Two small cities in the San Joaquin Valley that rejected public health orders to shut down certain businesses during the coronavirus pandemic remain defiant after the state took steps to withhold hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid.
At their city council meetings on Monday, leaders in Atwater, a city of 29,000 off Highway 99 in Merced County, and Coalinga, a city of 17,000 in the southwest corner of Fresno County, stood by resolutions they passed this spring allowing all businesses in their communities to reopen.
The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services warned the cities last week that they could collectively lose about $600,000 of federal coronavirus relief unless they come into compliance with state health requirements.
Both are located in hard-hit Central Valley counties that have recently emerged as hot spots for the virus. They are among areas where Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered the closure of bars, indoor dining, gyms, movie theaters, indoor worship services and other sectors believed to more likely venues for virus transmission.
Local officials said it was an economic trade-off they are willing to make. They decry Newsom as a bully who is illegally denying them money they are owed.
Atwater Mayor Paul Creighton, who led an effort in May to declare it a “sanctuary city for all businesses,” said he worried that shutting down again would cost more in lost tax revenue and failed businesses than whatever financial aid the state is offering. Slammed by the last recession a decade ago, Atwater has long been considered one of the most fiscally challenged cities in the state.
“We don’t want to be a ghost town,” Creighton told The Chronicle on Wednesday. “We’re trying to navigate through this pandemic without being completely devastated by the end of it.”
Coalinga has tried to get around state closure orders by declaring every business in the city “essential.” The state isn’t buying it.
Ever since Newsom imposed the country’s first statewide stay-at-home order in March, lockdown measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus have become a highly combustible political battle in California.
Protesters showed up to Capitol in Sacramento in April urging the governor to reopen the state. Frustrated by the slow initial pace of reopening, several rural counties dropped shelter-in-place rules in early May in violation of the state order, prompting warnings from the Newsom administration that they might not receive disaster funds.
Atwater and Coalinga, however, are the first communities to actually be penalized by the state for flouting pandemic regulations.
The recently passed state budget included $1.8 billion in federally supplied coronavirus relief for cities and counties. It also gave Newsom the authority to withhold the money if his administration determined that a local government was not following state guidelines on coronavirus response.
“We give an enormous amount of power, control and authority to local government, but what we’re now looking for is accountability,” Newsom said last month.
Atwater was eligible to receive $387,428 and Coalinga $212,358 of the funding. But in similar letters last Thursday, Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Office of Emergency Services, informed them that the state would not provide the first allocation of that money until they rescinded their resolutions defying the business closures. Ghilarducci noted that both cities are located in counties with rising hospitalizations and rates of positive tests higher than the state average.
“All of these actions were, and remain, necessary to preserve public health and safety,” Ghilarducci wrote. “COVID-19 does not stop at administrative boundaries and one community’s failure to follow public health orders will negatively impact other communities.”
Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the emergency services office, said the state remains optimistic that the two cities will rescind their resolutions.
“The goal is that we provide all of the money to all of the cities and counties,” he said.
The City Council in Coalinga passed a resolution on May 7 declaring all businesses in the city “essential.” Councilman Adam Adkisson said Wednesday it was a necessary step to preserve small businesses that could not otherwise make it through the pandemic.
Gyms, houses of worship and even the movie theater in town are open, he said, though restaurants and other businesses with state licenses have been more cautious. Coalinga has recorded 157 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, a lower rate of infection than in most other cities in Fresno County.
“I would like to get the state off our back,” Adkisson said. “We’re doing what we had to do to survive.”
He was one of four council members who voted down a motion Monday by Mayor Ron Lander to rescind the resolution, the Fresno Bee reported. The city is now seeking help from the federal government to get Newsom to hand over the relief money, and will consider in the coming week whether to file suit.
“It’s like we didn’t do his homework for him, so he’s going to take our lunch money,” Adkisson said.
Atwater has suffered a larger outbreak than Coalinga — 590 total cases as of Tuesday, compared with just 12 on May 15, when the City Council passed its “sanctuary city” resolution.
Creighton, the mayor, dismissed any connection between the surge and keeping businesses open. He said the city has been following safety guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and encouraged the state to provide more testing supplies so officials could identify where the hot spots are in the community.
“We need their help,” he said. “We don’t need their discipline.”
Atwater officials affirmed their stance at a City Council meeting Monday, which the Merced Sun-Star reported was also attended by activists with Freedom Angels, the anti-vaccine group that organized the Capitol protests.
Creighton said Newsom is choosing winners and losers during the pandemic — first among businesses that can remain open and now among cities that can receive federal aid. He said it was “shocking and appalling” that the governor is withholding money from one of the most vulnerable communities in the state, comparing it to abuse.
“He can’t just be a bully all the time,” the mayor said.
Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff
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