After disjointed coronavirus response from Texas cities, Abbott acted. Was it too late?
On March 3, wary of too many people packing into the Greater Columbus Convention Center, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine canceled a fitness and health expo expected to draw 200,000 people and reap $53 million in economic gains.
The state had zero cases of coronavirus at the time, but DeWine said he wanted to follow CDC guidelines. He continued using his power as COVID-19 turned into a global pandemic. He ordered the state’s schools to close March 12, its bars and restaurants to close March 15 and its Tuesday primary election to be postponed until June. Similar measures were taken by governors in Pennsylvania, New York, California, Maryland and other states on similar dates.
Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott resisted mandating strict statewide measures until Thursday, days after many governors had done the same. His executive order, which was filed at 11:59 a.m. Thursday and went into effect at midnight Friday, bans people from gathering in groups larger than 10 and requires the closure of the state’s schools, gyms, bars and restaurants, except for delivery and takeout service.
It was a drastic change from two days earlier and from the way small government Texas usually handles problems. Abbott had said local autonomy “is the way the structure works in the state of Texas” and had let county and municipal governments decide how to respond to the coronavirus. On Thursday, after noting cases had increased 300% since the prior week and had been reported in many more counties, he explained the statewide regulations by saying it had become clear coronavirus was “not a regional disaster or a local disaster.”
Public health experts say he made the right choice to enact statewide restrictions but question whether Texas’ coronavirus response would be more effective if he had taken control earlier.
“I would’ve liked to have seen restrictions like this go into place a week ago,” Ben Neuman, a biology professor at Texas A&M-Texarkana and a world-renowned virology expert, said Friday. “I think at some point there’s a duty of care to the citizens of your municipality or your state, and part of that involves doing the utmost to make sure they don’t get coronavirus.”
John Hellerstedt, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, told the Star-Telegram Saturday that the timing of Abbott’s decision puts Texas on a more proactive path than California and New York, whose governors acted after their states had more cases and more evidence of community spread than Texas did. The CDC confirmed Texas’ first case of coronavirus Feb. 13 in San Antonio, a patient who had been evacuated from China and quarantined at Lackland Air Force Base. Its first case of suspected community spread was March 11 in the Houston area. New York had suspected community spread by March 5 and California in late February.
As of Saturday morning, Texas’ total count of coronavirus cases was 194, according to the state, or over 300 counting patients who had been evacuated from abroad. The higher count still placed Texas behind 10 other states, all of them less populous than Texas except for California, and the lower count placed Texas behind 14 states (Ohio had 169 cases). Texas, as of Saturday morning, had also tested less than half as many people as California or New York, according to state figures, and as of Friday had tested fewer people than smaller states, including Michigan and Minnesota.
“We are much earlier in the upswing of things compared to other states,” Hellerstedt said. “The governor’s action I think is exactly timed right. ...You don’t ask people to make sacrifices if you can’t justify them. Now is the point in time when we can still flatten that curve.”
But the strategy of empowering local authorities led to slow, inconsistent — and sometimes weak — efforts to limit the spread of the virus. As a result, more people could be infected in Fort Worth and Tarrant County.
“When you have a patchy response it looks as though the problem is worse in some places than others, which can lead to confusion, which can potentially lead to disease spread,” Neuman, the professor at Texas A&M-Texarkana, said.
Likewise, the reactive strategy by Fort Worth and Tarrant County leaders to base restrictions on positive tests and community spread did not position them to counter spread throughout the region.
Diana Cervantes, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UNT Health Science Center, suggested that while it made sense for rural and remote areas to make decisions on a case-by-case basis, Denton, Colin, Dallas and Tarrant counties should have been under the same restrictions. “When it comes to disease, one that is transmitted person to person and through respiratory routes,” she said, “there is no geographic boundary.”
Dallas County vs Tarrant County
Mobility is a reality of urban life in Texas. People live in Arlington, work in Dallas and eat and drink in Fort Worth — sometimes all in the same day. Yet for two days last week, the eastern half of the Metroplex was effectively shut down by Dallas County officials, while the western half was open for business.
On Monday evening, following an order from Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson that all bars and restaurants had to close and that gatherings would be limited to 50, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins applied the same restrictions to the county. His decision ensured that separate cities such as Irving, DeSoto and Duncanville would be on the same page.
Fort Worth on Monday enacted looser rules that banned gatherings of more than 125 people and kept bars and restaurants open, limiting them to half their occupancy. That meant on St. Patrick’s Day Dallas residents, realizing they could not imbibe at an Irish pub because of county decree, could have driven over Interstate 30 and sipped green beer at the bars on West 7th Street in Fort Worth or at J. Gilligan’s in Arlington. In Colin County, Frisco’s restaurants and bars remained open while Plano’s had closed.
Unlike Dallas County, Tarrant County and other DFW counties did not immediately apply similar closures across their dozens of cities. Tarrant County Judge B. Glen Whitley at first said he did not think he had the power to mandate and enforce countywide restrictions (Texas Code 418, for disasters, states that in disagreements between a county judge and a mayor “the decision of the county judge prevails”). On Wednesday afternoon, he imposed Tarrant County-wide restrictions that resembled Dallas County’s from Monday. Then Colleyville challenged his authority by keeping restaurants open.
On Saturday, Whitely announced further restrictions, closing in-person worship services and “non-essential” retail businesses such as malls, barber shops, hair salons, nail salons and massage parlors.
