August 23, 2020

"We're grateful that every school district, again, we have 41, every school district is going to be opening." Governor Herbert

ANNOUNCER: PBS Utah presents The Governor's Monthly News Conference, an exchange between Utah reporters and Governor Gary Herbert.

RAEANN CHRISTENSEN, PBS Utah:  Thank you so much for joining us for the Governor's Monthly News Conference. I'm RaeAnn Christensen. We're going to first head to the Capitol to get an opening statement from Governor Gary Herbert.

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, thank you RaeAnn. It's great to be back. We've had a little bit of a vacation because of the pandemic. And again, we're getting back to normal, I hope, as we go back to our PBS broadcast and our monthly news conference. So thank you all for being a part of this.

Let me just start by saying, we all know these are really challenging times. We've not had a pandemic of this magnitude, certainly in any of our lifetimes. It may be similar to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1917, but I don't think quite as extensive, even then. This has been a unique. It's complex as certainly uncertain, has created a significant challenge for all of us, as far as how we conduct our lives.

I want to say thanks to all those who've been involved on the front lines, our healthcare providers, our medical people, the scientists that are at work here and trying to figure out how we get and navigate our way through this pandemic and get back to more normalcy. And I certainly appreciate the work right now currently being done because of our wanting to open up our schools and get our students back into the classroom.

The National Academy of Pediatrics has said it's imperative that we, in fact, get our children back into school, in a classroom setting to meet their teachers, to meet their student colleague friends. And even if it doesn't last, it's important that we start. And I certainly think it's important that we try and see if we can, in fact, get back to normal efforts on our schooling. So thanks to all those, it's been a combination effort of not only the governor's office, but our state school board, our local school boards, again, elected by the people in those respective responsibilities, our 41 different school districts and superintendents, our teachers, principals all working in concert to try to find a way to provide a safe environment to learn and to go to school.

Parents want to and expect to have a safe environment for their children to go to be taught and to learn. Teachers have an expectation they'll go and teach in a safe environment. And so we're all pulling for the same direction. And I appreciate the work of so many as we've tried to provide a variety of opportunities. So parents have choice to make for what's best interest of them, their family, and their students. And teachers also have choice and make sure that the people are going to feel safe there. And I think that's been a great effort on all parts. 

We've added to the effort by mandating of a face covering, of masks to be worn, to help in reducing the spread of the Corona virus. Wearing a mask protects others around you. You wear a mask, I wear a mask, we protect each other and doing that effort, particularly, as we learn that more people that are asymptomatic still prior to their showing any symptoms can actually have a viral load that makes them capable to spread the virus to other people. So wearing a mask really will help us. The evidence is clear. The studies that have been done, again, we had the Brigham Young University study that shows that wearing a mask can help us slow the spread and stop the spread of the Corona virus.

We're grateful that every school district, again, we have 41, every school district is going to be opening. They're not all going to open in the same way on the same day, but every school district has the ability to have online learning. So for those who are concerned that you can be involved in online learning experience and stay home, the districts are there to help you to make sure that that can happen with help with technology and instruments and products that will help you in fact, with that engagement. 

We also have made a significant effort to make sure that our teachers have personal protective equipment. And that has been the responsibility of the districts. The state, though, stepped up through our unified command and said, because they've heard the concern the teachers have, do we have enough personal protective equipment, PPEs, and so of their own volition as really a gesture of goodwill, they said, "We're going to provide to all the teachers five K95 masks." That's generally what's worn in hospitals, but five of those and two shields to all of our teachers and staff. And again, to give them a leg up and make sure that they have the products that they need.

If there's any shortage, and sometimes in distribution, we might have enough in warehouses, but it's like water getting to the end of the road, there might be some schools that are short supply. We don't exactly know why that's a question for the districts to answer. And so if any teachers have a concern, they should talk to their principal and that principal talk to the districts, talk to the county emergency planner to make sure that these products and the PPEs are, in fact, given to our teachers as we start the school year now. We have enough, and we'll get more if we need it. And we appreciate, again, those who are helping us to open up our schools.

Let me conclude on that aspect and say, at this time of pandemic, again, we all need to respect each other. I think that's why you wear the mask, by the way, is showing respect and concern for your neighbor, not because the government's making you do it but because it's the right thing to do. And I want to say that, ask everybody that's involved in this effort, let's have empathy for each other. Let's have a mutual respect. Let's be kind. 

Again, sometimes we have a disagreement on policy and what's taking place. I understand that, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't show respect, and have a united and focused effort, as far as all us working together. That's really how we're going to get through this. And I think it's really critical, this time of schools do open up. And we have an opportunity for our young people to get the learning they need to become productive members of society and advance their education as they go forward here. And we don't want to have this stymied because of this pandemic.

