As the COVID-19 crisis continues to wreak havoc with the American business landscape, several states and cities have put laws and executive orders on the books to address different issues arising in their communities. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper on Tuesday of this week signed an Executive Order prohibiting utilities in the Tar Heel State from shutting off service for non-payment. The order directs that utilities give customers at least six months to pay outstanding bills without interest. It also strongly encourages landlords to delay eviction actions and banks to forego overdraft fees. It does not address phone, cable or internet providers, but Cooper suggests they follow the same rules. Likewise, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed an order on Wednesday stopping any pending or future commercial foreclosures for at least 90 days. His order also requests that landlords and lenders defer payments for commercial and rental properties for at least 90 days with the obligations being added to the end of the respective term. In California, there’s been much action at the local level with at least two major cities imposing new restrictions. Sacramento, the state’s capital city, two weeks ago adopted a moratorium on residential evictions that is coterminous with the state of emergency declared by Governor Gavin Newsom (currently May 31). One week later, the Sacramento City Council expanded the eviction prohibition to include commercial tenants as well. The inability to pay rent must be demonstrable as a result of the COVID-19 emergency. And, in Southern California, the Los Angeles City Council took the federally mandated FFCRA paid sick leave dictate in the opposite direction by locally mandating that businesses with 500 or more employers be required to provide the same 80 hours of paid sick leave that FFCRA provides employees of smaller firms until December 31, 2020 at which time it expires. There was a different sentiment in a Dallas courtroom last week as a federal district court judge enjoined the city of Dallas from enforcing its paid sick leave ordinance. The local law, which was set to become effective April 1st, requires private employers to provide workers with 80 hours of paid sick leave (unrelated to FFCRA or COVID-19). The court ruled that ordinance violates the Texas Minimum Wage Law which supersedes local wage laws. And finally, Windy City Mayor Lori Lightfoot cited the coronavirus crisis as the reason she ordered all Chicago departments to deny any and all Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIA ). The Mayor explained that providing information on city operations to the public was not an essential function and therefore, in light of the COVID-19 outbreak, the city was simply not going to undertake such non-essential functions!
