No COVID-19 related fine increases, but Contra Costa Co. supervisors plead for compliance
By Sam Richards article
CONCORD, Calif. - Following emotional, at times intense testimony from both the public and from supervisors, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday chose not to raise administrative fines for businesses that violate the county s COVID-19-related health orders, saying steep fines would only further harm businesses already barely surviving.
County Supervisor Karen Mitchoff, who a week earlier had suggested such fine could go to $10,000 or $20,000 to discourage some habitual violators of health order rules, said Tuesday that the current fines aren t working. She said a group of Danville restaurants openly defying orders to end outdoor dining will keep operating, as will a business in her own central county district that has opted to rack up $1,000-a-day fines rather than obey the rules.
I m sorry to use that kind of language, but that s the language we re hearing, Mitchoff said. As for the current uptick in local COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths, This is not going to end until businesses choose to comply, Mitchoff said.
Indeed, of almost 25 commenters on the fine proposal Tuesday, almost all either blasted Mitchoff and the other supervisors for even considering the idea, and said they small businesses they or others own are foundering as it is. Two called the idea unconstitutional; one said it would open the county to lawsuits; another said the supervisors were being more like a dictatorship than a republic already, in regard to health orders.