Tulare County defies Newsom
Supervisors let businesses reopen, violate state’s rules
Gov. Gavin Newsom this week loosened reopening requirements for counties wanting to get back to life as normal amid the coronavirus outbreak. But that wasn’t enough for Tulare County.
The rural San Joaquin Valley county’s Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to allow restaurants, shopping malls, hair salons, movie theaters and most other commercial establishments to welcome back the public, despite not meeting new criteria for phasing out state shelterinplace orders.
“It’s become an issue of needing to get people back on their feet, back to work,” said Supervisor Dennis Townsend, who authored the county’s measure that permits virtually all businesses to reopen and halts local enforcement of the California stayathome directive. “By trying to protect people, we were taking away the livelihood of people.”
Tulare County has had 1,539 cases of COVID19 and 71 deaths. On Tuesday, health
officials reported 101 new cases.
Newsom’s effort to relax the criteria for county reopenings came Monday amid pressure from many parts of the state that think the 2monthold lockdown has gone on too long. A handful of counties had begun to take matters into their own hands, encouraging residents to get out in public again and businesses to open their doors. None, though, had ignored the new rules until now.
Tulare County’s defiance underscores the difficulty the governor has had in determining when to lift the shelterinplace and how to address the uneven impacts of the pandemic in different regions of the state. In some places, death tolls from the highly contagious coronavirus have yet to tail off while other locations have had few or no infections.
Most of the Central Valley, as well as parts of California’s mountainous north, have had fewer problems than urban regions like the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
“Our numbers are not that bad,” said Mike Fligor, owner of the small restaurant chain Fugazzi’s in the San Joaquin Valley, who has been clamoring to get up and running again. “I get the sickness part of this, I do, but you can’t shut the whole world down.”
Fligor wasn’t among several in Tulare County’s business community who rushed to open after local leaders gave the green light. While some restaurants, shops and cafes were operating, many merchants remained concerned that the state would take action against anyone who defied the shelterinplace orders, as it did in counties that had broken the rules earlier.
Two weeks ago in Sutter, Yuba and Modoc counties, state regulators threatened to take away liquor licenses and salon permits from dozens of businesses that spurned the state directive.
State officials reacted quickly to the Tulare County Board of Supervisors vote, sending notice Tuesday to county leadership that they were not acting legally. The letter, sent by the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said the county risked losing millions of dollars of government aid for COVID19-related expenses and natural disasters if it didn’t come into compliance.
County leaders said they had no intention of changing course.
“We will not be doing any type of enforcement,” said Supervisor Kuyler Crocker.
Newsom’s revised criteria for an incremental reopening of California’s counties is meant to accelerate the return to normalcy in places where coronavirus infections have subsided or have always been low. Counties must meet certain thresholds for testing, medical care and caseloads.
Notably, the new regulation sheds a requirement that counties can’t have had a single COVID19 death for two weeks before moving forward. Instead, counties must meet certain limits on the rate of new infections. To reopen, counties must show they’ve had less than 25 cases per 100,000 people during the previous two weeks.
While the governor said Monday that 53 of the state’s 58 counties would satisfy the requirements that allow them to move to at least the first stage of reopening, he said five counties would not. Tulare County was one of them.
Tulare County has been plagued by several recent outbreaks at nursing homes as well as food processing and packing plants. The number of new infections exceeds the state’s threshold for moving forward.
County Supervisor Amy Shuklian said it was unfair that the state included infections at nursing homes in the total assessed for reopening. The facilities, she noted, are stateregulated and there’s little the county can do to improve health conditions at the sites.
“We were looking to pull those numbers out,” she said. “Even prior to COVID19, a couple of them had really bad records, and the state didn’t do anything.”
Still, Shuklian voted against Tuesday’s reopening measure, which passed 32. She said she wants businesses back but thinks the action went too far.
The measure allows the county to move to what the governor calls stage three. In this stage, higherrisk venues with larger congregations of people, including theaters, churches, gyms and salons, are allowed to open. No counties have met the requirements to proceed this far.
Nearly 30 counties have attested that they meet the criteria for stage two. This stage allows dinein restaurants and shops to begin opening. In all stages, business owners are required to maintain new health standards, including ensuring social distancing.