Trending
No one wants to see Pennsylvania become New York with the heavy-handedness of the Empire State's COVID-19 pandemic policies.
At the same point, reasonable people should be able to recognize that the state Health Department needs additional authority to deal with emergent issues like the ongoing measles outbreak in the state.
Doing nothing makes no sense. Accepting the Health Department's proposed 502 pages of Chapter 27 regulations is ludicrous, because it feels as if the Health Department is trying to seize authority the state Legislature didn't want to give in the first place.
This dilemma is exactly why we prefer these changes to be made in public, open session by legislators rather than through the opaque rulemaking process the state Health Department is proposing. Administrative rulemaking is an open process in name only. Most state residents have no clue that administrative regulations are being discussed because it's incredibly difficult for the general public to keep up with those processes. So while the Health Department has been working on the process for more than two years, the public is being hit with 500 pages of regulatory language that takes a Philadelphia lawyer hours to wade through.
Republicans are raising what are, in our view, valid concerns about the proposed rules. Concerns include expanded reporting of immunization information, access to medical records, the authority of health officials to enter certain private locations during disease investigations, private interviews with students for contact tracing or partner services and expanded disease-control authority. We share their concerns.
The fact of the matter is health officials in many states are suffering from a lack of trust after the COVID-19 pandemic. Using administrative rulemaking to expand the state Health Department's rulemaking rather than proposing a publicly debated legislative package that works through the give-and-take of the legislative process only feeds into that lack of public trust because it appears that the Health Department is trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes. We agree with lawmakers that the process is poor even if many of the Health Department's aims are pure.
If there is going to be an expansion of the Health Department's authority, that expansion should come given in clear terms by the state Legislature, in open session, not seized in a rulemaking procedure that most state residents don't know is happening until after the fact.