His Majesty, sorry – excellency, Chris Sununu thinks he’s got something of a constitutional streak. Sure, if it’s the one he creates when he uses the document to wipe his backside.
Like most GOPe tools (and every Democrat), he likes to bring the thing out like fine china or good silver to show the guests. It’s a prop but a disposable one, unlike the fine china or silver.
The same can be said for his positions on “local control.” It’s a prop.
Local towns and cities have been turning mask mandates off and on for the past two years. School districts are even bigger violators, and therein lies the problem at hand—the argument in favor of state inaction ‘cuz local control.
His Excellency will not impose another statewide mask mandate after his last one expired, or so he claims. Nor will he sign legislation (last I heard) prohibiting local government agents from imposing mask mandates.
Mr. Sununu thinks it interferes with local control, and he isn’t going to interject the State into matters of local control.
Really?
We’ll ignore all the federal mandates the State shoves down their throats when it takes DC dollars. And we will forget the sketchy nature of towns or school boards even having the authority for such mandates. Local government can’t exercise any power the Legislature has not given to them – a mandate all its own that the State ignores unless enforcement (or failure to enforce) serves some political advantage.
In other words, the local control schtick coming from the Chief Executive is hazy at best and BS at worst. But let’s not get bogged down by that. If the governor wants to hang his hat on the local control, let’s ask this question.
Why don’t parents represent his baseline for local control? What “governing” unit is more local than the family? Family values. Kitchen table economics. The State accepts and recognizes that parents and guardians have legal authority over their children, with few exceptions.
But the governor will not act to ensure that a) towns and school districts that likely have no authority in statute and therefore no right to mandate masks b) are prevented from violating the recognized legal authority of parents who do not want or need their children masked.
Executive rule-making interpretations? Court decisions based upon them? None of that supersedes the limitation of the State Constitution or the actual language in the state statute. And while the Legislature can approve administrative rules if those rules violate the constitution, then a constitutional Republican should be the first to step in and protect the citizens from this abuse.
Especially after learning that most masks don’t stop infection or spread and that the vaccines don’t either.
In other words, his approach to local control is a lot like cloth and medical masks: a meaningless gesture, posturing, political theater.
A prop.
