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Michigan Senate ties restaurant limits to virus metrics

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The Republican-led Michigan Senate voted Thursday in favor of legislation that would automatically tie restaurant capacity limits to COVID-19 testing positivity or hospitalization rates, embracing — over Democrats’ objections — a metric-based approach long advocated by the industry.

Senators also split 20-15 over a GOP-backed bill that would allocate $1.25 million to support county prosecutors who investigate Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration’s coronavirus policies for long-term care facilities. One Republican prosecutor, Peter Lucido in Macomb, is reviewing deaths.

Michigan bars and restaurants currently are at 50% occupancy under a state health department order. Indoor dining has been prohibited twice for several months during the pandemic.

Under the legislation, there could be no restrictions on indoor dining capacity if the statewide positivity rate or the percentage of hospital beds used to treat coronavirus patients was under 3% for at least seven straight days. The positivity rate was 9.8% on Wednesday, amid a recent resurgence of the virus.

The capacity limit would be 50% if the positivity or hospital rates were at least 3% but below 10%. Occupancy would drop to 25% if one of the rates got above 10% for seven consecutive days. Food establishments would close if a rate exceeded 15%.

A similar phased system would apply to banquets halls, hotel ballrooms and other event venues, based on the number of people per square foot.

Restaurants and event centers are “asking to know what the rules of the game are,” said the bill sponsor, Republican Sen. Jon Bumstead, of Newaygo. He said the state owes owners “at the very least transparency regarding the metrics that are controlling the fate of their businesses.”

Democratic Sen. Jeremy Moss, of Southfield, criticized the legislation, noting it would loosen contact-tracing requirements and is silent on an existing mask mandate when people are not eating or drinking in a restaurant.

“As the health conditions ever evolve, everyone wants predictable and workable capacity limits. But this bill is not that solution,” he said.

The measure was sent to the GOP-controlled House for consideration. Whitmer has opposed automatically linking economic reopening steps to changing virus trends, though her administration has monitored case rates and testing positivity rates and hospital capacity when deciding whether to tighten or ease restrictions.

Under the nursing home bill, a county prosecutor could get up to $250,000 to investigate the Whitmer administration’s long-term care policies and related infection and death data.

Republicans say the state should not have let recovering virus patients return to nursing homes and potentially put at risk non-infected residents. Democrats say many states did the same thing as Michigan — isolate COVID-19 patients from others in such facilities, a practice that was codified under a bipartisan law — and there is no evidence of any attempt to hide deaths like in New York.

Democratic Sen. Curtis Hertel Jr. of East Lansing said he had “never seen anything like it in legislation in my life … a payoff of a specific amount of money to investigate your political adversaries.”

But Republican Sen. Lana Theis of Brighton said the bill is necessary because Democratic state Attorney General Dana Nessel decided not to investigate.

“We owe it to the grieving families of this state to get answers,” she said.

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