in a month’s time was that the state may revisit with the county to see if those campaigns had been effective. In a Wednesday conversation between the Herald, the governor’s office and Curnel, external relations director Nick Streuli with the governor's office similarly said that if any timeline had been suggested, it was likely just to say the state would be checking back in.

How any of the many local leaders who attended the call understood the state’s messaging was likely a matter of personal perception, said Gary Chandler, former state representative and vice president of government affairs for the Association of Washington Business, who said he helped arrange the meeting.

“You can take it as a threat, or you can take it as, ‘I’m telling you guys, your numbers are climbing, how can we work together?’” Chandler said. “How do we work to convince people when you’re out that you need to wear a mask?”

The governor’s office was asking how it could help, Chandler said, while also stating that Grant County, among a few other counties, needed to do a better job of lowering the number of COVID-19 cases. Like Doran-Martinez and Taylor, Chandler said he didn’t hear a deadline for those changes raised during that conversation.

His organization and others, while lobbying the state not to hurt small businesses by shutting down counties again, also launched campaigns to encourage people to wear masks while in public, he said. To that end, Moses Lake and Grant County both issued proclamations this week promoting local “Mask Up” campaigns.

Chandler said that, for his part, he appreciated that the governor’s office had a direct conversation with local leaders, rather than make a decision without consulting them, and encouraged local residents to help slow the spread of the virus.

“I don’t want to see Grant County, because of high numbers, be rolled back from Phase 2 to 1.5 or 1 or whatever,” Chandler said. “If you want to keep small businesses open in Grant County, we ask you when you leave your home and you’re out in public that you wear a mask.”