A Pierce County city goes rogue on vaccine and mask rules. We hope others don’t follow
At least Bonney Lake leaders got one thing right when they recently voted — unanimously, no less — that their city should be immune to state government directives to vaccinate or wear masks.
We have no quarrel with one line in the City Council’s resolution, which declares all residents should be treated “with kindness, compassion and understanding,” regardless of vaccine status. Who could argue with that?
Sadly, that nugget is buried in a wrongheaded statement of anti-vax principles that could arouse anti-government passions on the Bonney Lake plateau while pandering to offensive claims of “vaccine segregation.”
Misguided messages like this won’t help Pierce County improve a vaccine rate that still lags most of Western Washington.
The resolution was drafted by Angela Ishmael, who’s running for election this year after being appointed to City Council this spring. She’s a protege of right-wing state Sen. Phil Fortunato, whose Freedom Caucus fingerprints are all over this thing.
Under a thin veneer of language promoting inclusivity and liberty, Bonney Lake leaders undermined widely accepted public health practices that have brought us near the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a clumsy attempt to protest unequal treatment of those who refuse to show proof of vaccination or wear a face covering, they diminished the experience of people who’ve lived through real segregation and discrimination.
And they presumed to speak for everyone on a very controversial issue in an increasingly diverse community — a nexus for Pierce and King county commuters that’s becoming more politically purple all the time.
One City Council member, Kelly McClimans, said before the May 25 vote that Gov. Jay Inslee “doesn’t really represent Bonney Lake.” Silly us. We didn’t realize the city had seceded from Washington.
Another council member, Terry Carter, quoted from Holocaust literature in a tortured defense of the city’s resolution, then claimed he wasn’t comparing the mass slaughter of Jews to the mass inconvenience of Washingtonians.
Some council members had enough sense to raise red flags. Deputy Mayor Justin Evans balked at including the word “segregation” in the resolution, saying this issue pales in comparison to the historic repression of Blacks in America.
“I can’t speak to everyone’s heritage here,” Evans said, “but from what my two eyes are seeing, we’re a bunch of middle-aged white people. We can’t put ourselves in the shoes of people of color who have truly experienced this.”
In the end, however, all concerns were swept under the rug as the resolution was approved in a 7-0 vote.
The good news is that Bonney Lake appears to be an outlier. A policy consultant for the Municipal Research and Services Center told us she found no other Washington cities that have adopted similar measures.
That will change if Fortunato’s dreams come true. The senator was button-popping proud to see a city in his 31st Legislative District do what he tried to do in Olympia this year. (His bill never stood a chance.)
Fortunato irresponsibly throws around terms like “vaccine discrimination” and “paranoid surveillance operation” to inflame his constituents’ fear of government. And his claim in a press release that Bonney Lake made itself “a sanctuary” against state overreach is flat wrong; the city has no legal authority to waive rules or penalties for businesses and employees that don’t follow Washington vaccination and masking guidelines.
To be clear, we don’t disagree with every word of Bonney Lake’s resolution. It’s true that citizens have a right to refuse vaccination for religious, medical or personal reasons. It’s also true that wearing a mask is a personal health decision.
But the combination of those two things, and the defiant assertion that Washingtonians should be free to choose “none of the above” during a public health crisis, goes too far.
Choices have consequences, but it sure beats having no choice at all. A Black person refused restaurant service in pre-Civil Rights America couldn’t get in by wearing a piece of fabric over their mouth and nose.
Bonney Lake leaders would do well to remember that.
This suburb of more than 21,000, diverse-minded people deserves better.
News Tribune editorials reflect the views of our Editorial Board and are written by opinion editor Matt Misterek. Other board members are: Stephanie Pedersen, News Tribune president and editor; Matt Driscoll, local columnist; and Jim Walton, community representative. The Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom and does not influence the work of news reporting and editing staffs. For questions about the board or our editorials, email matt.misterek@thenewstribune.com