Coronavirus
Northern California counties scramble to reopen. Some are confused by Newsom’s demands
At least eight Northern California counties rushed Monday to persuade state health officials they are ready to reopen key segments of their local economies on a fast-track basis – perhaps as soon as Tuesday.
But the process for what Gov. Gavin Newsom calls a region-based economic reopening remained mired in uncertainty and confusion, with some counties saying they believe they can open businesses without a formal state approval and others saying they believe they need some affirmative state backing.
Newsom may clear up some confusion when he offers more details on his Phase 2 reopening plan at a noon press conference on Tuesday. The governor is expected to list the restrictions and conditions for reopening restaurants for on-site dining. He may also discussing reopenings for other businesses, including offices for those where teleworking is not possible and retail for in-store shopping.
As of Monday, Placer, El Dorado, Yuba, Sutter, Nevada, Butte, Colusa and Modoc counties had submitted or were about to submit what the state is calling “attestation” documents to the governor and state Department of Public Health. The documents offer evidence that each county essentially is seeing coronavirus spreading only at a minor level, and that county officials have plans in place to handle a potential increase in COVID-19 infections as they reopen businesses.
It is unclear, however, whether submitting those forms is sufficient to win state approval to reopen, or whether the state will assert that it must pass judgment on whether each county has met state standards.
On Thursday of last week, the governor’s health chief said counties will have to show that they are doing enough testing, have enough coronavirus tracing staffers and that the county’s infection rate is below a certain per capita standard. Those criteria are precise. For instance, they say a county is only eligible for early Phase 2 reopening if it has not experienced any COVID-19-related deaths in the last 14 days.
That standard will be much tougher for more populous county to hurdle. Some counties, such as Yolo and Kern, also say the per capita infection rate standard is not necessarily fair for counties that have had outbreaks in assisted care living facilities.
On Monday, Newsom said he recognizes that counties are all different and said his administration “will work with every county ... We are open to arguments, and interested in evidence.”
Opening from coronavirus too early
Newsom and epidemiologists have said one of their big fears is reopening businesses and offices too early, and causing a second wave of infections that could be worse than the first. That in turn would force another and perhaps more economically devastating shutdown later this year.
Newsom on Monday contended that 70 percent of the state economy is currently up and running. He did not cite a source for that statistic.
Anger and resentment among some residents, notably those who have lost jobs and income, has been brewing for a month. The governor already has had run-ins in the past week with three Northern California counties, Yuba, Sutter and Modoc.
The joint Yuba-Sutter health department allowed a select group of businesses to reopen as of May 4, despite a state order that those business remain closed. They include restaurants, gyms, shopping malls, hair salons, barbers, and nail salons.
The state in response sent Alcoholic Beverage Control regulators to restaurants in the counties telling them they could be charged with a misdemeanor crime and could lose liquor licenses. Other state agencies told nail and hair salons to close back down.
Newsom’s Office of Emergency Services dispatched letters to Yuba, Sutter and Modoc county officials, urging them to comply with the governor’s approach to gradually reopening the economy, telling them their share of $15 billion in state-controlled federal coronavirus dollars could be jeopardized.
“Disaster assistance programs prohibit a jurisdiction from receiving funding for a condition caused by its own negligence,” Emergency Services Director Mark Ghilarducci wrote. Also, he wrote, if the counties believe they can reopen their economies because they don’t have a public health emergency, that might disqualify them for the funding as well.
Some of the businesses that opened last week in Yuba and Sutter – notably salons and gyms – are not part of the governor’s Phase 2 reopening. They are listed in Phase 3, which is at least a month away.
Yuba and Sutter officials say they are sticking with their current directive that those businesses are allowed to open, but they have advised establishments to consult lawyers about their legal status. Meanwhile, area leaders are in talks with the governor’s health office.
“We are continuing to reach out to CDPH in order to reconcile the disparities between the state public health officer’s order and our current Yuba-Sutter position,” local Health Officer Dr. Phuong Luu said in an email to The Sacramento Bee on Monday afternoon.
