Lamont looks to extend school mask mandate
In a letter to the state legislature, Gov. Ned Lamont is asking lawmakers to extend Connecticut’s public health emergency and about a dozen COVID orders, including school mask mandates, when his executive authority expires next month.
The 11 executive orders include allowing the commissioners of education and early childhood to issue rules like mandatory masks and social distancing in schools. He also asked the legislature to continue the state's civil preparedness emergency and “establish a process to respond quickly in the future to the ongoing public health threat from COVID-19.”
The letter comes less than a month before Lamont’s authority to declare a continued state of emergency and issue executive orders expires on Feb. 15.
“We are not out of the woods,” Lamont wrote in the letter Friday to the General Assembly.
The latest COVID surge, driven by the omicron variant, has resulted in record-high case rates in Connecticut and hospitalizations increasing to levels not seen since spring 2020.
While the COVID case rate and hospitalizations have dropped in the past week, Lamont noted in the letter that there has been a sharp rise in infections among nursing homes and school employees.
“We are still in a state of emergency,” Lamont wrote in the letter. “The nature of this virus is such that
conditions change rapidly, with the resulting need to have the tools in place to respond quickly to an ongoing public health threat.”
Lamont hinted to legislators last week that he was not going to formally request an extension of his emergency authority, but left open the possibility of a narrow continuance. He also announced he was
going to compile this list of executive orders for the legislature to consider.
“I’d like the legislature’s imprimatur on that,” he said last week in an online news conference. “The legislature may say, ‘I don’t think we ought to be wearing masks in schools’ or ‘I don’t think a store should be able to ask people their vaccination status.’”
Lamont issued nearly
300 executive orders during the first year of the pandemic. He is now asking the legislature to continue 11 of his orders, including some that require long-term care facility and state hospital workers to receive booster vaccines, require unvaccinated people to wear masks indoors and allow municipalities to issue their own mask orders. Some of these executive
orders also require nursing home visitors to either have a booster vaccine or a negative COVID test.
Some of the orders also provide non-congregate housing to people experiencing homelessness or survivors of domestic violence. Federal funding, which reimburses this housing as well as extra money for families for food, is “contingent on the continuation of the emergency declarations,” Lamont wrote in the letter.
These executive orders also modify state contracting statutes to get essential goods and services, as well as address teacher and health care shortages.
House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, RNorth Branford, said he was confused by Lamont’s letter in regards to his request to extend the state’s civil and public health emergencies.
“He seems to suggest he wants us to make a determination, but the way the statute works, the governor needs to make a declaration,” Candelora said. “So whether he wants a new declaration or an extension, that request needs to come from his office.”
Republican lawmakers are still reviewing the executive orders Lamont suggested. Candelora believes the most contention will come from the orders requiring masks in schools and requiring either a negative COVID test or a vaccination from nursing home visitors.
“I think we’ll see the most discussion revolve around those two orders,” he added.
This year’s legislative session starts Feb. 9, giving lawmakers only six days to formally discuss the orders.
“The legislature is 187 people, it operates differently,” Candelora said. “It needs to be able to have some time in order to effectuate anything.”