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Last month, Stamford Select’s board of directors voted 3-2 to end the governor’s COVID-19 emergency restrictions.
Led by board member Dan Potvin, the majority said Scott’s orders imposing mandatory face masks, quarantines and restrictions on large gatherings were unconstitutional.
The quarantine order is largely based on an honor system, is mostly unenforceable and is widely flouted, as shown by a visit to a number of ski resorts. Vermonters who live in communities close to the borders of New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York, meanwhile, regularly shop and do business in those states, and vice versa. It’s not as if Vermont officials were hiding around border towns like Cold War guards.
When it comes to mask wearing, Vermonters were largely compliant even before Scott reluctantly made it mandatory last summer, mainly, he said, due to the influx of seasonal visitors.
Yet some here, including Potvin and fellow board members Michael Denault and Carol Fachini, feel it is important to push back as they say restrictions were imposed without due process and fear that acquiescence may embolden Scott and future governors to restrict other unspecified individual freedoms.
The pushback has not gone out of left field. More like the right field. The city narrowly voted for Donald Trump over Joe Biden, 267 to 254, and is leaning on Tories in a state where Trump has been smoked, with just 30% of the vote. As the presidential tally suggests, the city is divided over many things, including COVID-19 precautions.
Scott, a Republican who won his third term with 70% of the vote, did not vote for Trump, routinely repudiated him and, after the Capitol uprising, called on him to resign or be removed from office. functions.
Most popular politician in a Democratic-dominated state Scott says he understands the frustration as the pandemic continues, but insists he’s on a solid legal footing and is issuing orders emergency.
Individual municipalities cannot opt out, he said, “They’re all part of Vermont.”
Attorney General TJ Donovan, a Democrat, agrees and has called the city’s action illegal.
The city’s threat of legal action and the state’s insistence that the governor’s orders be obeyed have led to a difficult stalemate.
Despite all the noise, not much has changed here. Many residents wear masks, and in a city of this size, it is difficult to find enough people to break the ban on public gatherings. Not that they haven’t tried.
While the vast majority of towns followed Scott’s order and canceled their annual Christmas tree lighting or held them in a row, Stamford continued like any other year.
Two dozen parents and their children gathered to sing Christmas carols outside the elementary school before a maskless Santa showed up on a John Deere tractor to light the tree. Santa Claus distributed candy canes and made the children get on his tractor.
At a board meeting the night before, some residents objected to challenging the public health decrees, with one asking board members to keep their political views out of the politics of public health.
When the city’s state representative, Laura Sibilia, stood up and offered to bring state officials from the capital Montpellier to explain the precautions, a maskless Potvin was less than receptive, according to one Review by Howard Weiss-Tisman of Vermont Public Radio.
“You can tell your comrades when you’re up there that we’re not going to put up with this here,” Potvin told him.
Vermont saw its biggest spike in cases after the holidays. More recently, cases have declined.
Skeptics here aren’t backing down, claiming to hold the ultimate trump card: Since March, there have only been six cases of COVID, tied for the lowest number of any city in Vermont.
Kevin Cullen is a columnist for The Globe. He can be reached at [email protected].
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