Santa Clara County:
State crackdown on outdoor dining leads to local confusion.
An attempt by the state this month to crack down on outdoor dining in Silicon Valley added one more layer to what has become a head-spinning patchwork of ever-shifting state and local edicts aimed at containing the coronavirus.
Indoor dining is still forbidden by local order in Santa Clara County but is permitted in neighboring San Mateo County, although all signs indicate the coronavirus is no more threatening in one county than the other.
A spring that saw local and state officials move swiftly and in near unison to impose strict lockdowns to flatten the rising curve of COVID-19 infections has turned into a summer of fragmented reopening. With new cases and hospitalizations rising in much of the state, counties have chosen their own rules and pace to open for business.
Bewilderingly, all that changed over the Fourth of July weekend. After weeks of deference to local control, Gov. Gavin Newsom sent armed state agents to warn 6,000 restaurants of violations for serving food on site.
On July 3, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control sent officers to restaurants in Morgan Hill and Gilroy telling owners they had to cease outdoor dining under a July 1 order by Newsom, stunning local officials who said they were not alerted beforehand.
Local restaurant owners are baffled.
“If they shut us down, that’s really rude,” said Helen Nguyen, who was continuing to offer outdoor dining July 6 at her Pho Ha Noi restaurants in Cupertino and San Jose until told otherwise.
“It’s really stressful on a business owner right now. We don’t know what’s going on.”
That order was aimed at reining in outbreaks in counties that were on a state “watch list” for worrisome outbreak trends and required them to cease indoor dining for three weeks. Santa Clara County had been on that watch list due to rising COVID-19 hospitalizations. The county was removed from that list July 6.
Nevertheless, the California Department of Public Health said Santa Clara County still must obtain state permission before allowing outdoor dining. Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith said the state’s reopening rules didn’t clearly indicate that Sacramento’s blessing was required.
“Typically if it doesn’t mention it, the local public health officer has control over it,” Smith said, adding the county now is awaiting word from the state on its request for approval. “It’s in the state’s hands at this point.”
Adding to the frustration, the different dining rules for neighboring San Mateo and Santa Clara counties seem to have little connection to coronavirus outbreaks. Santa Clara, with 2 1/2 times the population of San Mateo County, has had fewer COVID-19 cases and fatalities per 100,000 residents. And the rate of positive test results in Santa Clara County—a key metric watched by Newsom—is 2.67%, compared with 4.9% in San Mateo County.
Outdoor dining also is allowed in Los Angeles County, even though it has about four times as many cases and deaths per 100,000 residents. Its positive test rate is 7.3 percent.
“At the end of the day, our numbers are better than the top 10 most populated counties in California,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Mike Wasserman said.
Santa Clara County officials have taken a more cautious approach to reopening, arguing other areas were moving too quickly and risking a surge of new cases, and have not sought state approval through a “variance” to allow indoor restaurant dining. But the county in a revised health order June 5 did allow outdoor dining.
There were no indications that the weekend crackdown was leading restaurants to close for lunch July 6, but business owners urged local officials for help.
“Can we get some clarity on outdoor dining, please?” the South First Area district in downtown San Jose asked on Twitter.