LR stops short of mandate

City’s vaccination efforts staying in line with state law

Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. has charted a proactive approach to the covid-19 crisis, which has included naming a covid-19 task force during the early days of the pandemic, issuing and later reinstating a local mask mandate and publicly getting the Johnson & Johnson shot with the media present.

But the city of Little Rock so far has declined to issue a vaccine mandate or an alternative testing requirement for its hundreds of municipal employees, including first-responders.

According to city spokesman Spencer Watson, no municipal departments currently have a vaccine mandate or testing requirements. However, Watson noted that the city has encouraged vaccinations and offered bonus paid time off as an incentive for employees to get the shots.

“Department directors regularly monitor the covid situation internally and externally, and our employees and supervisors have been able to adequately manage the situation thus far,” Watson wrote in an email responding to questions. “We currently are seeing very few absences due to covid-related illness.”

Asked if officials felt it would be advantageous for Little Rock to implement a vaccine mandate both to avoid virus-driven labor shortages as well as to protect residents who come into contact with city employees, Watson referred to the city’s vaccine incentive program rolled out earlier this year.

The program, bankrolled by direct aid to the city from the federal covid-19 aid package enacted in March, provides unvaccinated residents up to $100 to get the shots as long as they attend a city-sponsored clinic.

“The City wants to protect both employees and residents and, for that reason, chose to allocate federal funds to incentivize vaccination of residents,” Watson wrote. “We believe that’s contributed to an increase in vaccination rates across the city and contributed to a safer living/ working environment for residents and employees.”

In a separate reply, when asked whether the city has maintained data on the number of fully vaccinated employees versus the unvaccinated across municipal departments, Watson wrote, “In terms of the data,

the City’s policy has been to have voluntary reporting of vaccination. So that number, as a percentage, wouldn’t be an accurate reflection as the negative includes all non-reporting, whether vaccinated or not.”

Next year, the municipal government is set to employ 2,216 full-time individuals across all city funds — they include the Little Rock general fund as well as ancillary funds dedicated to waste disposal, fleet, vehicle storage and more — according to a draft 2022 budget proposal recently delivered to city board members.

More than half of the fulltime employees budgeted for next year will work in the police and fire departments as well as the 911 communications division, Little Rock Finance Director Sara Lenehan told board members during the budget presentation earlier this month.

In one sense, the city’s hands are tied because of the decision-making by state lawmakers.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson in April signed House Bill 1547, which prohibited the state, state agencies as well as local governments from requiring covid-19 vaccinations, including as a condition of employment. The measure, which took effect as Act 977, made an exception for state-owned or state-controlled medical facilities that want to mandate vaccines provided the facilities receive the approval of the Legislative Council.

Nevertheless, if Little Rock officials chose to challenge state lawmakers on the vaccine law, it would not be the first time.

In August, the mayor reinstated a version of the city’s mask mandate amid a surge of covid-19 cases driven by the delta variant of the virus. The new mandate applied only to city-owned or city-operated buildings and came after Scott let a similar, though not identical, version of the measure end in May, citing the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The mayor reissued the mandate in spite of a recently enacted state law, Act 1002 of 2021, that largely banned state and local authorities from issuing mask mandates, with only a couple exceptions for entities like state-owned health care facilities and prisons.

Asked at the time if he expected push-back from state lawmakers, Scott said, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

But before the dispute could develop further, a court intervened. The day after Scott announced the reinstated mandate, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox temporarily halted enforcement of Act 1002.

Fox this week heard testimony in the trial over the legal challenges to the legislation banning mask mandates.

When reached via email Tuesday, Little Rock City Attorney Tom Carpenter indicated that his office has not looked into the possibility of the city requiring weekly covid-19 testing as an alternative to vaccinations.

“The short answer is that no one has asked me to look at that scenario, and I have not,” he wrote.

However, Carpenter checked on the ability of government employers to enact certain requirements like mask-wearing or vaccinations when the city took its latest action on masks, he wrote. Carpenter did not respond when asked what his conclusion was regarding a vaccine requirement at that time.

The Biden administration has required that much of the federal workforce, as well as employees of federal contractors, get vaccinated. Reuters earlier this week reported that more than 90% of the 3.5 million federal employees who fall under the mandate had received at least one dose ahead of a deadline on Monday.

Another rule the Biden administration has issued through the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, requires companies with 100 or more employees to mandate vaccinations or have employees submit to weekly testing by January, but the rule is currently on a court-ordered hold as numerous lawsuits have sought to invalidate it.

The OSHA mandate does not apply to local governments in Arkansas.

Arkansas is one of a number of states without an OSHA-approved workplace safety plan in place that applies to state and local government workers. In states with an OSHA-approved plan, state and local governments with 100 or more employees are covered by the agency’s new vaccination-and-testing rule, known as an emergency temporary standard, according to the website for the National League of Cities.