Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Mayors and city councils across Arizona issued face mask mandates during the pandemic to prevent the spread of Covid-19, angering conservative state lawmakers who decried government overreach. So the legislators turned to the newest Republican playbook and passed a law allowing businesses to ignore those public health requirements. <\/p>\n
The one-line \u201cpreemption\u201d law signed in April by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who refused to issue a statewide mask order, won\u2019t make much of an immediate difference now. It doesn\u2019t go into effect until later this year, and local officials have lifted mask mandates in compliance with CDC guidelines as the threat of the virus subsides. <\/p>\n
But the bill\u2019s main sponsor says it was needed to ensure \u201crogue city leaders\u201d can\u2019t impose mask mandates again, should another outbreak occur. <\/p>\n
\u201cNext year, if a liberal town \u2026 imposes a mask mandate again on businesses throughout the community because of a bad flu virus or the sniffles, everybody would have to abide,\u201d said state Rep. Joseph Chaplik, a freshman lawmaker who is skeptical of the science showing masks help reduce transmission of disease. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to give up our freedom and liberties for temporary safety, we\u2019re going to have neither safety nor freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
The strategy used in Arizona has been employed with new intensity by Republicans in states like Texas, Florida and Georgia, where lawmakers over the past year passed legislation preempting the ability of city \u2014 and state \u2014 leaders to enforce their own regulations. The bigfooting of local officials accelerated as the pandemic turned public health decisions into political minefields, but it also also touched on other wedge issues, like police funding, gun control and climate change. <\/p>\n
The move by GOP lawmakers represents a sharp ideological shift for a party that has long championed states rights and local control. Republicans, their influence growing in statehouses and shrinking in cities, see an opening to extend their reach into urban centers. And Democrats, typically the targets of these preemption laws, fear they could be left powerless.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, we want to give community members the voice to have the policies and laws that they\u2019re voting for local officials to make,\u201d said Brooks Rainwater, senior executive and director for the Center for City Solutions at the National League of Cities, a nonpartisan advocacy group generally opposed to preemption legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiving local officials the space is that goal,\u201d he said. \u201cThere shouldn\u2019t be these big dichotomies in how policies are being made between state and local.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Republicans have maintained a tight hold on the majority of state legislatures, much of today\u2019s preemption battles feature GOP-led assemblies handicapping Democratic-run cities. That dynamic is drawn from the stark partisan divide between statewide and local power: Republicans control 30 state legislatures while Democrats control 64 of the 100 biggest cities in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Preemption fights are nothing new. State and local officials have been pitted against each other on what seems like every policy, from soda taxes to minimum wage increases to transgender rights. But in recent years, deep red states have latched onto preemption legislation more and more as a strategy to snatch away power from Democratic city leadership and rally their base.<\/p>\n
Take Florida, where the Legislature this session pushed through several major preemption bills, starting with a high-profile \u201canti-protest\u201d measure as part of the backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement. Buried within the law is a provision checking the ability of counties to redirect funding from police departments and giving the state\u2019s governor the authority to review and reject those budget decisions. Lawmakers also enacted a proposal tightening an existing law forbidding local governments from approving any policies on guns. <\/p>\n
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, capitalizing on the conservative resistance to Covid-19 protocols, also issued an executive order waiving fines issued to businesses by local governments for violating Covid-related mandates and signed legislation allowing a governor to preempt local emergency rules.<\/p>\n
And now, environmentalists took another hit after DeSantis this week signed a law that preempts local government decisions on energy and makes it difficult for cities to reduce fossil fuels by switching to renewable energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like there\u2019s a competition out there for Florida to be the worst of the worst on these awful preemption laws,\u201d said Brooke Errett, a senior organizer for Food and Water Watch Florida who lobbied against the bill. <\/p>\n
Supporters say the bill, backed by oil and gas interests, shouldn\u2019t deter cities from setting or achieving clean energy goals and is in fact needed to prevent them from cutting off natural gas used by homeowners or restricting consumer choice on energy. <\/p>\n