AMES, Iowa - The Ames City Council will not include a fine with the city's mandatory mask mandate. The Mayor of Ames says the ordinance is more of a strong recommendation, since a penalty will not be enforced.
Ames City Attorney Mark Lambert says it's not common for the city to pass an ordinance without a penalty attached. Lambert advised the city council not to issue a mask mandate, siding with Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller. Miller has said previously that city wide mask mandates defy Governor Kim Reynolds' position that counties don't have the authority to enforce mask mandates.
However, Lambert tells WHO TV 13:
“There’s something in Iowa Constitution called the Local Home Rule Authority that says that cities can pass ordinances on any topic they want to as long as it doesn’t conflict with state law. So the legislature can still say, ‘cities, you may not have a law on this. We’re going to have one law for the whole state.’ But they haven’t done that in this situation. It’s not in the Iowa code, telling us that we can’t do this.”
The Ames City Council will hold its first reading of the ordinance in two weeks.