Oklahoma City – A bill that would prohibit the governor from closing any business during a pandemic without documented scientific evidence that the nature of the company really contributes to the spread of the disease adopted by the Chamber Trade and the Economic Development Monitoring Committee on Tuesday.
Representative Kevin West, R-Moore, is the author of the house of Senate bill 672.
“I believe that this bill breaks the needle between everyone’s rights,” said West. “The right to be in security, the right to have your business open, the right to earn money.
West said that according to the language of this bill, the governor would always have the capacity to close companies during a pandemic to protect public health in the event of scientific evidence that a particular company contributes to the spread of the disease. The governor should give an opinion and the possibility of an audience for any determined company as non -essential or determined as prejudicial to public health. This would give the company an action plan to plead its case and possibly remain open.
It’s not too high a bar for the governor, West said. With the tracing of contacts and other tools available to health workers now, he said that it was possible to determine with precision and definitively if a company endangers the public.
He underlined the example of the city of Moore during the cocovid pandemic.
The city has enabled people to decide on their own to close their business or attend a business according to their own concerns and health needs. Consequently, visitors to the surrounding communities – where companies were forced to close or limit their hours – came to Moore to shop. Even with the increase in the number of people, Moore has still shown no sign of being a surprise, said West. In addition, the city exceeded its income expectations during this period.
West said there was no coherent reasoning for certain decisions to close companies during the covid. He gave the example of the bars that were forced to close after 10 p.m., as if the threat of the propagation of the disease was lower before 22 hours than later in the night. He also recognized that small businesses were sometimes forced to close while large -surface stores were allowed to stay open, once again without proof that a business was safer than another.
The bill has adopted 14-3 and is now eligible to be considered on the house floor.