Sacramento County supervisors ‘abandoned’ public health during COVID-19 crisis, grand jury finds
Sacramento County supervisors “abandoned” the public health department in the early months of the pandemic, failing to quickly provide support, oversight and funds to the agency at the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis, a grand jury report concluded.
The grand jury investigation lambasted the Board of Supervisors for failing to request updates about the public health department’s COVID-19 response or funding needs at any time between March and mid-August, and for not scheduling a briefing by the public health officer.
The “executive disinterest” from supervisors, despite the urgency of the public health emergency, continued until public health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye made a direct request for funding in August 2020, the grand jury found.
“The Grand Jury is dumbfounded that the County Board of Supervisors seemed completely disconnected from the Office of Public Health in the midst of the crisis our community faced,” Jury Foreperson Deanna Hanson said in a statement, “and, it is simply irresponsible to think that Sacramento will never face another situation that needs immediate attention.”
“The burden and responsibility for safeguarding county residents through enforcement of COVID-19 public health orders were almost entirely borne by the County Public Health Officer and” the Office of Public Health, the grand jury report stated.
The grand jury report, released Monday, comes two months after the jury published a similarly critical report, which contended supervisors “abandoned responsibility for COVID spending” and “undermined public confidence in government” in 2020 when they allocated the lion’s share of $181 million in federal coronavirus aid toward the Sheriff’s Office.
That report found that then-county executive Nav Gill and county supervisors “showed little interest in the allocation and utilization of the CARES Act funds received,” with little to no action taken for three months, even as a major COVID-19 surge developed that summer.
Meanwhile, the public health department made several COVID-19 emergency budget requests, but were “inexplicably forced” to navigate the county’s “cumbersome” annual budget allocation process which can’t expedite requests, Monday’s grand jury report found.
“That rigid process absolutely stymied appropriate and timely disbursal of emergency funds requested by (the public health department) for needed equipment, staffing and services,” the grand jury report stated.
Monday’s grand jury report recommended the county develop a public health emergency response plan, “which would recognize and meet the immediate requirements of (the public health department) to implement future public health orders to best ensure the safety of Sacramento County residents.”
The county should also develop a separate emergency budget allocation and approval process, the grand jury report recommended, and increase funding for the public health department to improve staffing levels.
Sacramento County’s COVID-19 response
Despite the department being understaffed and underfunded, the public health office “efficiently ramped up its operation” to address the pandemic, the grand jury found.
Public health staff took on a slew of jobs — contact tracing, analyzing COVID-19 surveillance data, creating a public health dashboard with up-to-date case numbers and deaths, opening and running community COVID-19 testing sites.
Without additional funding, the department used “many thousands of hours of medical reserve corps volunteer time were utilized to fill the staffing and service gaps,” the investigation found. Most public health department staff members each worked 20-30 hours of overtime every week.
“These under-investments in public health presented significant challenges for (the department) in meeting the immediate public health emergency response required in a pandemic,” the grand jury found.
No public health order enforcement
The department’s efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 were also hampered by “county and local law enforcement’s refusal” to enforce public health orders, the grand jury wrote.
The same day in June 2020 the county public health department issued a mask order in line with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order, Sheriff Scott Jones announced he would not direct deputies to enforce the requirement.
The Board of Supervisors also “failed to enact an ordinance to authorize enforcement of orders issued by (the public health department) throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” the grand jury found.
The grand jury pointed out that supervisors did not implement civil penalties for businesses and individuals that failed to comply with health orders in December 2020, despite a request to do so from Dr. Kasirye.
“This failure was in sharp contrast to enforcement ordinances enacted by County Boards of Supervisors in several other northern California counties,” the grand jury wrote, including San Mateo, Yolo, Contra Costa, Marin and Napa counties.
This story was originally published April 4, 2022 at 12:23 PM.