Let OC Go Back to Work, Gov. Newsom

Every day the phones in my office ring off the hook from constituents in my 37th Senate District seeking help during the economic lockdown from the coronavirus.

Terminated employees need assistance filing for unemployment with the Employment Development Department. Businesses seek tax and regulatory relief at a time when they have shut down entirely or may still be using a skeleton crew. Seniors are worried about getting groceries and prescriptions. This is just a small sample. The list goes on.

My heart breaks when I hear their stories from individuals I’ve known for decades or young people in their first jobs.

One constituent just wrote me, “I believe we need to get back to work with the same procedures for safety as UPS, the USPS, grocery stores, Home Depot and many other companies. I’m a small business with five employees and I’ve kept my workers here working with almost no work. My money will run out eventually. 

“If Gov. (Gavin) Newsom extends the stay-at-home (order) until May 15, my company will not survive. If I lay off my workers, then they will have to wait up to a month to get their money. My bank, Wells Fargo, is extremely backed up with no sign of getting me a PPP loan and all the other lenders are requiring us to have a relationship. I’m at a total loss for surviving this time. Get us back to work OC.”

At the beginning of the lockdown, a restaurant manager told me he was forced to make personal calls to lay off 60 hourly employees, many in his employ for 10 years to even 20 years. If they’re not called back soon, their financial lives will be ruined and the restaurant itself might fold for good.

Data Driven

Yes, California needs to continue taking precautions to protect against the coronavirus, and no, I don’t have the expertise of a doctor or an epidemiologist.

But I don’t want to see the whole economy implode when reasonable accommodations can be made to reopen businesses. It’s time to start reopening California’s economy—carefully—sooner rather than later.

That’s why I wish Newsom would be more definite on when he expects to start relaxing the quarantine. His six-point plan, released on April 14, was vague, but seemed to imply criteria that are too strict. He needs to be more aggressive in the direction of getting California to open.

Relaxation of the rigorous statewide stay-at-home order should be data driven and regionally based.

Using updated statistics, precise parameters should be set for when a county can start opening up. From there, county public health officers can make approvals for triaged openings with reasonable restrictions.

As of April 16, Orange County had 1,425 cumulative cases and 25 deaths.

The medical system in Orange County, which has more than 5,300 hospital beds, has postponed a lot of operations and consultations to handle what was believed to be a huge surge of coronavirus cases. Instead, there are 138 people currently in the hospital, including 68 in the intensive care unit, according to the OC Health Care Agency.

Frankly, our hospitals, which have ceased most of their regular work to focus on the coronavirus, are not being overwhelmed.

Every day, better treatments and remedies are being introduced. Hopefully one day soon, so will a vaccine.

Orange County is the second most densely populated county in the state, yet OC is among those counties with the lowest per capita incidence of coronavirus.

Real People are Distressed

Even though we are much less affected than New York City or New Orleans, our population of 3.2 million isn’t being allowed to get back to work in a normal fashion.

The people calling me in distress are real people. They know they can work safely in place.

I don’t see why most businesses could not be re-opened with sensible precautions. Restaurants, for example, could cut their allowed occupancy in half, while still promoting takeouts. Churches, synagogues and temples could easily set up their services to keep people safe while re-engaging with their friends and congregants.

It’s not only individuals who are calling in fiscal distress. Cities are also imploding. Anaheim is losing about $1 million per day due to Disneyland’s closure. South Coast Plaza is shuttered, and Costa Mesa may never recover from the loss of its sales-tax revenues.

Sacramento has a minimal Rainy Day Fund for its 944 public school and 72 community college districts, most teetering.

If California doesn’t rev up its strong business engine, the damage to the economy will be so severe the state’s ability to fund anything, especially public health measures, could lead to other negative reverberations to our medical industry.

Open ASAP!

The cure ought not be worse than the disease.

Newsom should start the opening as soon as possible. Waiting until the middle of May or later is a bad idea.

If there are problems, such as infections increasing again in a county that relaxed the quarantines, then these counties have the authority and the right to tighten up the restrictions.

If we can all go to grocery stores in a respectful manner, then we can go anywhere.

Better hygiene, wearing protective masks and social distancing have become something of a new normal and should still be encouraged for the foreseeable future.

We can and should be trusted.

Get us back to work, Gov. Newsom.

Editor’s Note: John M. W. Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, represents the 37th District in the California Senate. Moorlach, who has often been called the fiscal conscience of the California Legislature, presciently warned of the Orange County government’s risky investments before it declared bankruptcy in 1994.