 A couple other items I want to mention here that bear some discussion. One, the census. The COVID-19 certainly has impacted every aspect of our society. To me it's like the movie "Groundhog Day." Every day we wake up, it's the same thing, COVID-19, 24 /7, and has slowed down our ability to in fact, get our census done. And so I want to ask everybody to really help participate. We have until the end of September, September 30th, instead of October 31st. So it's a month earlier we've got to get it in. We've only had about a 68% response from the state of Utah. That's too low.

We like to encourage every household to complete the census this year and get the information in. An accurate account is important for a variety of reasons to know who's in our borders and what's the government's role is to in fact provide opportunities for our constituents and the state of Utah. We know we have about 3.2 to 3.3 million people, but the demographics, the information we get from the census, will help us, in fact, work with, in fact, the federal government. We receive a portion of our monies that come from us, they go to the federal government back. Really 94% of all the monies that we receive from the federal government, interestingly enough, generate from Utah citizens and their own pocket books. Most of the money we get from the federal government originates from us, the people, in their respective states, and in Utah's case, it's about 94% of the money received from the federal government is money that came from us first, went to Washington, and is coming back.

It comes back in the form of helping us with education funding, transportation, health, and human services, business development, political representation, public safety. There's a long laundry list of issues that we get, in fact, federal funds for. We have a lower than expected response from some counties. I want to just pass this out to the folks there. Emory Wayne, San Juan, Paiute, Beaver, and Garfield have a lower than usual response rate right now. We'd hope that they would take this as a charge to get out there and make sure that they fill out the census.

You can fill out the census online. It's easy to do. It doesn't take that long. Go to the census online webpage @my2020census.gov, my2020census.gov, or you can phone. If you want to do it by phone, you can call 1 844-330-2020, 1 844-330-2020. And there's another line for those who would like to have it in Spanish. It only takes a few minutes, so let's get her done.

Last but not least, this is an important thing. It's been in the press, and that is the state of emergency declaration that we've had in place since about the first part of March, I think around March 6th or 7th, as I recall. The being in a state of emergency allows certain things to happen, otherwise would not be able to. It gives more power, certainly, to the governor and the executive branch. This emergency stay declaration will expire tonight at midnight. The state of emergency is designed to give legal status, to help us, in fact, doing things quickly out of the norm. And normally we have a policy that's created by the legislatures. They gather together in a session and take time to debate, have committee hearings, have input from the public and make some decisions on policy. But this declaration of emergency allows the governor to be very quick in making response under emergency type of situation, which is understandable where we need to respond immediately. And we're allowed to do that as we kind of suspend the rules for a period of time.

Typically that's 30 days. And typically when we have an emergency, it could be an earthquake, we've had fire, we've had floods, we've had micro-bursts, many hurricanes as it were here, it would last the duration of the event, maybe a day or two or three. The emergency takes place over maybe a few days or a few weeks, but then it's over.

Our statutes do anticipate though a longer time type of emergency. In the statute it talks about, in fact, an epidemic. An epidemic, a pandemic just means a worldwide epidemic. So the anticipation by those who created the laws way back when said, "We know there's going to be needs "for emergency declarations," and epidemics have been included in that, which are a longer duration. So this is not as unusual as sometimes we would think. I understand the concern about how long does the emergency last, and when do we get back to normal practice. And the legislature and I have had those discussions the last few days, and I think it's a worthwhile, in fact, discussion to have. And we'll see where that leads.

Some of the things that we, and I recognize right now today is that one, the emergency declaration will expire tonight at midnight. The legislature's said they do not want to renew that. We do know that we still have challenges with the COVID-19. People are still dying. The infection rates are still too high and growing. I like the trends that we have, but still we have challenges to some of our minority communities have a disproportionate amount. We're concerned about making sure our healthcare system still does not get overwhelmed with a surge. The capacity of our hospital system, the stockpile of PPEs I've already talked about a bit, and do we have the ability to withstand a future surge of infections as we would have a need for PPEs. And we're just starting the school year.

So this is kind of an inflection point that gives us the desire to pause and see let's see what happens, so we don't in fact create a serious problem that we cannot address in a timely fashion. We're not out of the woods yet on this pandemic, even though we're making some good headway, I believe.

Therefore I'm announcing today, right now that I will establish a new state of emergency that will take effect tonight, immediately upon the expiration of the current state of emergency. And by the way, just for information, all states in America today have an emergency declaration in place, including the federal government. So if we were not to do this, we would be the only state of the 50 that would not have an emergency declaration in place for our state during this pandemic.

