BUFFALO, N.Y. — In New York State, you must wear a mask inside any business or venue that doesn't require proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter.
The new mask mandate which will be enforced by local counties went into effect midnight on Dec. 13.
"I have warned for weeks that additional steps could be necessary, and now we are at that point based upon three metrics: increasing cases, reduced hospital capacity, and insufficient vaccination rates in certain areas," said Gov. Kathy Hochul.
However, in Western New York, county leaders in Genesee, Orleans and Chautauqua counties have announced they will not be enforcing the mandate.
During an interview with 2 On Your Side, Chautauqua County Executive P.J. Wendel said he does not believe it's enforceable and questions the metrics being used to impose the mandate.
"This is a challenging position, it’s not that we don’t care for the safety and wellbeing of our residents, it’s to the contrary," he said. "The question that I ask is, what are the metrics that we use and what are the metrics we are using to come out of it?"
Wendel said he encourages people to wear masks and to get vaccinated, but believes mask wearing shouldn't be mandated. He believes businesses should be able to decide whether to require customers to wear them.
"We are not going out and penalizing those businesses that don’t have 100% compliance which is challenging because what are we punishing them under, civil law, criminal law what criminal law are they going to be penalized under? We don’t have the resources to police this," Wendel said.
In a statement released Friday, Niagara County Legislature Chairman Becky Wydysh just stopped short of saying the county would not enforce the mandate.
"Niagara County has said right along that we believe it is advisable for people to wear masks indoors, especially when social distancing is not possible, as part of a multi-layered COVID-19 mitigation strategy, but that a mandate was not the best approach nor the enforcement of such a mandate the best use of our resources.
"Today, Governor Hochul has instituted a statewide indoor mask mandate through January 5 but how the state intends to enforce this mandate is not clear. To the extent that we are asked to take part in any sort of enforcement of Governor Hochul’s mask mandate, we will be taking an educate to cooperate approach.
"In Niagara County, we will continue to focus our county resources on vaccinations, contact tracing, testing and working to keep kids in school. As a matter of fact, we held five vaccination clinics this week. We continue to seek more testing resources from the state, including reopening the free testing site at NCCC, because we believe identifying and isolating those who test positive is the greatest need right now to reduce the spread."
Genesee and Orleans County Public Health Director Paul Petit said they do not have the capacity to enforce the mask mandate.
"The Genesee and Orleans County Health Departments (GO Health) will continue to focus our efforts on offering free vaccination and testing clinics as well as conducting case investigations,” said Paul Pettit, Genesee and Orleans Public Health Director. "We do not have the capacity to enforce mask mandates and enforcing mandates is not the best use of our limited resources at this point of the pandemic response. As we have throughout the pandemic in line with CDC guidance, we continue to advise residents to properly wear masks indoors when social/physical distancing is not possible."
“As we did during the last surge, Genesee County will take the approach with our community to Educate to Cooperate in regards to the benefits of masking and social distancing,” stated Rochelle Stein, Genesee County Legislature Chair.
“In Orleans County, we will continue to focus our county resources on vaccinations, contact tracing, testing and working to keep children in school,” said Lynne Johnson, Orleans County Legislature Chair. “We held two clinics this week, one for testing and one for booster shots. We continue to seek more testing resources from the state, because we believe identifying and isolating those who test positive is the greatest need right now to reduce the spread.”
Monday, during a press conference, Governor Hochul was asked many times by reporters whether there will be any disciplinary action for counties who are choosing to not enforce the mandate.
“We have left this up to counties to enforce,” said Hochul.
A reporter asked the governor, “So, counties can choose not to enforce?”
She responded, “We hope that counties will enforce it. We are going to assess the situation; I am going to monitor what is going on in the various counties, but I am not attempting to be heavy handed."
On Friday, when the mandate was announced Hochul said any violation of any provision of this measure is subject to a maximum fine of $1,000 which would be enforced by local health departments.
The new mask requirement will continue until Jan. 15, 2022. Following Jan. 15, Hochul says the state will re-evaluate the mandate based on conditions at that time.