While bigger SC cities take coronavirus action, local leaders remain mostly hesitant
At the mayor’s request, the Charleston City Council was set Tuesday to close non-essential businesses and enact a two-week “stay at home” order to its residents outside of grocery, pharmacy and doctor visits.
In Columbia, mayor Steve Benjamin has been ahead of the governor for weeks, initiating a curfew, closing restaurants and bars, blocking evictions and pushing forward an economic response package.
In Greenville, mayor Knox White was the first in the state with restaurant restrictions and followed up with a downtown curfew starting this week.
In Beaufort County, meanwhile, local leaders are expressing hesitancy, a lack of coordination and, perhaps most concerning, a lack of certainty about what they can do.
Across the county, shoppers can still crowd stores such as Hobby Lobby and Big Lots and many smaller shops. Hilton Head mayor John McCann is urging tourists to still visit and has taken only minimal steps to keep people from the beach. And residents in Bluffton and Beaufort swarmed local beaches and sandbars over the weekend.
All at a time Beaufort County ranks fourth in the state in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Some local leaders say they want people to stay home but don’t have the authority to act without an executive order from the governor. However, S.C. law allows cities to set up their own emergency plans — which cities like Columbia have used to enact local orders.
“We’ve received several requests to shut down private businesses,” Beaufort County Administrator Ashley Jacobs said Monday night. “Yes, it’s concerning that these businesses remain open. They should not be open. However, there is not an executive order from the governor that gives us the authority to shut them down.”
Jacobs said she and Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner agree that local municipalities can’t unilaterally shut down private businesses to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
“While I would certainly be open to calling these businesses and strongly encouraging them to close, I don’t have the authority to shut them down,” she said.
Jacobs’ statements were echoed by both Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka and Beaufort County Council Chairman Joe Passiment on Tuesday.
Beaufort Mayor Billy Keyserling said he supports the idea of a county-wide shelter-in-place order, but all municipalities have to be on the same page.
“It’s got to be a group decision,” he said “We all wish the governor would take the lead, but we have authority to do what we think is the most prudent thing for the people we represent. As mayors, we’re the only people where the rubber hits the road. It’s not a matter of power, it’s responsibility.”
‘Very careful about what we do’
Last week, all local governments in Beaufort County signed emergency declarations — a designation that gives leaders the authority to make wide-ranging decisions regarding town and county operations.
But even with emergency orders in place, local leaders have been reluctant to act.
“We have to be very careful about what we do,” Beaufort County Council Chairman Joe Passiment said. “As the council meets and gets information, we’ll react. We want to do things that are factual and things we can stand behind. I know from Ashley and from council members that before we take action, we want to be on legal standing and then be able to do this. Once you say something, how do you back it up?”
‘A little more force’
Across S.C., local officials in other municipalities have taken drastic measures to ensure public safety without needing guidance from the governor or state.
Before McMaster ordered all restaurants statewide to close their dining rooms, mayors in Columbia, Charleston and Greenville all passed emergency ordinances that placed restrictions on restaurants.
On Tuesday, Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg said he would “close non-essential businesses and direct citizens to stay at home except for necessary trips to the grocery store, the pharmacy or for other essential activities.”
Columbia has been perhaps the most proactive. Before the first coronavirus cases reached South Carolina, the city organized a coronavirus task force with other local agencies, schools and the medical community to coordinate a local response. While the governor was still calling for S.C. residents not to disrupt their everyday activities, the city modified its meeting schedule.
When the governor did declare a state of emergency, Benjamin followed through with his own emergency declaration and the city began to close offices and municipal parks to the public. Columbia has stopped disconnecting water and sewer service during the crisis, and was moving to block evictions and close restaurants and bars before those moves were superseded by state action, and the city council gave preliminary approval Friday to a $6 million economic response package. The city also passed a nightly curfew.
“We believe in science, and we saw the growing public health threat spreading across the globe,” Benjamin said of the city’s quick response. “Columbia sits at the center of a metropolitan area with a $43 billion gross domestic product, interconnected and interdependent with a global economy. We knew that we would be affected and that we had to be ready. We owed it to our citizens.”
However, leaders in Beaufort County, although they have modified government operations and closed public buildings, say they’re still waiting to see what to do about closing private businesses and a shelter-in-place order.
“We’re putting in those questions to state officials to make sure we’re on solid ground,” Passiment said. “Whatever we do in Beaufort County is also going to have an effect in Jasper County.”
Beaufort Mayor Keyserling said if all people in the county, state and country sheltered in place, “we would kill this thing in 30 days or less.”
“Whatever we do, should we do anything, it will only work if we do it countywide and if we get the support of the sheriff and of course all other law enforcement,” he said. “It would not work if we did it just in the city of Beaufort.”
Bluffton Mayor Sulka — who’s been sending out daily emails to residents with business closure updates and reminders to wash their hands and social distance — said she’s met with other local mayors so that, if a decision is made, it’s a joint decision.
“We think there should be a little more force from whoever has the authority. I just want to make sure we know what we can do,” she said. “Somebody has to know what it is. We’ve got to make tough decisions. The mayors are going to talk today. We’re not sitting here twiddling our thumbs. We are trying to come together as mayors with a joint release. The good thing is, for the first time in a long time, we are all on one step.”
Administrator Jacobs reiterated Sulka’s comments that local municipalities have to make decisions together — especially if that includes defining what “essential” and “non-essential” businesses are.
“I think there’s a lot that needs to be considered before we would make that kind of decision,” she said.
Bristow Marchant contributed to this story.
This story was originally published March 24, 2020 at 4:10 PM.
