Niagara County Legislature Chairman Becky Wydysh offered a mixed opinion of today’s announcements by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
While Wydysh applauded Hochul’s lifting of the mask mandates in businesses, she lamented Hochul’s inaction on masks in schools.
“As the declining COVID-19 numbers in our weekly update show, we are clearly trending in the right direction and doing so quickly,” Wydysh said. “With Governor Hochul’s announcement today that the mask mandate for indoor businesses is now lifted, there is no public mask mandate in Niagara County as of tomorrow, including all county buildings, except for those under control of the court system.”
“However, we are very disappointed that the Governor not only failed to lift the mask mandate in schools, but did not identify a clear, definitive threshold for doing so,” Wydysh continued. “This will continue to frustrate many parents who believe we are well past the time for schools to resume a normal learning environment for students. The state taking another month to evaluate is wholly unnecessary.”
Wydysh has been at odds with Hochul’s office on the topic of masks from the beginning, saying in December when the mask mandate was instituted that “a mandate was not the best approach nor the enforcement of such a mandate the best use of our resources.” She added, “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.”
Mask usage has been hit or miss in Niagara County throughout the pandemic — including when it was mandated — especially in rural parts of the county and in smaller family-owned businesses. It is unknown whether Wydysh’s public statement of refusing to enforce the mandate had any effect on mask usage.
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