Lawmakers blast Newsom over ‘standoff ’ in vaccine plan

SACRAMENTO — Bay Area legislators are ramping up pressure on the Newsom administration over a state program to vaccinate the poorest Californians that largely bypasses the region, after two private meetings this week failed to yield changes.

Twenty state lawmakers, representing nearly the entire Bay Area delegation, released a letter Friday to Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly and Government Operations Secretary Yolanda Richardson, denouncing the recent changes to vaccine distribution that they said were not equitable and hurt the Bay Area.

“This is a matter of life and death for our community,” they wrote. “This plan needs to be restructured and recalibrated immediately.”

Sen. Dave Cortese, a San Jose Democrat who met with the governor’s aides Monday and had expected a fix within days, said Friday that negotiations were at a “standoff.” He

“This plan needs to be restructured and recalibrated immediately.”

Letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom from 20 state lawmakers

said a second meeting with administration officials Thursday evening — which, like the first, did not include Gov. Gavin Newsom himself — undermined his confidence in their approach to public health.

“It’s hard to understand the motivation,” he said. “My colleagues in the Bay Area are kind of dumbfounded — or perhaps flabbergasted would be a better word — that they are not just looking at the actual COVID impact.”

On a call with reporters Friday, Ghaly said the fluctuations in vaccine distribution under the plan “were fairly small across the whole state” and that he expected “counties will be at least getting as much as they’ve received in the past” as supply increases over the coming weeks.

In their latest shift to California’s everchanging vaccination strategy, officials announced last week they would begin allocating 40% of doses to residents in more than 400 of the state’s lowestincome ZIP codes, an attempt to address a disparity in who has been able to get shots.

But a Chronicle analysis found that only 2% of people who would benefit from the program live in the Bay Area, even though the region represents 20% of California’s population and has many needy communities. Five of the nine counties — Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Sonoma and Napa — are excluded from the plan altogether.

Hundreds of local officials and community organizations signed onto Friday’s letter, which urges the state to consider census tracts instead of ZIP codes for vaccine prioritization. It cites East Palo Alto, Hayward, San Francisco’s Mission and Bayview districts, Marin City and East San Jose, among others, as areas that were left out of the state’s plan despite having disproportionately high rates of COVID19.

Cortese said legislators presented that option, which he believes would be a relatively easy adjustment, to the Newsom administration during the Thursday evening meeting, but the governor’s aides were not receptive.

“That’s their call,” he said.

“I don’t know whether anyone can force them to do anything differently. I don’t think it’s sustainable for them.”

Sen. Mike McGuire, a Healdsburg Democrat who has also been in the meetings, said he expected that the conversations with Newsom’s office would continue, though nothing has been scheduled yet.

“The governor is absolutely right to shine a huge spotlight on equity,” he said. “Those in the Bay Area deserve equal attention.”