Column: Create COVID-19 fund for Hawaii businesses

In order to correct a major flaw in our state’s pandemic response, while protecting our communities from COVID-19, our state leaders and courts should strongly enforce new COVID-19 emergency orders and provide support for businesses impacted by them through the establishment of a COVID-19 special fund.

Many local businesses and working families have struggled to get by during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns and social gathering restrictions imposed by our state and county governments, which the virus’ spread has necessitated to protect our communities and health care systems, have shut down entire industries in some instances. It is clear that most businesses in Hawaii are voluntarily complying with emergency orders and in doing so, are abiding by our government’s rules and protecting our communities and health care system.

Unfortunately, the great flaw of our state’s pandemic response has been that those businesses and workers who have complied with COVID-19 orders and guidelines have often been hit hard financially, even to the point of bankruptcy, while often those violators of COVID-19 emergency orders have gotten away without punishment. This is exactly what happened at the recent large “super- spreader” party at the Kaiwi State Scenic Shoreline: out of the 300-400 who violated Gov. David Ige’s Executive Order 21-25, only four people received citations — and all for non-COVID-19 issues.

The result is stupefying. Those who follow the rules are essentially punished, while those who knowingly disobey them — and whose behaviors help prompt restrictions in the first place — stand to benefit from not getting caught or are given extreme leniency. Although that is most certainly not the goal of our state’s COVID-19 response, that has certainly been the outcome in many public cases.

The delta variant and the irresponsible behavior of many of our visitors and residents, especially many in our younger population, who have disobeyed gathering limits, ignored mask mandates and resisted vaccinations, has meant that more economically damaging restrictions — for those who follow the rules, that is — will come back to preserve our health care system and avoid the tragic deaths of more residents. Unfortunately, this time around, it is likely that we will not have the same level of federal aid money available to us, nor the momentum of a reopening economy.

Our leaders are not wrong in implementing more restrictive measures — at this point, we must. However, it is critical that this time around, our state leaders and courts reverse this flaw and ensure that those who blatantly violate emergency orders are properly cited, while those who follow them willingly are supported and protected.

Here’s one potential (and fairly straightforward) solution: Empower our police to cite the most obvious COVID-19 order violators, such as those at the Kaiwi Shoreline super- spreader party, and ensure those citations are properly processed through our courts. To support businesses and workers struggling as they comply with COVID-19 restrictions, our lawmakers can create a temporary COVID-19 special fund to provide temporary support to local businesses and their workers. Portions of the state’s general fund revenue — particularly revenue generated by enforcing emergency orders in the form of citations — can be redirected to finance this fund. Businesses demonstrating losses because of restriction compliance would apply for a modest grant as assistance to hold their business over and compensate their employees through the duration of new restrictions.

Such an option would be no cure-all to correct all irresponsible behavior or overcome the large economic hardships faced by businesses and local workers. However, seeing as COVID-19 will be with us for a while longer, it certainly would be more effective, and more just, than the self-defeating design of COVID-19 responses we have now.

Cameron Deptula is a public policy student at University of California-Berkeley.