JACKSON CO., Ill (WSIL) -- Local health departments are in a tough situation.
They have been tasked with enforcing rules such as wearing masks in businesses--and the restaurant mitigations.
However, the legality of what health departments can do is very complicated.
Health departments are able to enforce mask wearing rules in businesses because it is written into the Illinois Communicable Disease Code.
This measure allows health departments to take actions such as removing business permits from businesses who knowingly, and repeatedly, do not comply with mask rules.
Right now there are no current legal measures that health departments can take when it comes to restaurants keeping indoor dining open during tier two and tier three mitigations.
However, health departments are working to change that.
"The mitigation measures themselves are not specifically written into state law. So that is where it becomes complicated for us to enforce them. And so we are working with our state's attorney's office, our county board, and other elected officials to determine what are the instruments we need to legally be able to enforce the mitigation measures themselves," said Jackson County Health Department administrator Bart Hagston.
Because of the complicated legality, local health departments ask the public to do their part to follow the mitigations as closely as possible.
Since April, the Jackson County Health Department has received 17 facemask complaints against businesses and 12 complaints on businesses allegedly not observing the regional resurgence mitigations.
Some of these complaints cover the same establishments and the numbers do not include complaints that were referred to the city of Carbondale.
