A patient is examined at a drive up COVID-19 testing site at Valley View Health Center in Centralia in last April.
With the hope of heightened representation in the state’s COVID-19 response, Lewis County will be one of the many rural counties from around Washington signing a letter lobbying Gov. Jay Inslee for less restrictions in certain areas.
In a Board of County Commissioners meeting on Thursday, Lewis County Commissioner Gary Stamper said the letter was the product of a meeting he had with a commissioner from Kittitas County on April 30.
He said the intention was to convey a “strong message” to Gov. Inslee regarding the communication between the state and some counties.
“We realized he (Gov. Inslee) was having a press conference everyday, but it was all his health officers,” Stamper said during the meeting. “We felt like, and I think that we still feel like this a little bit, along with the mayors of towns in these counties, that this communication stream is very limited.”
According to Commissioner Edna Fund, the group of counties involved in drafting the letter was pulled together by Commissioner Laura Osiadacz of Kittitas County. She continued by saying 12 counties, including Grays Harbor, Mason and Cowlitz, were involved and “at least 36 sets of eyes” were looking at the letter.
The county commissions from the 12 counties had to agree on the language in the letter, with Friday serving as the deadline for commissions to decide on whether or not the letter would be supported.
“We (Lewis County) received consensus (Thursday),” Fund said. “So we’re fine with it.”
In a draft of the letter, the counties say the issue doesn’t stem from the governor’s state of emergency declaration, but rather some of the restrictions set in place by the “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order.
“By all means leave the emergency order in place so that people remain aware and vigilant,” a draft of the letter states, “But remove the arbitrary restrictions of essential and non-essential businesses and services to allow our counties to actually begin to open up and operate again. Show us, and the people who have empowered us to serve them, that you not only hear these issues but are actively working to rectify this situation.”
All three county commissioners — Stamper, Fund and Bobby Jackson — expressed concern with an early draft of the letter, particularly with the language it contained.
Fund said the writing was “too strident” for her liking.
“It (the language) didn’t add anything to it (the letter),” Fund said. “It didn’t add anything to the communication we wanted to put forward.”
With the concerns about the tone of the letter being concerned, though, Stamper feels that a middle-ground was reached in the letter’s latest inception.
“I think that’s how this whole thing evolved,” Stamper said. “Some (counties) chose to sign it (the original letter) and some chose not to sign it. I did talk to some of my counterparts in other counties and they felt like the language was a little strong. I think that we’ve come up with a happy medium, so to speak.”
The differences between Lewis County and some of the other, more populated counties in the state, in Fund’s mind, should be taken into consideration.
“We don’t have the population density,” Fund said. “We may be a very big county geographically, but we certainly don’t have the people. I hear the Governor saying data and this is another piece of data he should be considering — how our rural counties operate quite differently.”
At the end of the day, though, Fund says the intent is to make the voice of the county heard safely.
“(We’re) just trying to get our rural voice out there,” Fund said. “We won’t do anything that is problematic for people with poor immune systems, this is not what this is about. We can operate as rural counties can, in a safe manner that all people feel comfortable living here and our businesses are operating in a healthy manner.”
