WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAW) – Since its launch last Thursday, Marathon County’s online reporting portal for people wishing to submit mask compliance complaints has received 410 reports. The rate far exceeds nearby Price and Portage counties, where online reporting portals have been available for longer but have only been used a handful of times.

The portals were created in the wake of Governor Tony Evers’ order mandating masks starting the beginning of August for most adults when indoors outside of their homes (and strongly encouraged outdoors), with limited exceptions. He joined 31 other states at the time, led by both Democrat and Republican governors, that had already implemented similar statewide orders in the wake of CDC guidance indicating masks are the best way to protect others from the person-to-person spread of COVID-19. Four counties in central Wisconsin adopted reporting forms where people could report noncompliance online; Price, Portage and Marathon returned data on the number of times their portals had been used, Clark did not.

When measured by a rate of complaints per 1,000 people in the county, people in Marathon County were more than three times likely than those in Price and Portage counties to utilize the form, submitting 410 complaints to Price’s eleven reports and Portage’s thirty-one. But what started as a surge of use in the first few days has been reduced to just a handful a day since Monday, MCHD’s Judy Burrows said.

“Initially, people had a lot to say, and then it kinda slowed down,” she explained. “It feels to me like we have some really frustrated people that just need to tell us what they think.” On Tuesday and Wednesday, the sixth and seventh day of operations, they’d recorded fewer than 20 complaints each day.

Many of the complaints didn’t include actionable information, details that the department uses to reach out in an effort to educate on compliance. A common theme is business locations, an area where the department has no authority to mandate a compliant policy due to the executive order’s focus on individuals, but where health officials seek to touch base with the business and explain the concerns.

“The executive order only applies to individuals behavior,” she noted. “We can’t make business do things because of this executive order.”

Businesses were also a central theme for the handful of complaints coming out of Price County, a spokesperson noted.

“The majority of the reports are the individual’s perceived lack of procedures that employers have implemented during the face covering order,” the department explained in an email. “Price County’s priority is to educate and work with the employer to keep citizens and employees safe.”

Wausau police haven’t had a lot of need to step in, deputy chief Matt Barnes said in an email, after the department posted earlier this month that they would help encourage compliance in the community. He knew of a few instances where officers had helped hand out masks.

While other states like Washington and Virginia have a centralized, state-run reporting system, Wisconsin leaves it up to county health officials to determine how best to handle the public’s mandate complaints. Fond du Lac and Dane County, for example, utilize a simpler system–emails or hotlines.

“It has helped streamline some of those complaints,” Stephanie Smiley noted, interim administrator of the Wisconsin Department of Health Service’s Division of Public Health. “Really giving the public a place to go to lodge concerns that they may have.”

Neither Price nor Marathon County health officials had submitted referrals for citations to district attorneys, under the order’s allowance for up to a $200 fine for noncompliance. (Portage County did not respond to that question prior to publishing this article.)

“We’re happy to give information to people to help them understand COVID,” Burrows said. “Our first priority is controlling the spread of the disease.” In Marathon County, there’s been fewer new daily cases this week, she said (currently, data shows 100 active cases). But between Wednesday and Thursday, the county also recorded its thirteenth death.

Copyright 2020 WSAW. All rights reserved.