In a letter to the Texas attorney general’s office, Mayor Steve Adler said that his latest stay-at-home order complies with Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive orders.
The letter, a point-by-point response to a letter earlier this week from AG Ken Paxton’s office calling Adler’s order illegal, was sent to Paxton’s office Thursday. It states that Austin’s order, which mandates face masks and calls for dine-in restaurants to keep logs of all customers, merely enhances some of Abbott’s order without breaking any of its provisions.
Adler’s letter, obtained by the American-Statesman, indicates that Austin will not alter its latest stay-at-home order despite Paxton’s tacit threat of legal action. While defiant, the tone Adler’s letter is far more muted than Paxton’s, which called the suggestion that restaurants keep customer logs to assist in contact tracing “Orwellian.” It also accused Austin and Travis County of trampling on the Constitution by encouraging houses of worship to provide remote services.
“Drafted in consultation with public health and medical experts, Austin’s Order seeks to protect local residents from COVID-19 as allowed by law including the Governor’s Orders,” Adler’s letter states, referring to the disease linked to the coronavirus.
The local orders require masks but come with no threat of criminal or civil penalty. Those penalties were removed after Abbott retroactively eliminated them from his orders, partly in response to the political dust-up over the jailing of a salon owner in the Dallas area who defied local orders by illegally opening her business.
As Adler has said publicly multiple times, the new penalties for violating the face mask requirement are on one’s conscience.
“In Austin, the penalty for not wearing a mask is that more people will get sick and some will die,” Adler said. “It is our hope that this is not confusing and will be penalty enough.”
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