Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has now decided to shut down all bars, restaurants and food establishments, except grocery stores — without public debate or discussion — in counties where people have tested positive for COVID-19.
As of press time, that’s 11 of Arizona’s 15 counties, excluding Mohave, La Paz, Gila and Greenlee counties.
Both of the Verde Valley’s counties — Yavapai and Coconino county — are included in the new order.
Now that the state has shut down these businesses, the state, counties, towns and cities are morally, if not also legally, obligated to assist these businesses they have shuttered to pay their staff, pay their staff’s health care needs and to keep those businesses alive until this crisis passes.
And governments are on the hook until this order is rescinded.
While local leaders can pass the buck upward to Ducey, he can only issue executive orders and direction to executive branch staff about how to proceed with their jobs. He does not control the state budget.
That’s the purview of the Arizona State Legislature, which basically adjourned early this session with much of its legislative agenda unfinished.
Following the governor’s instructions about limiting the number of people gathering, Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers canceled all committee meetings and hearings except those related to the budget, a barebones version of which is expected to pass early this week with little-to-no support for COVID-19 relief.
After the budget gets negotiated and passed, legislators will be heading home to both self-quarantine and campaign, as best they can in probably creative ways, for the 2020 primary in August and general election in November.
But that means there is little-to-no financial help coming from the legislature this session.
Conceivably, the legislature could resume when the height of the crises passes and address the direst of needs this summer, but in the midst of election season, don’t hold your breath. Ducey and legislative leaders could offer local governments the promise of help in the next session and vow to pass legislation to refund cities and towns for the COVID-19 responses, but that’s a lot of credit on the line from a legislature that does not have a good track record in paying back other governments. Just ask any school administrator what happened in the Great Recession.
That means the only real relief will be coming from counties and our local municipalities.
What are they going to do to help these businesses it has closed? They have leases, mortgages, overhead costs in addition to salaries for their employees who are now out of work through no fault of their own.
Will cities be offering checks to workers like waiters, bartenders, bussers and hosts? At many restaurants, servers can become temporary, de facto delivery drivers, but unless restaurants begin charging a delivery fee and customers are willing to pay, these workers will not be earning a living wage. Many businesses have just decided to close, putting workers out of job twice in a month.
Additionally, with this order, nothing else in the economy stops. Rents will still be due. Water bills will still be due. Electricity bills will still be due. Internet bills will still be due — and right now we need online access to order goods and supplies, check for health updates and communicate with loved ones.
Internet companies are removing all data caps. Likewise, some government agencies are revoking, repealing or altering restrictions and policies to streamline services, which seemingly points out how unnecessary and arbitrary data caps, restrictions and policies were in the first place.
Property leases are contracts; federal, state and city governments cannot interfere with a legal contract under the Contract Clause of the U.S. Constitution — Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 — meaning no matter how generous local governments want to be, they cannot nullify leases nor mortgages, which are contracts between renters and owners or owners and banks.
Even if landlords, or power companies or internet companies, decide to pause rent collection or bill collection during this crisis, the banks they owe money to will not.
So how will elected leadership deal with this considering they have denied the ability of workers to earn money to feed their families and pay their bills? By begging and pleading property owners to not collect rents or bills? By offering to pay them? Now that Arizona’s leaders have no problem closing businesses without discussion or warning, will they make a single effort to mitigate the problem they created? Or are we really abandoned and on our own?
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
