Board of Health Appointments
On April 14, 2022, the County Board proposed 3 new appointments for the Board of Health (BOH). Shad Edwards commented that the BOH had a committee working since January to recommend new appointments and that this committee would present recommendations on the following Tuesday. 7 Democrats voted to table the appointments until after hearing the recommendations. 10 Republicans, including Entler, voted NOT to table. Following, the same 10 Republicans approved the appointment while 6 Democrats opposed and one abstained.
The appointments were additionally controversial because Board of Health President Vivian Goodman, a Democrat candidate for Macon County Board District 1, wanted to continue serving on the BOH after her term expires May 31, 2022. Kevin Greenfield (County Board Chair) said the BOH bylaws only allowed one County Board member to serve on the BOH and Goodman would win on Nov 8th due to District 1 having no Republican candidates. At the June 21 BOH meeting, the BOH unanimously approved Mark Scranton to be BOH President and Entler to be BOH Vice President.
COVID, Daily Reports
Throughout the pandemic, Brandi Binkley, Macon County Public Health Administrator, had discretion as to when COVID data updates would be given to the public. During the Board of Health's December 21, 2021 meeting, the BOH voted to remove Binkley's decision making authority on this issue and restrict COVID updates to once per week. Vivian Goodman and Candi Clevenger voted NO. Entler and all other BOH members voted YES (to go to once per week). After community backlash, the decision was reversed at the January 18th meeting by unanimous vote. Entler said the original decision was a well-intentioned mistake, but he wanted to reconsider this in a couple months. Binkley asked the BOH to trust her to make this decision moving forward.
COVID, Dining Indoors
At the January 14, 2021 Macon County Board meeting, there was a motion to approve an ordinance allowing restaurants to re-open indoor dining with up to 25% capacity, even if Illinois requires lower capacity or bans indoor dining. The ordinance was presented 5.5 hours before the County Board meeting. Democrats opposed the motion & asked for more time to review the ordinance before voting, due to a concern of increased loss of life. Pat Dawson & Laura Zimmerman motioned to table passing the ordinance to allow that time for review. The Republican majority voted NO on tabling, then voted YES to allow indoor dining.
During discussion, Dr. Laura Zimmerman (D) said, among other things "No information has been provided to us about... We can all agree that deaths will increase with this, but do we have an estimate of how many more deaths? Do we have [an] estimate in the increase in number of cases. Do we have [an] estimate on what it is going to do to our health care capacity? Do we know what it will do to [our infection rate], [a] very important epidemiological number? Do we know how many more employees will go to work because of this, on the other side of the equation? Do we know how many of these businesses will be affected by allowing indoor dining when we already allow them take-out? We know none of those things because this resolution was given to us [5 and a half hours before this meeting]."
Zimmerman also said "We have 5 hours to make the most important decision, let’s be honest, that any single one of us will ever vote on, ever. Because people’s lives are in the balance and so are their businesses."
No Republican Board Members made any remarks during this discussion prior to the vote on the motion.