Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wants to extend stay-home order past July 1st
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LANSING — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Wednesday she wants to extend her stay-at-home order beyond May 1 before restarting an economy she put on lockdown one month ago to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
An extension without significant modifications could be opposed by legislative Republicans, who have lobbied the Democratic governor to relax business rules in certain sectors or regions of the state with fewer confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Whitmer is developing plans to reopen the economy and said she hopes to begin discussing those in more detail by Friday. But in a media address from Lansing, the first-term governor appeared to try and lower expectations of an immediate transition.
“I want to be clear, we will likely need another short-term extension of the stay home, stay safe order,” Whitmer said.
“When we do start to re-engage, it will have to be very thoughtful and precise, mitigating risk to all and mitigating the risk of a second wave. But we will start to re-engage.”
Whitmer said the state is seeing encouraging signs after recording 34,000 positive cases of coronavirus and more than 2,800 deaths. She warned that reopening the state too soon could prompt a second wave of infections.
It’s unclear what would happen if Whitmer sought to extend her stay-home order but was opposed by lawmakers. Republicans contend she cannot continue to act unilaterally if they do not extend her emergency authority beyond the end of April. Legislators last extended her emergency declaration — which is separate from her stay-home order — on April 7.
Whitmer argues she derives her emergency authority from two separate laws: The Emergency Management Act of 1976, which requires a legislative extension every 28 days, and The Emergency Powers of Governor Act of 1945, which does require any legislative action for continuance.
“My powers come from a couple different parts of statute, and so I believe that regardless of what the Legislature does, I still retain those powers,” the governor said Monday in a separate briefing. “But I would like for them to be partners in this.”
There are significant differences between the two emergency power laws, Whitmer said Monday. In particular, the 1976 statute, which requires legislative sign off, shields health care professionals from legal liability for services provided at the request of the state.
That’s an important protection for “frontline” workers battling the pandemic at crowded Metro Detroit hospitals, the governor told reporters, and one that can't continue without legislative sign off.
“We’re trying to draw more people into the frontline, so we’ve made it easier for people to join up and we’ve given them protections for doing that — for doing their job,” she said. “So staying in a state of emergency simply so that our health care frontline workers have the protections that they need is absolutely essential.”
Michigan House Republicans released their own recommendations for Whitmer on Monday morning, proposing what they called a “risk-based, regional approach” to relax travel rules across the state but maintain stricter standards in counties with higher case numbers like Wayne, Oakland and Macomb.
Even in those “highest risk” counties, House Republicans want Whitmer to remove restrictions on large retailers that she ordered to close their paint, flooring and outdoors sections. And Republicans want the governor to adopt new federal guidance that could allow for more construction crews and landscapers to return to work.
Under current rules, “even residents who work alone in areas of the state with very low occurrences of COVID-19 are precluded from earning a paycheck or participating in perfectly safe outdoor activities, causing everything from confusion and frustration to unnecessary job loss and hardship,” House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, said Monday.
The House Republican plan envisions a three-phase process for “returning to a new normal,” but legislative leaders did not set a clear timeline for how long that might take.
Under a separate Senate GOP plan, sports arenas and concert venues that attract large crowds could not open to the public until there is no active spread of the coronavirus for 30 days or until a vaccine has been available for 30 days, which likely won’t happen soon.
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