California state leadership is confused. Sacramento shut down schools and businesses for years while simultaneously granting early release to thousands of violent, repeat felons. With the State Legislature AWOL, Gov. Newsom demanded stricter, more isolating mandates beyond the CDC and WHO recommendations, while himself being a repeat offender in violating those very mandates. Children who need the classroom environment and are least affected by COVID and the working class whose businesses and employers were severely limited shouldered the greatest burden. Meanwhile, big businesses like Target, Walmart, and Amazon saw record profits as government shuttered their competitors. This is upside-down policymaking.
And at what unfathomable cost?
Even the mainstream media can no longer ignore the obvious fact that our government’s COVID response has been, at worst, counterproductive and, at best, in immediate need of drastic change. Since May, 2020, – long after the failed “two weeks to flatten the curve” — I advocated for safe business practices and policies in alignment with CDC recommendations, which were often less restrictive than the state’s plan. Responsible policymaking would have followed the science then that the mainstream media is only now recognizing but that was long obvious to me and many other advocates for liberty, limited government, and personal responsibility.
At this late date, it is past time for the State Legislature to reassert its proper legislative role. That is why I supported Senator Melissa Melendez in her proposal of SCR-5: ending the State of Emergency and returning local control to the counties, as many states across the nation have already done. Orange County is a good case study on why local control is preferred. Throughout the pandemic, OC reported lower case counts and more hospital capacity than any other surrounding county, even when those counties had stricter mandates.
Sadly, on March 15, the Senate Government Organization Committee defeated SCR-5 on a party-line vote: committee Republicans voting yes, while the Democrat members voted against ending the state of emergency.
This is all the answer needed to those voices out in the community and on my social media pages advocating for more controls and arguing, against all the evidence, that if OC had only isolated just a little bit more or masked up more vigorously, we could have avoided the worst of the pandemic. No. We did better than our neighbors, in every meaningful metric. And nowhere on the planet was safe from the ravages of the virus. It is wishful thinking to claim otherwise.
Fortunately, Gov. Newsom is moving in the right direction, but much slower than necessary. He recently issued a news release acknowledging declining case rates and hospitalizations. Strangely, California, Oregon, and Washington jointly (because we are so alike?) moved in lockstep to update their masking guidance. After 11:59 p.m. on March 11, California, Oregon and Washington changed their new indoor mask policies and move from mask requirements to mask recommendations in schools. What made the 12th safer than the 10th?
But contrary to the beliefs of some in the community who have asked me, Orange County cannot just ignore the state rules or lift the mandates ourselves. (And all of the mandates are state-imposed; OC has not required anything itself and, as mentioned, is better for it.) If a school or business chooses to violate state mandates, the state can — and has — made visits to those establishments with threats of severe penalties. It would be no defense to state action that the county “allowed” it. We have no power at the county level to allow the violation of state law, even if that law is unwise, unfair, and harmful.
Make no mistake. In California, we are seeing the ill effects of unwise, unfair, and harmful laws.
As always, I wish our community health, unity, and prosperity as we move forward in a new direction.
