Opinion: Governor needs to lift stay-home order

Hot spots have developed in New Mexico as the daily reporting of COVID-19 cases continues.

Many of those cases and deaths have occurred in San Juan and McKinley counties, home to the vast Navajo Reservation. There, extended families often live together and many elderly have been victims. The other hot spot has been Albuquerque nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

Clovis residents and business owners were widely supportive as Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham made the decision to close non-essential businesses and issue a stay-at-home order. Local small businesses have closed or dramatically reduced their operations.

Those small businesses may appear non-essential to some, but to those families who rely on them, they are most certainly essential.

A recent local survey of employees who continue to work in essential businesses finds concern for their personal safety and the safety of their families is their biggest issue. Another survey of local business owners finds paying bills and taking care of laid off employees their biggest concern.

In short, if you’re still drawing a paycheck, you’re thinking about safety. If you’re shut down, you’re worried about survival.

Many small business owners have watched with dismay as they sit on expensive unsold inventory while big box stores flourish. These business owners understand the importance of social distancing and intensified sanitizing and are every bit as capable of implementing them, or even more so, as the big boxes.

The capriciousness of the governor’s order has become obvious. Parks remain open while golf courses are closed. Nurseries are shuttered, even prevented from curbside business, while big home improvement stores pack customers in their garden centers. Small furniture stores are dark, but people keep buying furniture from the chains who also sell groceries.

I commend the Clovis city commission for writing the governor to ask her to reopen the economy and I look forward to her response — not the vague generalized statements she has been making in her press conferences, but a personal response to the suffering of Clovis businesses.

The federal government just released guidelines for a phased reopening in counties where new cases of the virus have slowed. Curry County and many other New Mexico counties meet these criteria. Half the states in the U.S., and all the states neighboring New Mexico have announced their plans. Early indications, however, are that our governor is not on board.

Issuing another cease and desist order against a Clovis mom-and-pop isn’t going to prevent a death on the Navajo Reservation. Destroying another family business in Clovis isn’t going to save a life in an Albuquerque nursing home.

It’s time for the governor to lift the stay-at-home order and let Clovis get back to work.

Greg Southard is a small business owner and president of the Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce. Contact him at:

[email protected]