BUFFALO, N.Y. — On Monday, New York state's new mask mandate went into effect.

On Tuesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul offered an optimistic outlook to her expectation for how county governments will enforce the rules.

"Seventy-three percent or so of the New York state population is governed by county leaders who say they support what we're doing here, so that is a pretty large number of individuals represented by people doing the right thing," Hochul said.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said local public health sanitarians will enforce the state mandate under his direction. The county already had a slightly less restrictive mask mandate in place.

"We have the capability here," Poloncarz said. "We've been enforcing all along and we'll continue to enforce but the most important thing lately is businesses have been following the rules."

But for neighboring Niagara County, there's a bit more of a gray area.

"There are counties across the state who are standing up and saying defy this mandate, don't follow it, but I think for the most part, what you're seeing is statements like ours. We encourage mask wearing. We encourage all of those mitigation strategies. We simply don't have the resources to dedicate to enforcing that at this time," Republican Niagara County Legislature Chair Rebecca Wydysh said.

Wydysh said the county will continue to focus its limited department of health resources on things like vaccine and test distribution and helping school districts. She said while the county won't be fining businesses for failure to enforce masking, it will be implementing an "educate to cooperate" strategy.

"We can't be everywhere all the time, but we will get calls and we will get complaints from residents who have noticed things going on and that's when we can reach out to that business and make sure that they're aware of the mandate, answer any questions that they might have about how that works and really just try to help teach them about the different strategies that we have," she said.

The state will reassess the mandate on Jan. 15 following an anticipated holiday surge.

"I encourage the counties to do this but it's also, this is also up to individuals. Individuals are asked to follow regulations and in general follow laws and that is what we're continuing to do here. There's nothing extraordinary about this. It's one more area where we hope and anticipate there will be compliance," Hochul said.