Written by Michael Palomba
Yesterday, California Senate Republican Leader Shannon Grove sent a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom regarding the opening of local economies throughout the state.
I sent a letter to @GavinNewsom requesting CA grant cities & counties flexibility & discretion to safely reopen economies.
Californians in regions minimally affected by #COVID19 are suffering economically.
We must allow communities who can safely reopen to do so immediately. pic.twitter.com/lXZDWjwPIy
— Senator Shannon Grove (@ShannonGroveCA) April 23, 2020
In the letter, Grove requests that California grants cities and counties some flexibility in reopening their economies. She begins by thanking Newsom for his efforts during the pandemic, and then gets straight to business:
“I write to you now, however, because its time for us to move away from pursuing a set of uniform, statewide policies in response to this crisis and to instead permit for more focused and narrowly tailored solutions that are based on local conditions and levels of threat.”
Grove continues by saying that the virus “has had a sizably different rate of spread” throughout local communities and that some cities have “only a handful of cases.”
Grove’s point here is empirically correct, as different areas of the state have had widely disparate results. For example, here in San Diego County, we have just over 2,600 cases of coronavirus as of today. Meanwhile, the total population of San Diego is over 3.3 million, which means that a fraction of a percent of the county has been infected with COVID-19.
Meanwhile, 300,000 people have lost their jobs in the county and countless more have had hours cut and income reduced. This shutdown of our economy is having real repercussions for millions.
The economy has been shut down for too long; too many people are suffering economically and need relief. Not relief in the form of a government check, but in the form of employment and a stable income. Additionally, early predictions for coronavirus have been deemed an overreaction and the death toll is predicted to be far less.
What Leader Grove is calling for is not a complete and rapid reopening of the economy, but simply for local leaders to have flexibility when it comes to opening their economies. We can allow more businesses to operate, with guidelines in place, rather than forcing them to be shut down.
Millions more filed for unemployment this week and stocks are still at extreme lows compared to just three months ago. All of this is going to continue to get worse until we allow Americans to get back work.
