North Michigan News

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently vetoed a bipartisan bill that was meant to extend legal protections for health care workers, which she had recently rescinded, despite her continued restrictions under the assertion that the COVID-19 crisis isn’t over.

Michigan Speaker of the House Lee Chatfield (R-Levering) joined "The Frank Beckmann Show" on WJR to discuss the impact of that veto.

Chatfield told Beckmann that the protections the bill would have provided are the same ones that Whitmer had issued under her first coronavirus executive order, which created the state of emergency.

"However, once the Legislature did not extend the state of emergency, the court of appeals ruled that those health care protections, in essence, stop because the governor cannot unilaterally extend a state of emergency without legislative approval,” he told Beckmann. “So the governor actually used these health care protections as a tool, as a threat, for us to extend the state of emergency.”

The Legislature moved to reinstate the protections without reinstating the state of emergency, Chatfield said. Whitmer responded to this by vetoing the bill.

"So it seems the governor would rather -- would only want to provide these health care immunity protections to our frontline workers if it comes to an executive order,” he told Beckmann. “Even though they are roughly the same protections that she provided, now they are no longer fair and appropriate because the Legislature passed it.”

Ultimately, Chatfield said he feels that health care workers are being forced to suffer due to petty, partisan politics.

"This is about nursing homes, this is about our physicians, our doctors, our nurses, those working in the ER,” Chatfield told Beckmann. “They deserve certain health care protections that would be provided under different pandemics -- or previous state of emergencies.”