Some say reopening NC shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. These counties want to go first.
North Carolina is in the early days of “Phase One” of a three-phase reopening plan, and there is a growing partisan divide over whether that plan moves too slowly.
Elected officials from a group of eight counties in Eastern North Carolina want to be able to set their own schedule. They wrote a letter to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper last week asking to be exempted from his various orders responding to the coronavirus.
“Our rural geography and low population density should not be lumped together with much larger urban counties that face very different challenges,” their letter said. “We all agree that the most recent data clearly reflects that the curve in Central Eastern North Carolina has flattened and that our timing for reopening should be much sooner than other parts of North Carolina.”
The letter was signed by the chairs of the county commissioners of Beaufort, Carteret, Craven, Jones, Lenoir, Onslow, Pamlico and Wayne counties. They make up the area in between Wilmington and Greenville. Of the eight county leaders, six are Republicans and two, the leaders of the Pamlico and Lenoir county commissioners, are Democrats.
But while there may be some bipartisanship on the issue at the local level, at the state level the debate has become increasingly partisan.
A group of Republican state senators filed a bill last week that would render Cooper’s coronavirus-related executive orders basically powerless to stop businesses from violating them to reopen. A spokeswoman for Cooper called it “a dangerous bill that irresponsibly encourages people to violate health and safety rules during a pandemic.”
And on Tuesday the partisan split hit the Council of State, which is the board made up of the politicians who are in charge of various parts of the state’s executive branch.
All the Republicans on the Council of State — including Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, who’s running for governor against Cooper — signed a letter calling on Cooper to schedule a new meeting “as soon as possible.” They want to ask questions about why restaurants, hair salons, churches and other such establishments still can’t fully reopen.
They also mentioned the possibility of county-level flexibility.
At a press conference Tuesday, Cooper was asked about that letter and said he already offered the Council of State a briefing, days before the Republican members sent that letter.
“Pandemics cannot be partisan,” he said. “I’ve been on the phone with the White House every week. I’ve signed a unanimous pandemic budget. We’re going to rely on the science and the facts to tell us when we need to reopen.”
Cooper and his health advisers have laid out seven benchmarks to determine the severity of coronavirus risks, which The News & Observer has also started tracking.
At least twice in last few weeks, Cooper has said he remains open to the idea of letting some regions move faster than than others — but that health experts in his administration say the coronavirus threat is still too serious to do so yet.
“We know that this virus does not respect county lines,” Cooper told reporters on April 28. “There are people who live in one county, work in another county, shop in yet another county. And when that happens the virus can spread from county to county.”
Neighboring states
None of the Democratic politicians on the Council of State signed the letter, which also referenced the fact that Cooper’s orders to stem the spread of coronavirus have been more aggressive than in other Southern states led by Republican governors.
On that front, the Republican leaders wrote, “we need clarity as to why you’re not allowing certain industries to reopen as our neighboring states have done.”
A day later, Cooper said that he spoke with Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and expressed concerns with Georgia’s more aggressive reopening plans.
That same day, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported a growing COVID-19 outbreak in northeast Georgia — where the state borders North Carolina.
“They’re being strained pretty hard up there at the moment,” Kemp said, the paper reported.
Georgia has had nearly triple the number of coronavirus-related deaths as North Carolina, despite both states having roughly the same number of residents. As of Tuesday Georgia was reporting 1,460 deaths compared to North Carolina’s 577.
Increasing partisan divide?
Sen. Jim Perry, a Republican from Kinston who represents two of the eight eastern counties asking Cooper to reopen more quickly, said the state no longer needs a one-size-fits-all approach to coronavirus.
Perry said several times in an interview that he thinks Cooper made the right decisions early on by enacting statewide orders, since public-health models were forecasting large coronavirus outbreaks.
But North Carolina appears to have avoided such a fate, he said, and now there needs to be more flexibility.
“I think the right things were done,” Perry said. “I just think local health departments, local hospitals, local leaders have the same level of intelligence as our leaders in Raleigh.”
A fellow Eastern North Carolina state senator, Republican Bob Steinburg, voiced a similar opinion in an interview with the News & Observer in late April when Cooper announced details of his three-phase reopening plan.
“It is obvious that these safety protocols have helped to flatten the curve,” said Steinburg, who represents the Outer Banks and other northeastern parts of the state. “So I’m all for a three-step approach, if that’s what he’s got. But we need to get this thing moving faster.”
Rural NC not spared by COVID-19
Perry said that in eastern areas that have been ravaged by multiple strong hurricanes over the last several years, the economic need to reopen is particularly acute.
However, health data shows that while urban areas tend to have the most cases in terms of sheer numbers, rural areas aren’t necessarily less susceptible.
As of Wednesday, Mecklenburg County reported 2,204 cases of coronavirus, the most in the state, compared to 129 in Perry’s home of Lenoir County.
Yet Mecklenburg’s numbers actually equate to a lower infection rate (19.8 cases for every 10,000 people) than in Lenoir (23.1 cases for every 10,000 people), a News & Observer analysis of health data shows.
In fact, three of the eight eastern counties asking to be exempted from Cooper’s coronavirus orders, citing their rural nature, actually have higher infection rates than Mecklenburg.
That includes Wayne County, whose 61.7 cases per 10,000 people is one of the highest anywhere in North Carolina. That’s largely because a state prison there, Neuse Correctional Institution, has reported the largest outbreak of any state prison. It had 467 positive tests of inmates through Tuesday, which were more than half of the county’s cases.
But some of the other counties in the cluster have relatively few coronavirus cases — just eight in Pamlico County. Some also have infection rates significantly below most of the rest of the state. And Perry said there are multiple data points that could be used to determine whether groups of counties should be exempted from the coronavirus orders.
Besides, Perry said, he knows businesses in his corner of the state need a boost and that local leaders deserve to be able to make their own choices.
“In my opinion it’s a complicated issue, but typically these would be local decisions,” he said.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published May 13, 2020 at 1:51 PM.