Again, I think the very nature of a pandemic, again, it's an unpredictable. And until we get a vaccine we'll probably have that kind of a situation. We're certain to get into more normal opportunities where we don't have to have quite the knee-jerk reaction that we've had in the past and response time does lengthen out. But we certainly don't want to risk losing help from the federal government by not having an emergency declaration.

At the top of that list is the funding for a national guardsmen who've been doing a lot of work and testing and contacting and tracing of those who have the virus. And that's the 13, the $14 million bill that the federal government is helping us to pay under the current state of emergency declaration.

But other monies from FEMA, our monies that will be used by our health department, the monies from our workforce services. We're requesting money, $445 million on lost wages assistance. Our SBA, small business administration, we just met with the administrator yesterday. Again, the list goes on and on of what we would potentially risk losing some federal funds that we're entitled to. Again, most of that money generated from the people of Utah.

So I just think it's wise and prudent the weeks, in fact, create and start a new state of emergency, which again, will present. We've already notified the legislature about this, talk with legislative leadership yesterday afternoon. And we'll in fact, file that and have that in place to take effect immediately upon the expiration of the current emergency declaration. So with that, again, I think we're in good shape overall.

Our goals are still the same. We want to protect the lives and the health and welfare of our people, which includes not only protecting their lives, but their livelihoods, as we said many times. And we understand that it is the responsibility of all of us to work together to get that to happen at its optimal level. So with that rather lengthy introduction, we've been away for a while, will now turn it to you for any questions you may have for me.

RAEANN CHRISTENSEN, KUED: Thank you, governor. We're going to open it up now to the studio for questions.

LEE DAVIDSON, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE: Governor, some legislators said they were under a lot of pressure to not extend the emergency declaration. Can you talk about what kind of pressure, if any, your office has received and what kind of arguments others were making to not extend it? 

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, you can call it "pressure." I would call, I like to call it "input." I think we have a need to have dialogue and understanding from different voices and different perspectives out there. Once you get everybody around the table and get their input, it does help us to sort through the positions that people are taking, and hopefully come up with a correct best position. I don't know that any position is absolutely perfect, and no position is absolutely false. There's merit to a lot of different positions and impact and input that we've received.

Based on the input we've received, I don't feel like it's pressure. I think it's been recommendations and suggestions and would you consider this or consider that. And after so doing, we were going to put in place that we'll renew the emergency declaration with certain executive orders that we were going to put in place that will continue with that. There'll be a few. It will continue to be in place as part of this emergency declaration. They'll be listed with the emergency declaration, which we will be able to give you a copy of as we get that prepared.

BEN WINSLOW, FOX-13: So governor, at this point, are you just going to issue a new state of emergency every 30 days until this is over? Is that how this is going to work now?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Ben you know my favorite philosopher, you've heard me say this before, Yogi Berra, the famous Yankee catcher, hall of fame baseball player, who was also a great philosopher, said, "I hate to make predictions particularly about the future." I don't know what's going to happen in 30 days.

There are legitimate issues as far as what are the powers, and when you have a sustained long-term emergency, like a pandemic. There's also the responsibility the legislature has to make policy. We are in the process of making sure that they are informed about what we do, so they're not blindsided. That's part of the change we've made legislatively as we've gone through this pandemic. We recognize, and I think the legislature recognizes the need to act quickly. That's why we have emergency declarations, so we can do things without having to notice up a legislative gathering, have 104 people come together to go through some hearings, committee hearings, and then make a decision that may take us two or three weeks to get to. We need to do things quickly. 

That being said, well, we're going to continue to work with the legislative leadership and see are there areas in the statute that maybe need some refinements, some clarification, some understanding. Again, I don't know it's as much as some think, because when you read the statute it says clearly epidemic, which is a long-term issue. But we ought to have that discussion. And I think we'll resolve any differences there might be as we work together. And I'm certainly prepared to work together. And this may be a discussion for the next general session, by the way. But I'm prepared to, in fact, engage, and we are engaged. 

KYLE HARVEY, KUTV2: Governor, we're seeing some more organized opposition to masks in schools, especially in the rural communities. How would you advise districts to navigate that issue? And do you see misdemeanor penalties as something that's going to happen?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, it's a local issue I think when it comes to the enforcement. The local school districts have that responsibility. We've tried, in fact, to make sure that we've create a safe an environment as we can for our students to come and learn. And we also recognize the pleas of our teachers are saying, we're the ones that are probably going to be the most susceptible in that classroom. We're older. That means we're more susceptible. They might have conditions that make them more susceptible as their health issues, particularly as you get older that you probably have more aches and pains here and there than the young people do.

