Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made a national name for herself in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic by issuing some of the strictest lockdown policies in the country. She forced a larger share of businesses to close than any other state. Her edicts were shocking in scope but also a shocking display of unilateral and centralized executive power.

Whitmer has not shown an interest in formally reviewing the effectiveness of her unprecedented pandemic policies. But her counterpart in New York — Gov. Kathy Hochul — has, and a new, independent report puts the Empire State’s pandemic response under a microscope. Whitmer deployed a similar strategy to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s, New York’s governor at the beginning of the Covid pandemic.

One similarity was that both Whitmer and Cuomo ignored the pandemic response plans their states had developed for these situations. Like Michigan, New York had “a sophisticated preparedness structure, mandated under state law, and implemented by professional emergency managers,” according to the report. The existing pandemic response plans called for a coordinated response led by public health officials at both the state and local levels.

But, as one former New York state official noted for the report, “Plans were too quickly abandoned, and new plans were made ad hoc with little or no transparency.” This fits the Michigan experience: Whitmer’s appeared to have made up her policies on the fly, rarely, if ever, explaining the rationale behind her orders.

Both Whitmer and Cuomo relied on a strict top-down approach, where they exercised unilateral policymaking power. They determined state policy with the stroke of a pen. Both issued hundreds of different executive orders in just the first few months of the pandemic.

The independent review from New York highlights the harms of such an approach.

A centralized, top-down strategy makes it more difficult for state and local agencies to enforce the policies. The lack of coordination confused both the people who are supposed to enforce the rules and the people who are supposed to follow them. Here’s what happened in New York, according to the report:

[T]he State frequently disseminated directives to the public via press releases and media interviews without first coordinating messaging with the relevant state regulatory and enforcement agencies. […] Not only was the messaging about the directives uncoordinated, but the State’s assumptions about the capabilities of relevant agencies and organizations to support and enforce the directives were frequently incorrect. In cases where local response partners issued conflicting messaging or were categorically unable to support or comply with the directives, it damaged the public’s trust in both state and local response competencies.

Whitmer’s make-it-up-as-you-go approach damaged the public’s trust in another way. She reversed herself often, mandating one policy one day and then abandoning it in the next order. It became a sort of mystery science, where one could only guess at the slippery rationales the governor used to make her decisions. This happened in New York, as well:

For example, certain policies, such as allowing bars to open under specific conditions while keeping schools closed and inconsistent mask-wearing guidelines were viewed as contradictory and difficult to rationalize to the public. State and local agencies struggled to message these inconsistencies effectively, straining the relationships with their communities.

Whitmer’s approach of setting policy on the fly by issuing executive orders caused confusion and eroded public trust. According to the New York report, Cuomo’s approach did something similar:

[T]he sheer volume of information released by the Executive Chamber with thousands of executive orders, press releases, social media posts, daily website updates, and media interviews, especially during the early phase of the pandemic, was unprecedented. A substantial quantity of this information was neither intended for the public, tailored for general consumption by the public, nor useful to members of the public. Executive orders and other official government documents released into the public domain caused tremendous confusion and eroded public trust and confidence in response leadership. This is especially true as the pandemic progressed and the number of EOs and directives grew dramatically. EOs and other official guidance documents that were often full of technical and legal language not intended for non-specialist audiences were issued publicly. This bred opportunities for public confusion and misinterpretation. The frequent release of updates, revisions, and clarifications that were often contradictory or in conflict with previously released information worsened general confusion and misinterpretation.

Even if Whitmer and Cuomo had chosen all the optimal policies to combat a coronavirus pandemic, the top-down, unilateral approach would still have been suboptimal. Arbitrary orders lead to less compliance among the public, which limits the effectiveness of the response. Here’s the New York report:

Because [Cuomo’s executive office] used public information channels (e.g., press releases and media interviews) to disseminate executive orders and directives to [state] agencies, local response partners, schools, businesses, and other institutions, the public information realm was inundated with irrelevant information that both created confusion and made it difficult for members of already stressed communities to access and implement the safety measures that applied to them. As a result, much of the public struggled to understand and appropriately implement public safety guidance as it was issued. […] Eroding public confidence in the authority and competency of government officials, the public struggled to comply with many of the public safety directives issued, especially related to masking, social distancing, and vaccines.

There appears, unfortunately, little interest in Michigan to examine and learn from Whitmer’s unprecedented use of executive power to respond to Covid-19. But evidence is piling up that suggests her approach was a bad mistake. Policymakers need to learn from this episode so as not to repeat these errors.

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