Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti recently announced that the city would shut off water and electricity to any home or business that breaks LA’s COVID-19 lockdown guidelines.
Some would applaud the move given the fact that crowded indoor venues could promote the spread of the novel coronavirus. However, anyone who cares about basic human rights should be appalled. Shutting off utilities to “dissenters” is a move straight out of the old USSR or Communist China, not a supposedly free nation.
To make matters worse, there is really no oversight over the whole utility shutdown process. If the police come to a property and deem that a gathering is illegal, the officers will ask the Department of Water and Power (DWP) to shut off service to the property. Within 48 hours, the property will no longer have power or water.
The order does not provide information on what a home or business owner can do in the wake of a power and water shut-off. There does not seem to be an appeals process whereby one can contact the DWP or the Police Department to request a reassessment. Naturally, one could try to take the case to court but, in the meantime, living without electricity or water would be a nightmare situation for anyone involved. It could even be life-threatening if the homeowner has young children, or a member of the home is elderly and/or has health problems.
Despite all of this, it seems that Mayor Garcetti doesn’t have time to contemplate such scenarios. He is too busy trying to come up with a new lockdown order for his city. Because that’s the only solution Democrats have put forward during this whole process — stay in your home indefinitely until no one dies ever again.
Allowing city officials the right to determine who gets power and water and who does not is dangerous — for extremely obvious reasons. Today, it could be over COVID-19 parties. In the future, the criteria could be different. Perhaps a liberal official doesn’t like a particular local church; maybe he or she could make up false allegations against the church and have its power and water shut off in a day or two.
Mayor Garcetti’s assurance that only the most “egregious” offenders would lose power and water doesn’t make his order ethical or even legal. Calling this a “power grab” is a severe understatement. Allowing it to slide in the name of “preventing the spread of COVID-19” is allowing the government to have far more power than it should.