So I understand their concerns. We have some that'll say, "We want to have zero risk in our schools, "if we're going to go back and teach." And parents say "I want to a zero risk, "if we're going to send our students to school." Well, zero risk is probably not realistic at all. I don't know that there's any place you can go where there's zero risk, but we certainly can minimize the risk and mitigate the chances of you catching the Corona virus at school, which we're trying to do. One of the best ways, the most effective, inexpensive ways to do that is have everybody wear a face covering, a mask. The studies are overwhelmingly showing that to be the case. So this is just good medicine. It's good common sense, and it shows respect for your neighbor. And so I'm sending my grandchildren to school with a mask being worn. That's not only helps protect them, but just as importantly, it protects those around them, particularly as we're learning that more and more of the infection is being spread by those who are asymptomatic.

So again, I know people have a strong emotion about this. Sometimes I don't know that I understand what seems to be a little bit irrational, where all we're trying to do is help create a safe environment. I guess these same people would get on an airplane and say, "I'm not going to fasten my seatbelt," even though that's the rule and regulation. And they may be invited to get off the plane, if that's the case.

MICHAEL ORTON, CAPITAL PRESS CORPS: Yes, but governor, we have reports indicating that some of the school districts are being lax in terms of their own response to PPE and preparation along those lines. And that additionally, they don't have an adequate reporting authority to go through. They're saying that the local health authority has been indicated or has been told by the state health authority that they're to advise only and not to enforce. So what is the obligation that everybody is under at this point to make sure that there is an effective response?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, the health department, starting at the state level with the local 13 regional health departments have been empowered by the state legislature, in fact, create these rules and regulations which they can enforce. And again, I expect that most of us, we're hoping people will comply, because it's the right thing to do. Don't do it because government's making you do it. Do it because it's the right thing to do, and you're a good citizen. And you want to, in fact, make sure that people feel comfortable in the classroom.

If you don't feel comfortable in the classroom, then you should maybe do online or you maybe should do homeschooling. And the districts will help you do that. We have a hybrid system in some of those school districts where you could take some online and some in class. And we're learning as we go.

Again, I don't think this is going to be a big problem. I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill. There may be few out that'll be a little obstinate about it. I will work through that with them. And if there's any issues, they will have them contact the state health department, if there's concerns and work with the local health departments and the school boards, which really are the governing body of the districts that they have been elected to serve. So I don't think it's going to be as big a problem as some. That's my hope, and that's my belief. And unless something changes, I think we're moving in the right direction in an okay fashion.

RAEANN CHRISTENSEN, PBS Utah: Thank you, governor. We do have some reporters joining us remotely, and we have a few minutes left. So I do want to get to one of those people. So Brian, go ahead.

BRYAN SCHOTT, UTAH POLICY: Good morning, governor. In an earlier interview, Lieutenant Governor, Spencer Cox, was asked his thoughts about a mask mandate, and he declined to answer, because he said, you asked him not to get out in front of you on this issue. Why did you ask him not to comment on that? I'm curious, because it seems like something that we would want to hear from a candidate who is running to replace you in November.

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, it is a unique situation, but there's a reason why he's called "number two," and I'm called "number one." It's part of what we do working together. Again, I have to make the decision ultimately of all these things. And the buck stops with me. He's a team player. He's a supporter, and I have supported him too. So that's just the natural order of things. Very seldom do you see the number two guy getting out of the head of the number one. When I was Lieutenant governor, I certainly didn't get out ahead of the Governor Huntsman and his policies, though we may disagreed on some issues. And so it's nothing nefarious there. Don't make it into something that it's not. It's just good protocol.

RAEANN CHRISTENSEN, PBS Utah: Okay, we have time for one more quick question from the studio. Anybody else? 

REPORTER: Governor earlier, when you were talking about masks, what are your thoughts on salt Lake County extending their mask order until the end of the year?

GOVERNOR HERBERT: Well, I think that's the prerogative of the local government. I've always said I'm a local government guy. I come from local government. I would prefer the people who are closest to those who've elected them, whether that'd be the mayors, the county commissioners, just say our people here, this is our unique circumstance. And here's what we think should be our policy. 

So working in conjunction with the state health department and our overall goal to slow and stop the spread of this Corona virus is important. And if they're not doing something that people want, they'll show their concern at the next election. So again, having them to have skin in the game, having them make decisions, I think is the appropriate way to do it. And if Salt Lake County wants to extend a mask mandate, which they have chosen to do so, I think that's the appropriate way to do it, rather than me tell them that they have to do it.

RAEANN CHRISTENSEN, PBS Utah: Okay, thank you so much, Governor. And I appreciate all of you guys being here in studio, as well as joining us from Skype. We are out of time, but we will see you back here next month for our Governor's Monthly News Conference. Thank you so much.

ANNOUNCER: This has been The Governor's Monthly News Conference, an archive of transcripts, video, and audio is available online. Please visit PBSutah.org/governor.

Return to home page