House Speaker Clay Schexnayder Denounces Fellow Republican’s Petition

House Speaker Clay Schexnayder is discouraging his fellow Republicans from supporting an effort spearheaded by Shreveport Republican Alan Seabaugh to revoke the Governor’s coronavirus pandemic state of emergency.  Schexnayer says the petition fixes nothing.

“COVID is not going away.  It is not a Democrat thing, it is not a Republican thing, it’s an everybody issue that we all have to deal with and this petition is not going to be the fix-all to that,” said Schexnayder.

Schexnayder adds the move could trigger overrides for ongoing executive orders tied to previous natural disasters and be a hurdle for the governor’s authority to tackle future events.

Schexnayder says the executive order is just one layer of mitigation efforts and it will not loosen up restrictions put in place by local governments.

“Whatever the locals have in place, stays in place and that’s not going to fix a business opening up.  This petition won’t do that,” said Schexnayder.

The recently-enacted statewide mask mandate has once again brought attention back to the petition.  Schexnayder says he understands the inconvenience of wearing masks, but adds this petition will not remove the mandate.

“Although I don’t particularly love it, I don’t think anybody does, I do think if somebody told me that I needed to wear a mask for the next week so that we could have football in Tiger Stadium, I’d wear that mask going to bed,” said Schexnayder.

Seabaugh has responded calling the House Speaker’s claims about the petition’s consequences inaccurate fear-mongering.