Gov. Jay Inslee announces an extension of this stay at home order during a press conference earlier this month.
A meeting between representatives from Lewis County, the City of Chehalis and I-5 Cars spawned two letters that ultimately helped allow car dealerships in the state of Washington to continue selling vehicles — with conditions — as essential businesses during Gov. Jay Inslee’s Stay Home, Stay Healthy proclamation.
Chehalis Mayor Pro-Tem Chad Taylor addressed the Board of County Commissioners on April 1, with an update on the response to the letters by the governor’s office.
He and Chehalis City Manager Jill Anderson joined County Manager Erik Martin, Commissioner Gary Stamper, and I-5 Cars Owner Heidi Pehl in the meeting. The BOCC and City of Chehalis both sent letters to Gov. Jay Inslee’s office, while Pehl emailed the governor with multiple questions regarding the proclamation.
“I’m sure that the governor had received many, many letters,” Stamper said. “I think it was very pointed, when we had the discussion, that we have a story to share with the governor exactly the hardships that this has created.”
That story, which was detailed in the letter written to Gov. Inslee from the BOCC, told of a healthcare provider at Arbor Health Hospital in Morton who sought an RV from an I-5 Cars dealership for self-quarantine. Her husband had just undergone open heart surgery, so she didn’t want to put him at risk after working with at-risk patients.
According to Taylor, she wasn’t able to complete the transaction under Gov. Inslee’s Stay Home, Stay Healthy proclamation.
“We specifically put that in the letter,” Stamper said. “These people who want to self isolate themselves so their family or friends, especially, do not get this virus.”
Stamper credited Rep. Richard DeBolt, R-Chehalis, for his role in getting the letters to the governor’s office. Once they reached Chief of Staff David Postman’s desk, Taylor said he was then told Postman initiated a conversation with Gov. Inslee.
“He (Postman) read it and because of how you guys (the BOCC) did your job, they immediately went and talked to the governor, who definitely agreed with you all,” Taylor said during the April 1 meeting. “In making an adjustment to the proclamation that he signed that talks about essential services.”
In Inslee’s March 23 proclamation, the occupations listed under the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workers didn’t touch on the actual sale of vehicles, instead listing repair and maintenance facilities as the only essential workplaces that could be utilized by residents.
The update of the proclamation, issued by Inslee on March 31, featured a new sales entry under the automotive section, which allows transactions that were pending before the governor’s initial proclamation to be closed. Additionally, dealerships can replace vehicles that have either been totaled or damaged beyond practical repair, extend an expiring lease or sell vehicles to essential workers if they have no other means of transportation.
Commissioner Bobby Jackson called the update “narrow in its scope” during the meeting, while Commissioner Edna Fund said the hope was that the update would be “more broad” on Monday.
“It is narrow, but it (the update) provided a definition to the automobile dealers of who they could and couldn’t sell to,” Taylor said during the meeting. “Originally, there was no definition of what and if you could actually sell a vehicle.”
The update also states that in-person visits to the dealership are by appointment and only one employee is able to be in the building and must leave upon completion of the sale. It’s also the buyer’s responsibility to prove the transaction is essential.
According to Taylor, the county’s demonstration of a contact-free sales process helped sell Inslee’s office on allowing state dealerships to operate on a limited basis.
“The fear was, there’s a lot of people that are involved in an automobile transaction and (the fear of the) risk of spreading the virus, if somebody had it, or, if somebody were to have it in a vehicle and then somebody else were to get into that vehicle,” Taylor said. “The demonstration of a touchless transaction (and the story of the Morton Arbor Health healthcare provider), that is what, I guess, gave (Inslee) the need or the want to clarify what an automobile dealership could and couldn’t do.”
While Stamper acknowledges he was hoping for a bit more with the governor’s update, he is pleased with the start.
“You have to start at some point,” Stamper said. “This (COVID-19) is, again, it’s such a fluid situation and I’m sure the governor is receiving the best information from his advisors, but the reality of it is he’s not out in some of the more rural counties where we rely on some of those other services.”
