‘Utter chaos.’ Beaufort County votes against extension of mask rules. When they expire
Beaufort County Council voted Monday evening not to extend its mandatory face mask requirements for commercial and public buildings in unincorporated parts of the county.
The ordinance, which has been in effect since July 3, will now automatically expire on Thursday.
Despite every major health agency supporting continued masking, the requirement has been one of the county’s most contentious political issues during the pandemic. That political divide has left the county’s governing body split on the issue of requiring face masks throughout the majority of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beaufort County heard widespread criticism last October when officials briefly allowed the mask requirements to expire in a vote very similar to Monday’s. After the vote, Beaufort Memorial Hospital CEO Russell Baxley pleaded with local municipalities to keep their mask requirements in place.
On Monday, Council Chair Joe Passiment, who voted for the extension of the mask rules, told a reporter after the meeting that he was disappointed in the four council members who voted against the rules. The county’s decision will result in uneven mask rules countywide and will put more strain on business owners who still want to enforce the rules, he said.
Passiment called the situation “utter chaos.”
Although seven of the 11 council members voted to extend the requirements for 61 days, the emergency ordinance needed a supermajority — eight votes — to pass. It failed.
The ordinance is in place only for unincorporated parts of the county and requires people to wear masks or face coverings inside all commercial and public buildings. The ordinance also requires employees of retail businesses, salons, grocery stores and pharmacies to wear masks when near the public or close to other employees.
When the rules expire, people will still be required to wear masks when dining and shopping inside the limits of Hilton Head, Bluffton, Beaufort and Port Royal.
Beaufort Mayor Stephen Murray, who attended the meeting, said afterwards: “I respect County Council’s decision to let their mask ordinance expire.” Beaufort’s ordinance, he noted, is set to expire in two weeks — April 30 — “and we will be discussing our next steps” at the council’s meeting at 7 p.m. April 27.
County Council member Mark Lawson, who has voted to extend the rules in previous meetings, was the deciding vote against. Council members Logan Cunningham, Chris Hervochon and Brian Flewelling also voted against the extension.
Lawson claimed that the county had put the rules in place to protect vulnerable people, first responders and the elderly from COVID-19 — populations he claimed were now protected due to the county’s vaccination rate.
However, data from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control showed that, as of Monday, 55.9% of residents still have yet to get a dose of the vaccine.
The elected officials heard a barrage of public comments Monday against the mask mandate, many claiming that mask requirements infringed on their civil liberties — a familiar refrain of those who have opposed the requirements since the start of the pandemic.
Laura Renwick, a DHEC spokeswoman, wrote Tuesday in a statement to a reporter that the state health agency “continues to support mask wearing, including mask requirements by local jurisdictions.”
“While case and deaths counts are decreased from their winter peaks, the virus is still widespread in the state,” she wrote.
Dr. Scott Curry, an infectious disease specialist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, added that it’s particularly important to wear masks now, as highly transmissible coronavirus variants circulate around the state.
“Masks are definitely an inconvenience. It’s absolutely true that they’re annoying and we’d like to get rid of them,” Curry said. “But, for the unvaccinated, it’s your only protection. And if people think that somehow it’s going to be magically safe to go to the grocery store, or the movie theater, or to the indoor musical concert, they’re going to find out the hard way that COVID is not gone from South Carolina.
“We’ve got a lot of people left to vaccinate/infect. And one of those things is going to happen to you in the next 24 months.”
What does ‘unincorporated’ mean?
Uneven growth in municipalities has resulted in Swiss cheese-like jurisdictions and pockets of unincorporated territory in Beaufort County. This means that some businesses and indoor public spaces will be subject to different rules from their neighbors.
Beaufort County’s public GIS mapping site includes municipal boundaries for the county. Beaufort’s are marked in red on the map.
The mask rules approved by Bluffton are for people and businesses within the town’s limits. Bluffton, however, has many “doughnut holes,” or areas that are not incorporated.
Although a business may have a Bluffton address, it may be in unincorporated Beaufort County. The Walmart Supercenter at Bluffton Road and U.S. 278, for example, is not within town limits.
To find out if you or your business is within the town’s limits, enter your address in the town’s “Am I in Bluffton” application.
This story was originally published April 12, 2021 at 10:34 PM.
