A Los Angeles county official who voted to ban outdoor dining to tamp down rising coronavirus cases reportedly sat down for dinner at an outdoor eatery just hours later.
L.A. County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl was spotted at Il Forno Trattoria in Santa Monica, Calif., last Tuesday — shortly after voting with the Board of Supervisors to shutter the county’s 31,000 restaurants over COVID-19 safety concerns, Fox 11 Los Angeles reported.
A spokesperson for Kuehl said the dinner was a final splurge — and it didn’t violate the closure order. The ban went into effect the next day.
“She did dine al fresco at Il Forno on the very last day it was permissible,” the statement said. “She loves Il Forno, has been saddened to see it, like so many restaurants, suffer from a decline in revenue. She ate there, taking appropriate precautions, and sadly will not dine there again until our Public Health Orders permit.”
At the Board of Supervisors meeting, she’d described outdoor dining as “a most dangerous situation” because tables of unmasked patrons potentially exposing servers to the coronavirus.
Janice Hahn, a county supervisor who opposed the closure, was furious.
“We have to remember that we who are in public office are held to a very high standard as we should be,” she told the news outlet.
“One of the things I’m realizing with some of these new restrictions is if we can’t garner the trust of the public to be with us in this fight against the virus, then we’ve lost a big battle. And I’m feeling that now nine months into this is we’re beginning to lose the trust of the public.”
On Sunday, California became the first state to record over 100,000 cases in just a week, a New York Times database showed.
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