Journalists’ Roundtable: 10-22-21: Ducey vs. OSHA, Ruling on Tapping School Trust Funds & QAnon Candidate for Congress

It’s time now for the Journalists’ Roundtable and for a look at some of this week’s top stories, we welcome Luige del Puerto of Arizona Capitol Times and Jeremy Duda of Arizona Mirror.

This week’s Journalists’ Roundtable covered:

• Ducey vs. OSHA
• Ducey vs. Tucson Vaccine Mandate
• Ruling on Tapping School Trust Funds
• QAnon Candidate for Congress
• Redistricting Commission

Ducey vs. OSHA

Luige del Puerto: “Federal rules demand safety for health care workers but for 2 dozen states it is up to the states to enforce their own rules. However, the rules say that the safety rules by the state have to be as good as or better than OSHA’s rules and in this particular instance, OSHA is saying that COVID-19 measures like social distancing have been subpar so far.”

Jeremy Duda: “This is setting the stage for a more prolonged fight if these things aren’t passed immediately.  The Ducey administration is saying that the Feds may move to take some pretty drastic action there.”

Luige del Puerto: “The Governor, of course, keeps saying that he’s not anti-vaccine but he’s anti-vaccine mandate. And the fact that we did pass something that you can’t propose a vaccine mandate, the problem is that it is now in the courts being litigated. The state lost the first round of that litigated and the mayor of Tucson said that the Governor is just covering up for the fact that he’s mismanaged COVID-19.”

Jeremy Duda: “That could be compelling because there’s a reasonable accommodation that are not defined in the law. I don’t know that sincere religious exemptions are something either because we’ve seen issues like this pop up with people claiming that this actually goes against our religion. Now the question is what right does the city of Tucson have to actually vet those claims.”