SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – As the coronavirus continues, “non-essential” businesses around San Diego County, and the world, are being mandated to shut down.
The extended shutdowns are not only hurting the economy on both the national and local level, but it is also hurting the small business owners, and employees. People are struggling to make ends meet, and Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey has been actively voicing support to safely get people back to work.
Mayor Bailey wrote an opinion editorial about the mandated closures of ‘non-essential’ businesses and the financial impact it has resulted in.Photo by Abraham Barrera on Unsplash
Why Are We Criminalizing Small Businesses?
Last week, as the owner of a boutique toy store in San Diego County was packaging a puzzle for delivery to a local customer, law enforcement officials knocked on his shop’s front door. The owner informed the officers that, due to retail stores being deemed “non-essential,” he changed his business model to only process orders online and was using his shop as a temporary warehouse for inventory. Unfortunately, neither the temporary warehouse nor his job met the state’s definition for “essential” either. The store owner was forced to close as he was facing a $1,000 fine and misdemeanor.
Although operating a toy store did not meet the state’s definition of an “essential” job, it was still an essential job to him.
During the past several weeks, over 22 million people lost their jobs as tens of thousands of businesses were forced to shut down.
While some businesses closed due to lack of work, and others, such as night clubs and concert venues closed because these businesses are inherently crowded, some businesses were closed simply because they were not considered “essential” in the eyes of politicians and bureaucrats.
Even if these jobs did not meet the state’s definition of “essential,” each one of the 22 million jobs lost so far were essential to someone. Each one of those jobs helped keep a roof over an employee’s head and food on the table for an employee’s family.
The state’s health orders seem arbitrary at best.
Why are big box retailers allowed to operate with hundreds of customers and employees at a time, but small mom and pop stores are shut down? Why is Amazon allowed to deliver the exact same puzzle as the local toy store sells, but the toy store is banned from making the same delivery?
While some businesses such as grocery stores and gas stations are obviously essential, other, less obvious, businesses are allowed to operate as well. For example, even though underlying health conditions from lung and liver disease increase the risk of dying from Covid-19, both marijuana shops and liquor stores are considered “essential” by state politicians.
The truth is that every single business and every single job is essential to someone.
Rather than picking winners and losers arbitrarily, the state health orders should consider all businesses and jobs as essential and set policies that are evenly applied. If health officials feel big box retailers are safe for the public with certain guidelines in place, let small businesses open with the same guidelines.
It is time to start planning for the re-opening of our economy and allow Americans to work again. The best thing we can do to help small businesses and their employees is to get them back operating like normal as quickly and safely as possible.
Until then, the very least we could do is to stop criminalizing their operations and allow them to operate under the same guidelines as everyone else. After all, their businesses and jobs are just as essential.
Photo by Abraham Barrera on Unsplash
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April 24, 2020 at 04:51AM
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Opinion: Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey asks, 'Why are we criminalizing small businesses?' - - KUSI
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