Name: How to Reopen: California’s path to economic recovery
Uploaded: 2020-05-27
Duration: 4 min 25 s
Description: Tom Steyer, part of the state’s economic task force, talks Hollywood, Tesla and more.

[MUSIC PLAYING] TOM STEYER: We have 58 counties in California. Some of the counties will open up sooner than other counties, based on the health statistics. And so that it may be possible to do certain things in counties where the virus is declining and in a very low level, as opposed to other places where there might be a hot spot. It is not going to be a one size fits all in terms of industry. But it's also not going to be a one size fits all in terms of county. It's going to be done very deliberately across the state, based on the health statistics, which the governor is going to watch on a daily basis. To make sure that we're responding to the changes in the way the virus is behaving. Governor Newsom talked about closing the digital divide in his January State of the State Address. With the pandemic, the need to have school kids connected to high speed internet has a new urgency to it. Because even though schools are scheduled to reopen, there is a very high likelihood that it won't be the same way it was in 2009. And therefore there may be some sort of blended learning that involves an online portion. So it's urgent. If you think about how people are getting their medicine, today, in the time of COVID-19, I was seeing from a huge health system in California that 80% of their doctor's visits are over the phone, or over Zoom. 80%. That means you're going to have to really get the full impact of medicine, you're going to have to be hooked up to high speed internet. And so you're asking me, what are some of the things? Here's a perfect example, something that we knew before Governor Newsom was all over and had a huge program to bridge the digital divide. But the urgency and the timing have telescoped. When you talk about protocols, you're talking about distancing, you're talking about masking and all of the conditions to make sure that the virus doesn't spread. And in the case of the film and television industry, it involves how many people are around at a given time. So that there are real protocols in terms of who's on the set at a given time. And it will be run differently than it was before, when there was really an ability to have as many people as you wanted, doing anything including filming a TV show or a movie. It turned out Tesla worked through their issues with the health officials in Alameda County. They came to a mutual understanding of a safe way to reopen that plant. There's always going to be tension between people operating business, who are desperate to get their factories open, their workers back to work. And health officials were desperate to protect the safety and lives of California workers. Well, I think there's going to be a huge effort under retraining, reskilling and upskilling. And I think that people across California, that's got to be a huge impact. Because when you think about infrastructure, I think, people tend to think about the 1930s and building physical things, and that's certainly part of what's got to happen. But I think what's also going to happen is the human infrastructure and health infrastructure, bringing that up as well. This is going to involve bringing people along and retraining them to participate in more skilled, better paid jobs going forward, coming out of this, you know, economic slowdown. 

Tom Steyer, part of the state’s economic task force, talks Hollywood, Tesla and more.

How to Reopen: California’s path to economic recovery

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Tom Steyer talks Hollywood, Tesla and more.