There’s been controversy and friction around Attorney General Jeff Landry’s issuance of an opinion on remedial and restrictive measures imposed by Governor Edwards under the ‘Declaration of Emergency’ statute. To better understand those objections, Newell invited Matthew Block, the Executive Counsel to Governor Edwards, onto the program Monday morning.
“The Governor responds to the opinion and reminds the AG that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts,” Newell began. “There’s a number of observations made in that opinion that seem to imply the underlying data is not there in order to undertake such actions as laid out in the Governor’s executive order.”“It’s unfortunate that the AG has decided to contradict his own opinions from earlier in this emergency,” Block said. “He appeared at a press conference with the Governor back in March, and the AG said that he believed the Governor’s measures, which were more restrictive at the time, were Constitutional and that he supported those restrictions. I’m not sure what changed for the AG between then and now, I guess that’s a question better asked of him. At the core of this, the Governor has, from the very beginning, been following advice and guidance from public health experts both here in Louisiana and across the country, and certainly within the White House coronavirus task force. The measures he took in his order came directly from discussions he had with the task force. The White House put recommendations for Louisiana in writing that are exactly in line with the Governor’s orders, which were to mandate face coverings, limit crowd sizes and to restrict bars. Those were all express recommendations from the White House, and they’re looking at the same data we are.”“There are things about this opinion that I’m not able to square up,” Newell continued. “Landry says he supported those actions as you just articulated, but says to that end, ‘we seem to have achieved that purpose,’ and goes on to say that ‘I don't believe that today these additional restrictions are being placed on our citizens while we no longer have a set benchmark with which to measure our success.’ It seems to me the benchmarks haven’t changed, the question is the timing of the remedial action. Do you do it in advance of a crisis, or is it only Constitutional when you’re in the midst of a crisis and you can’t take any remedial action until it’s too late?”