Resolution against health orders gets rejected by Carbon County

GILLETTE — Campbell County Commissioners will not adopt a resolution against the state’s coronavirus public health orders.

At a directors meeting Monday, Commissioners Del Shelstad and Colleen Faber said they had received questions from residents about whether Campbell County would pass a resolution against government overreach similar to what has been done in other communities.

The city of Sheridan adopted a resolution July 20 “declaring all legal businesses and personnel in the city as essential.” The resolution was necessary “for the purpose of discouraging state authorities from enacting forced closures.”

Two weeks later, the three-member Goshen County Commission adopted a resolution to “encourage the public to make appropriate virus-related health care decisions for themselves and their families” and to “refrain from any county-level virus-related mandates concerning individual health care decisions.”

After talking with Deputy County Attorney Jenny Staeben and Administrative Director Carol Seeger, the commissioners decided not to go the same route.

Resolutions are no more than a statement on how the commission feels on a particular issue and are not legally binding, Seeger said.

Staeben said passing a resolution like Goshen County’s could have serious consequences. Her main concern was how a similar resolution would affect Campbell County’s ability to get federal funding, especially through the coronavirus relief act.

“If the federal government finds out we passed a resolution that basically says we’re not going to listen to state mandates or health restrictions to stop the contagion, when they give us those funds, are they going to ask for them back?” she asked.

County government is an extension of state government, Staeben said.

“If we pass this kind of resolution, we’re going directly against the state mandates and the powers granted to the state,” she said.

If Campbell County passed its own resolution, it “would probably fail” because the Attorney General’s Office “definitely would have legal grounds” to override the resolution if it chose to, Staeben said.

Constitutionally, Goshen County’s resolution doesn’t have much to stand on, Staeben added.

The resolution quotes the Wyoming Constitution, Article 1, Section 38, which starts with, “each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions.”

Staeben said one must look at the entire section instead of taking out one sentence and saying “that’s what we want.” The section refers to a person’s right to health care access and insurance.

“It’s really more of a clause about insurance than our own rights,” she said. “It permits any person to pay any health care provider and receive direct payment for services.”

The only other section of the Wyoming Constitution that talks about health is Article 7, Section 20, which says the Legislature has a duty to “protect and promote health and morality of people.”