Getting the short end of the Sacramento stick

We can only begin to imagine how challenging this year has been for California governor Gavin Newsom. After all, when he was celebrating the holiday season just one year ago, he — like the rest of us — had no way of knowing what December 2020 was going to look like.

So, to help him and his team of advisors more successfully navigate life and legislation in the Year of Coronavirus, we’re thinking of sending him a gift: a map of California.

And if we do, we’ll make sure to highlight Butte County in a different shade than Sacramento.

After all, that makes sense — right? It’s 90 miles from Chico to Sacramento, a good hour-and-a-half drive. And in many ways, our smallertown, rural- county way of life seems even farther away than that from big- city madness.

But, when it comes to “sense” in dealing with this pandemic, that’s still in pretty short supply in our state’s capitol. And, as always, the end result figures to be residents of a rural county getting the short end of the Sacramento stick.

The latest example is this regional stay-at-home order announced by Newsom last week. His plan is this: divide the state into five regions, and if any of those regions’ ICU-bed capacity falls below 15 percent, that entire region will be placed under the stayat-home order.

We understand drastic measures must be considered, and implemented, to slow the most recent spike of this horrific pandemic. We especially understand the drastic measures happen largely because too many people are ignoring commonsense guidelines to help slow the spread of the virus.

But we also understand that blindly issuing overreaching edicts is a pretty poor way of hitting the mark. And this is just the latest example of what has long since become standard operating procedure from Sacramento.

The problem, from our end, is this: Butte County has inexplicably been placed in the “Greater Sacramento” region instead of the “Northern California” region.

As of Monday, the percentage of open ICU beds in the Greater Sacramento region was just 20.3 percent. That’s basically one bad day away from the entire region being placed into the “stay at home” division.

But — in the Northern California region, which extends from Mendocino and Lake counties all the way to the Oregon and Nevada borders (except for Butte and Plumas), the number of available ICU beds is 28.2 percent — not even close ( yet) to the benchmark.

That means what Chico, Oroville and Gridley residents do to combat the spread of the virus, frankly, will have almost no impact on how they’re treated by the state. Instead, the ICU rates in Sacramento County — which has around seven times as many people as Butte County — will have a larger impact on what kind of mandates are imposed on Butte County than anything people in Butte County can do.

Where is the sense in that? It makes no sense at all. But, neither did Newsom’s “curfew” between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. ( Viruses can tell time?) And, especially, neither did the fact big-box stores like Walmart, Lowe’s and Home Depot have been able to stay open, while hundreds of smaller businesses offering the same goods and services have been shut down over and over — in too many cases, for good.

And now, actions of people in Sacramento could lead to even more closures … here?

It’s no wonder so many citizens in rural counties are refusing to follow statewide mandates. It’s no surprise business owners are staying open when they’ve been told to shut down. We’re not encouraging either; but, when local jurisdictions are given no local decision-making ability to counteract state-issued foolishness, to expect anything else would be, well, foolish.

We’re thankful we are much closer to a coronavirus vaccine than ever before, and we’re hopeful it will eventually slow the spread of the virus to a degree the governor’s mandates never have.

While we’re at it, we also wish they’d come up with a common- sense vaccination. Or at least a good road map.