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  • county health authority

    From RichD@21:1/5 to All on Thu Feb 17 11:53:10 2022
    In every state, to my knowledge, the governor has the
    ultimate authority to declare a public health emergency,
    and issue regulations. We've seen this play out for two
    years, with much acrimony.

    However, at the county level, with a local Board of
    Health, there is some autonomy. I wonder, what is
    the division of powers here?

    For instance, imagine the gov. (or state health czar?)
    announces "The war is over", rescinding all previous edicts.
    But an individual county health officer resists, declares
    the emergency situation continues, and refuses to rescind.

    What then? Is that bureaucrat answerable to no one, or can
    he be overruled by the board of supervisors? Can citizens
    ignore his orders, claiming he's overstepped his authority?

    --
    Rich

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  • From John Levine@21:1/5 to r_delaney2001@yahoo.com on Thu Feb 17 17:21:20 2022
    It appears that RichD <r_delaney2001@yahoo.com> said:
    In every state, to my knowledge, the governor has the
    ultimate authority to declare a public health emergency,
    and issue regulations. We've seen this play out for two
    years, with much acrimony.

    However, at the county level, with a local Board of
    Health, there is some autonomy. I wonder, what is
    the division of powers here?

    In the US system, the states are sovereign except for the powers
    delegated to the Federal government. So in this case, the local
    board of health has exactly as much or as little authority as
    the state says it has. I expect there's a lot of variation from
    state to state.

    Each state also has a constitution, all of which are longer and more
    detailed than the Federal one* and it's possible that state
    constitutions have may affect both what can be delegated, and how
    it can be undelegated, as interpreted by state courts.

    * - The US connstitution is 7600 words. The average state constitution
    is 39,000, and the bizarre Alabama constitution is 389,000.
    --
    Regards,
    John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
    Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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