Face masks still have to be worn in Winamac businesses, and those not doing so could still be charged with a Class B misdemeanor. The Winamac Town Council held an emergency meeting Wednesday to try to clarify the issue. The council has rescinded its own order requiring the use of face masks, but Pulaski County’s order remains in effect, even within the town limits.
Council Member Judy Heater stressed that the town continues to expect residents to wear masks in public. “The county says that you must wear masks in the businesses, and so it’s still in force,” she said. “And we expect them to. We consider it in force as a town.”
As for why the town council repealed its order, Town Attorney Justin Schramm explained that it wasn’t strictly necessary and could have led to complications. “The county can enforce their executive order regardless of if the town passes a duplicative town ordinance, but the town cannot, by itself without a county order, enforce a local disaster emergency because a local disaster emergency, from my understanding of reading the statute, is declared in conjunction with your county health department,” Schramm said.
He added that if the county commissioners were to repeal their order, the town would have been left with an order it had no authority to enforce until the town council could meet again to repeal it.
Beyond that, Heater felt that the town’s order put local business owners in a difficult position. “Actually, by the time our officers would ever get to a business if they called us, the person causing the problem would be gone,” she said. “So we were putting it squarely on the business owners to enforce our ordinance because they were the ones that were running into people, and that’s what bothered me most about that ordinance.”
What isn’t clear is who exactly is allowed to enforce the measure now. Schramm noted that since the county has a sheriff’s office to enforce its rules, sheriff’s deputies would have the authority to do so. But he wasn’t sure whether the town’s police officers could enforce the county’s order, now that there’s no town ordinance to enforce.
Schramm also pointed out that the misdemeanor penalty for violating a county health order is set by the state, and county and town officials don’t have the authority to reduce it.
