We are writing to you today in response to the most recent executive order 2020-42 signed by the governor that extends the "Stay Home, Stay Safe" order.
Governor Whitmer signed executive order 2020-42, extending her prior “Stay Home, Stay Safe” order through the end of April. Just as in the previous order the landscape industry is still considered "non-essential" to sustain life and are unable to resume operations at this time. The order is also adding more stringent restrictions on business's that are deemed "essential". Also there will be new travel restrictions to people with multiple residences within the state. read the full order here
Here are some highlights related to our service industry from the order:
The measures put in place by Executive Order 2020-21 have been effective, but this virus is both aggressive and persistent. To win this fight, and to protect the health and safety of our state and each other, we must be just as aggressive and persistent.
This order must be construed broadly to prohibit in-person work that is not necessary to sustain or protect life.
No person or entity shall operate a business or conduct operations that require workers to leave their homes or places of residence except to the extent that those workers are necessary to sustain or protect life or to conduct minimum basic operations.
For purposes of this order, workers who are necessary to sustain or protect life are defined as “critical infrastructure workers,” as described in sections 8 and 9 of this order.
For purposes of this order, critical infrastructure workers are those workers described by the Director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in his guidance of March 19, 2020 on the COVID-19 response (available here). This order does not adopt any subsequent guidance document released by this same agency.
Any suppliers, distribution centers, or service providers whose continued operation is necessary to enable, support, or facilitate another business’s or operation’s critical infrastructure work may designate their workers as critical infrastructure workers, provided that only those workers whose in-person presence is necessary to enable, support, or facilitate such work may be so designated.
Suppliers, distribution centers, and service providers that abuse their designation authority under this subsection shall be subject to sanctions to the fullest extent of the law.
Now there's many ways to interpret the order on paper, but the governor has made it clear in her press conferences that landscapers are not to operate during the shutdown through April 30th. There's a reference to CISA in the above bullet points about how to designate an essential business. I urge anyone reading this who is not familiar with the CISA guidelines to please read through the link that is provided. In a nutshell, CISA has put out multiple documents to help State governments make decisions on how to declare who should or shouldn't work. Our governor has adopted one of the earlier guidelines which did not directly reference landscapers underneath the "essential service provider designation". CISA has since then updated and referenced landscapers as essential, but they did so in a later and different document. In summary, it is clear at this moment that she does not intend to allow any service under the landscaping industry to be permitted until the end of April. We hope she does reconsider this order before the end of the month as this affects you our clients as much as it does us and our employees.
We hope this helps to clarify the current and most recent events. We are constantly staying up to date with the information that is made available and will post new updates once it becomes relevant.
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