Gov. Gavin Newsom | AP Photo OAKLAND, Calif. – Modoc County – one of California’s most desolate jurisdictions with no known coronavirus cases – says it will allow bars, restaurants and churches to reopen Friday despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide lockdown. “We’re not in this at all to defy anything. We align with the plans. We’re just at a different phase in this because of where we are and how we live, ”Heather Hadwick, deputy director of the county’s Office of Emergency Services, told POLITICO on Thursday. Advertisement
The plan still recommends that all at-risk residents – those and older or who have underlying health conditions – remain at home. Restaurants and bars would have to cut their maximum capacity in half. The rural outpost, like many counties far from the coast, diverges from the California known nationally. Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats more than 2-1, while 200 percent of voters chose Donald Trump in the presidential election. Maintaining physical distance is easier in the county of 9, (residents, located in a 4, – square-mile corner of northeast California that borders Oregon and Nevada. “It’s empty, and that’s on a normal day. If there’s one or two people in line at the grocery store, that’s odd. ” she said. Newsom on Thursday acknowledged he’s received requests from Modoc and several other communities requesting to ease the restrictions, but set “the next few weeks” as the timeline. He said counties may be “more prescriptive and restrictive” than the state guidelines, but looser measures will conflict with the state order. “Nothing would please me more than pleasing those local elected officials and to help them help all of us move through this pandemic,” he said. “But we’re not out of the woods – no part of the state, no part of this country, few parts of the globe have been immune to this virus.”
Hadwick admitted the county will be reopening against state orders, but said the governor “didn’t say he was challenging it” in his remarks. If the state cracks down on Modoc County, “we would work with him to try to figure something out that would work with our county.”
Lassen, Modoc, Trinity and Sierra are the four California counties without a single confirmed coronavirus case. “Somebody has to step up for rural California and we just happened to be the first,” Hadwick said.
While the majority of businesses in the county are already deemed essential, Hadwick said it would be different for others – be it the one-chair barber or the few small restaurants – to recover financially if the restrictions continue. “Covid – looks very different in Modoc, ”she said. “And it’s not here.”
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