By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Board of Reno County Commissioners has made it clear that they don't want to have a mask mandate back in the county, but the problem is that Governor Kelly hasn't issued her new mask mandate language yet.
"With respect to masking, there is no governor's order in place at this time," O'Sullivan said. "My advice is that since the resolution, the order that you adopt references an existing order of the Governor on any particular subject and indicates that you are making findings as to why you should issue an order less restrictive than that and identifies which restrictions to mitigate, reference has to be made to an actual existing order."
O'Sullivan intends to have draft language ready for whenever the governor issues a new order, which her office has indicated they likely would do April 1.
"We don't know what that is," O'Sullivan said. "If it's identical to 20-68 and she issues another order, I can, along the lines of the current order and the one we did in July, I can have prepared a rough draft. It would take me about five minutes to complete and I could have that available for adoption and approval by this board."
The most time consuming part of getting such a new mandate adopted would be notifying the media of any special meeting necessary to put it into place, if that were necessary.
"Give notice to the media and you can call a meeting in a matter of days, if that's necessary," O'Sullivan said.
There is no specific time period of advance notice outlined by the Kansas Open Meetings Act according to the Kansas Attorney General's office's website.