Butte County is among local counties that have been whipsawed in recent days. County officials triumphantly said last Friday they had checked all necessary boxes and were ready to allow shoppers to go back inside stores as early as Saturday as long as employees wore masks and maintained social distancing protocols and other safety procedures.
“There are many businesses that are ready to reopen,” county Supervisor Tami Ritter said at a press conference, adding that Butte’s quick response was a testament to a collaboration between government and the private sector.
As of Monday, though, county officials said they were not yet quite sure where they stood with the state. Notably, the state hadn’t yet posted Butte’s “attestation” form signifying that the county had complied with the state Department of Public Health’s checklist. A spokeswoman for the county, Lisa Almaguer, said the final step was expected late Monday.
Business leaders said they didn’t fault the county for the confusion. “It’s learn as you go,” said Katy Thoma, chief executive of the Chico Chamber of Commerce. “No one’s ever done a pandemic before.”
She said she isn’t aware of any retailers that had gone beyond curbside service.
Rural California counties want flexibility
Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, continued his argument that rural counties with lower COVID-19 rates cannot be required by the state to wait for larger, harder-hit coastal counties, and that the governor was wrong to send regulators out to twist arms.
“Hopefully, business owners can move forward without state regulators threatening to take away their livelihoods with arbitrary penalties for noncompliance with an outdated state order,” Gallagher wrote in a press statement last week. “We owe a debt of gratitude to the leadership in Yuba-Sutter who put a spotlight on how we can open safely in the North State and provided a pathway for other counties to follow.”
While some counties are at odds with the governor, Nevada County officials say they are supportive of Newsom’s plan. They will have county representatives out Tuesday morning visiting business owners to educate them on necessary precautions so that they can reopen safely when state health officials give the county the green light.
“We’re continuing to put the health and safety of our population first,” said Heidi Hall, chair of the Nevada County board of supervisors. “We want to continue doing the good work we’ve been doing.”
Not all Northern California counties are pushing for fast-track reopenings. Six Bay Area counties that announced the first lockdowns in March – beating Newsom to the punch – are proceeding more cautiously than even the governor about reopening businesses.
When Newsom gave his OK statewide on Friday for stores to begin conducting curbside sales, San Francisco Mayor London Breed tweeted that her county would not allow that activity until May 18, or 10 days after the rest of the state. Marin County also expects to catch up with the state May 18.
Alameda County pegged its partial reopening at “mid-May,” while Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties haven’t offered a timetable.
The two largest counties in the Sacramento region find themselves uncertain this week.
Sacramento County’s efforts to win state approval to reopen restaurants, some offices and stores early has hit a snag. The county suffered two death in recent days, essentially disqualifying it from reopening for now, because the state standard is no deaths in the last two weeks.
As well, the county does not appear to have nearly enough contact tracers on staff to meet the governor’s stated standards.
Placer County officials, in contrast, say they believe they are “well-positioned” to get the green light to move deeper into Phase 2.
Placer County has met several key criteria required to start allowing businesses like restaurants and shopping malls to reopen with modifications: There hasn’t been a death in Placer County in the last two weeks, and the county has one of the lowest infection rates in the state.
That led the board of supervisors to unanimously approve submitting an attestation to the state Monday. The move comes after Placer County sent a strongly worded letter to Newsom demanding municipalities have more control over when and how they reopen their local economies.
But there were several benchmarks that Placer County is still racing to meet. Placer County currently has a team of 15 people that can conduct contact tracing, far below the 60 required under local variance. On Monday morning, the county began training 50 employees to become so-called disease detectives. That training will be complete within a week, officials said.
Though supervisors expressed excitement about potentially moving deeper into Phase 2, they were concerned about the lack of information for when counties could start moving into Phase 3 – when businesses like movie theaters and hair salons can reopen.
“It’s great that we’ve opened up some businesses,” board chair Bonnie Gore said Monday. “(But) then we have to decide what we want to do with the next step instead of waiting and waiting and waiting.”
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