A lot of good ideas have been coming out of Mesa County in the past few years. The latest one is a novel approach to salvaging the local economy in the midst of the COVID pandemic and the state’s responses to it. Not a small challenge.

This was maybe an even greater challenge for Mesa, insofar as the state had deemed their most important industry, oil and natural gas production, terminally non-essential years before anyone ever heard of COVID-19.

Anyway, what they came up with, under the guidance and leadership of Mesa County Commissioner Rose Femia Pugliese and County Public Health Director Jeff Kuhr, was a system by which the county outlined a number of strict and reasonable pandemic-mitigation criteria for local businesses to adopt – things like requiring masks, enhanced cleaning protocols, enabling social-distancing, etc.; when those businesses that wish to resume commerce demonstrate that they have implemented those practices, they receive a “Five-Star” accreditation, allowing them to remain open at a more economically viable capacity. It is a brilliant strike for equilibrium, balancing reasonable and necessary public health protections with the need to maintain a spark of vitality in the region’s economic life, granting business owners the hope of survival.

Brilliant enough that it attracted the attention of not only other beleaguered counties around the state, but even Gov. Polis, who indicated a desire to see this implemented statewide. Commissioner Pugliese – who, as one of the brightest stars in the constellation of local government leadership in Colorado, was already used to receiving calls from around the state seeking her advice and input – began being inundated with requests from other counties hoping to be able to do something similar. Everybody loved the idea.

Well, not quite everybody. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), which has been in de facto control of the state since about St. Patrick’s Day, got wind of this and decided that it was far too good of an idea to let continue. An increase in COVID cases in the county, which until a few weeks ago had seen hardly any, catalyzed the state into placing Mesa into its newly-conjured Level Red, effectively returning the county into lockdown. In the course of doing so, the CDPHE yanked their 5-Star program.

Fortunately, not for very long. A few phone calls from Mesa County Commissioners Pugliese and Scott McInnis, Kuhr, the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce and a few others spurred Polis to intervene, and the CDPHE reversed its decision within a day. Albeit with a rather arrogantly worded letter, which brought to mind an autocratic Caesar, after being quietly reproached by an eminent rouge-type adviser, deigning to grace a condemned subject with a temporary reprieve as a token of his divine benevolence. But at least the program is allowed to continue, and Mesa County businesses along with it.

There are obstacles to implementing this program, or a version of it, elsewhere across the state, aside from the tender mercies of the CDPHE. In several counties, the local public health directors appear to be taking cues from the CDPHE mother ship and have been imposing a myopic and insular approach to the pandemic. Public health is certainly a critical function of government, one of its most critical, but it is not in a vacuum; other considerations need to be taken into account, lest they generate problems that ultimately dwarf the original one. That is why governing power in Western liberal societies rests with elected officials – like county commissioners – who are responsible for the whole picture, not just a part of it. Generals are not placed in control of the government during wartime for the same reason.

So, much credit ought to be given to Mesa’s Jeff Kuhr, who, almost alone in his profession, recognizes this reality, and has worked diligently with the commissioners, the business community, and his colleagues and department to identify the space in which public and economic health can coincide.

About the only thing that could really mess up the program is if it were centralized by state absorption. The strength of Mesa’s five-star program is in its local administration. The specifics may not work for every county; Garfield, for instance, has their own ideas. The best that the state and Polis can do in this regard is to allow the counties, on their own volition, to adopt the program, or a local variant of it, as they see fit. And perhaps jerk the reins of the CDPHE when it strays outside its lane.