GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — The Brown County health department is going to begin naming businesses and event venues who are not in compliance with COVID-19 guidelines starting this week.
Local business leaders are split on the issue.
“I think that each business should be able to police itself,” Copper State Brewery co-owner Melissa Martens says.
Martens believes most businesses are already doing a good job of telling customers if they’ve had a case.
“I don’t know if it’s going to influence people one way or another, but I think at the end of the day, it’s a bit of a government overreach, to police it in this way,” Martens says. “I think they should let the business owners and the staff [do it].”
Emily Legener works as an assistant manager at Hinterland Brewery, and she looks at the situation differently.
“It is sort of human nature to jump to the ‘ooh, shock, ah, and that’s terrible,’ rather than the positive aspects of it, such as this is documented, they’re working and they’re transparent and they want to ensure safety,” Legener says.
She thinks transparency is important, but she doesn’t want establishments to get blacklisted.
“It’s dangerous just to give people information without any context,” Legener says.
The health department says if businesses continue to fail to comply, they may receive a citation, or even be forced to close. However, Destree says it has yet to get to that point.
“We really don’t want to do that, our goal is to encourage businesses to do the right thing,” Destree says.
Hinterland Brewery says it has had some employees test positive for COVID-19.
Copper State Brewery says it has not had any known cases of COVID-19.
Comments