Putting people back to work in San Jose — safely
It has been five weeks since Santa Clara County leaders issued the first shelter-in-place order and asked all nonessential workers to stay home. I applaud their efforts that are successfully, and dramatically, slowing the spread of this deadly virus, and I welcome their continued expertise on how to keep us safe. It is clear that times of challenge come with important lessons.
What I have learned is that government cannot continue to spend money on stabilizing our economy and make up for huge job losses for much longer, especially since our local and state governments depend mostly on business-activity-related taxes to provide services. While they can be helpful for some, in the shortrun, subsidies are often given to those most adept at dealing with government and help may not get to the small businesses and micro-enterprises most affected. Hence, we must look for new, hygienic and efficient ways to return to work sooner, rather than later. We need to use some of the new tools — and the skills to use them — we have been acquiring, like teleconferencing, to provide flexibility for our workforce, when possible.
This is why I am calling on our county and state health officials to look for safe ways to put people back to work as soon as it can be done safely. We need our public health leaders to assess risks and look for ways to mitigate them, one job classification at a time. There are many jobs that could resume, with the right protections and procedures. I think of outdoor jobs that do not typically require interpersonal interactions or that naturally meet the social distancing requirements — jobs like pool and lawn maintenance, landscaping, as well as construction jobs like foundations, framing and exterior work.
If we do not take a thoughtful, science-based approach to getting people back to work, no amount of government subsidies will revive our workforce or rescue our small businesses and micro-enterprises.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and we have learned a lot in the past two months on how to work from home and to conduct our affairs more safely. I am proud of our city’s planning department, for example, for implementing video inspections. Video inspections will revolutionize our planning department because it creates safety and efficiency while improving customer service.
For restaurants, we have temporarily allowed them to deliver alcoholic beverages, as long as they are delivered with meals. This has allowed some of our struggling restaurants that used to be full service to stay open and eke out a living. These lessons and policies must be carried forward when we ultimately emerge from the COVID-19 emergency.
We should also not miss the opportunity to rethink local and state policies so we can meet challenges more quickly — such as by reforming the California Environmental Quality Act, investing in online learning, and reconsidering employment laws, like AB 5, to help small businesses and the self-employed. We had big challenges around issues like a housing supply that failed to keep up with demand, and the crisis of homelessness, well before COVID-19 came along. Temporary changes in CEQA and contracting laws have sped up emergency and permanent housing development.
Let’s continue to innovate when it comes to local and state policy so we may continue to meet the challenges of the current and POST-COVID-19 landscapes.