Whitley clarified Friday that he knew he had authority over the cities and had worked with them to set up a policy that no city could have looser regulations than the county’s regulations. “There’s no question in my mind Judge Jenkins was doing what was appropriate to protect public safety, and I will assure you I was doing the exact same thing,” Whitley said. “I was consulting with city mayors and city managers and not making a decision without making any consultation.”
Rebecca Fischer, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Texas A&M, said it’s important to introduce strict regulations limiting the movement of people as early as possible. “The idea being that breaking the transmission cycle and preventing new cases of illness from occurring is effective mostly when it’s done early on when there are none or a few infected persons in the community,” she said.
Whitley said Tarrant County officials became more concerned after the first instance of suspected community spread in Tarrant, which was reported Tuesday morning. But community spread had been detected in Dallas County the previous week. “People go back and forth all the time. If you’re seeing community spread in Dallas County you’re seeing it in Tarrant County,” said Cervantes, the UNT Health Science professor, also acknowledging that officials were working through a “unique situation that no one has encountered.”
Asked about community spread being detected in the wider region, Whitley said local control was the correct option for the last week. “How far do you want the region to go out? I’m not sure there’s been anything in Parker County at this time,” he said (there were no confirmed cases in Parker County as of Saturday).
Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, questioned whether residents would have followed orders had they been applied immediately across the state instead of ramped up by cities or counties. “The needs of Houston and Harris County won’t be the same as Tekarkana and even the Metroplex. So a one-size-fits-all approach, you have to be careful about when you take that step or you won’t have people follow those directions.”
Jenkins, the Dallas County judge, insisted on the need for a unified approach early on. He explained who could get Dallas-Fort Worth under the same regulations at a news conference Monday night: Abbott. “We need our governor and our regional partners to come together,” he said. “The only way to do that is through the state. We need the state to come in and lay out parameters.”
Gov. Abbott’s powers
When Abbott declared a state of disaster for Texas on March 13 he heightened the powers of the governor. Under the disaster declaration, he was able to cut through the red tape of many state laws. He acted on this by waiving punishments for residents who do not renew expired driver’s licenses and by allowing restaurants to deliver alcohol.
Abbott also could have introduced, at any point since declaring the disaster, wider measures that would have brought areas such as Dallas-Fort Worth under uniform coronavirus-related rules, according to legal experts. “He can control the movement of people, the occupation of premises — ingress and egress in an area that has been declared a disaster,” said Charles Rhodes, a law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston whose research expertise includes the Texas Constitution and Texas laws.
Abbott used those abilities on Thursday to enact the executive order limiting gatherings to 10 people and closing restaurants and bars. “There was nothing that prohibited this from happening a week ago,” Rhodes said.
Ethos of local control
Limited state action has been a hallmark of Texas. Even with disaster declarations — and the increase in gubernatorial power — Abbott and other governors have typically let local authorities make crucial decisions. “The ethos of Texas government has always been local control,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a law professor at the University of Houston. “It’s ironic because there’s been an ongoing conflict between local and state governments the last two years.”
In 2015, Abbott signed legislation that stopped local governments from placing moratoriums on gas drilling. He said he wanted to avoid a “patchwork of local regulations.” During the 2019 legislative session, Abbott and many Republicans supported a bill that would have banned cities from passing paid sick leave ordinances. It did not pass, but the state has lawsuits against Dallas, Austin and San Antonio for passing paid sick leave laws.
“Six months ago Republicans were trying to strike down city policies, and now Greg Abbott is reversing course and saying, ‘We’re going to let cities handle this,’” said Lydia Bean, an Arlington Democrat running for House District 93, referring to his earlier actions of not using state control in the coronavirus crisis.
The decision to maintain local control before Abbott took over stemmed from years of disaster responses and protocol, said Kidd, of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. To have superseded the power of county judges and mayors without knowing the nuances of the local communities would have presented a message of a top-down, hierarchical government, and he said, “I don’t think many of us want that.”
Public health emergency
At his news conference Thursday, surrounded by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, Abbott went through various steps the state had taken since learning of the first confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States in late January. The response included daily conference calls and sharing information with local public health officials. He talked about Texas’ record in responding to disasters throughout the years by letting local leaders take charge.
“Texas, we’re a home rule state, and those cities and counties run their own affairs to their best judgment,” Hellerstedt, of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said Saturday. “And I can’t say that they’re wrong in anything they did. I think the governor realized the point (to act) had come.”
Fourteen minutes before Abbott’s executive order was filed Thursday, Hellerstedt, filed a declaration of a public health emergency. It’s the first such emergency since 1901. Under those circumstances, Abbott said Hellerstedt had insisted Texas “needed a unified, robust response” for stopping the spread of COVID-19.
The theme as Abbott spoke was that this situation was different and rare, that Texas needed to change. “We’re doing this now today,” Abbott said, “so we can get back to business as usual more quickly.”
In spite of the governor acting after many other states, Fischer, the professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Texas A&M, said it wasn’t too late and that there was a reason for even the most individualistic Texans to see a silver lining. No restriction from a mayor, county judge or governor can stop a pandemic, Fischer said: It comes down to people’s individual decisions within the guidelines that have been set.
“We should feel empowered by this in that we have the power,” she said. “If we can come together and be team Texas, we can come through this and be out on the other side better than some places.”
This story was originally published March 22, 2020 at 8:00 AM.
