EDITORIAL: Repeal ‘temporary’ COVID cleaning edicts

The COVID crisis is over, but some special interests hope to milk it for their own benefit in perpetuity. Nevada lawmakers shouldn’t play along.

On Tuesday, a legislative committee heard Senate Bill 441. It would repeal certain emergency orders that lawmakers passed in August 2020 as Senate Bill 4. Among them was a requirement that hotel-casinos clean guest rooms on a daily basis.

The thinking at the time was that constant cleaning and disinfecting would slow or stop the spread of the coronavirus. This proved to be false — and even destructive. So-called “hygiene theater” became commonplace in public places, where employees repetitively cleaned surfaces to ease customer fears. The hyper-vigilant even wiped down their mail and groceries. In the end, it all accomplished little.

“Today, it’s well understood that because the coronavirus spreads through the air,” Yasmin Tayag wrote for The Atlantic in July, “good ventilation and air filtration are far more effective at disrupting transmission.”

It would make perfect sense, then, to repeal the hotel cleaning mandate, returning the matter to state health and safety regulators by simply reimposing the conditions and requirements that existed before mid-2020.

“Unfortunately, because of SB4,” Virginia Valentine, president and CEO of the Nevada Resort Association, told lawmakers, “Nevada continues to be tied to mandates that were developed at the very height of the crisis.”

But the Culinary union has other ideas.

During the legislative hearing, dozens of union members showed up to protest the bill, in particular the provision repealing daily room cleaning edicts. Union officer Ted Pappageorge fretted that the legislation could allow less frequent maid service, which in turn could result in job cuts as hotels look to “increase their profits.”

Why Mr. Pappageorge believes “profit” is a dirty word is a mystery. An industry that doesn’t make money is an industry that will soon be forced to shed workers. How would that help his Culinary rank-and-file?

The union is free to pursue its agenda, of course. But state lawmakers should stand clear. There’s no need to continue as if we remain in thrall to COVID-19, and SB441 deserves quick passage regardless of the union’s objections. If the Culinary has concerns about job security and hotel cleaning policies, let them be addressed in collective bargaining talks with the resorts in question, not by using Nevada lawmakers to etch in stone what were supposed to be temporary measures enacted to combat a public health crisis.