News Story

No COVID Patients In Delta County, Yet Gladstone Tavern Closed On Whitmer’s Order

‘I’m not sure what science class she took,’ says business owner

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s 160th executive order forced bars and taverns to shut down indoor service if more than 70% of their gross income is derived from selling alcoholic beverages, thereby shuttering many rural small businesses while allowing larger establishments to remain open.

The disparity is particularly stark in small, rural communities in the Upper Peninsula, where populations are low and COVID-19 deaths are nearly non-existent.

“Currently there are zero COVID patients hospitalized in Delta County,” tavern owner Ann Sebeck said last week. “There have been 18 deaths in the entire Upper Peninsula.”

As of Aug. 3, there were two people in the entire U.P. hospitalized for COVID-19. The OSF St. Francis Hospital located in Delta County listed no COVID-19 patients as of Aug. 3, the latest date information is available from the state.

Sebeck, owner of The White Birch Tavern in Gladstone, was one of a number of local business owners forced to close their doors yet again under the latest order.

Gladstone, a community of 4,973 people, is in Delta County, which has had a total of 76 cases and three deaths from COVID-19, as of Aug. 9 according to the state of Michigan. The county’s population stands at 35,784.

The White Birch Tavern is a 28-stool business that gets more than 70% of its income from alcohol sales.

“We are very small,” Sebeck said. “We’re a little country bar and all we serve is pizza and burgers.”

While Sebeck was forced to shut down indoor service, neighboring taverns and bars that make more than 30% of their income from soda, food, games, apparel, a jukebox, or other sources are allowed to remain open at a reduced capacity under Whitmer’s order.

“We just don’t fall into that category,” she explained. “We do have a small outdoor area that would meet the [governor’s] requirements, but it is so small it wouldn’t even make enough to pay the employee’s wages.”

Sebeck said that while she is happy that other bars and restaurants in her community are able to remain open, she feels small establishments like hers are being penalized without cause.

“If my bar were open today, we would have a fourth of the people go through it versus the bars and restaurants that can still stay open,” she said. “It makes very little sense because taverns like ours are the ones that have the least people in them.”

“It almost feels like we’re being discriminated against because we didn’t have enough,” she added.

Sebeck’s mother owned and operated the bar for 43 years before Sebeck and her husband took over in 2019.

“At the end of the first two-month shutdown, revenue was down 30% from the year before,” she said.

Sebeck was able to retain her five employees due to government pandemic relief and unemployment benefits, but said the shutdown has taken a toll on her workers and the tavern’s local vendors.

“We purchase from small, local vendors who rely on our business to help keep them going,” she explained. “The destruction that’s happening to small businesses and the families that rely on those small businesses is devastating.”

The governor has not provided businesses with any anticipated dates for reopening.

“I feel it’s totally senseless. Our (coronavirus) numbers are so low,” Sebeck said.

She said the governor has failed to provide a factual basis to justify the latest shutdown.

“She keeps saying she’s following the science, but I’m not sure what science class she took,” Sebeck said.

The tavern owner said her primary concern is the damage the shutdown is doing to her local community.

“We’re ruining our economy and we’re ruining lives,” Sebeck said. “Many of them aren’t going to come back from this.”

Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.

News Story

Salon Owner Reported For Facebook Post, Gets State Inspection

Small town entrepreneur learns value of keeping quiet

Cristy Gutierrez, a single mom and business owner in the rural mid-Michigan town of Gladwin, thinks of herself as a good citizen. One devoted to her family, her customers and her community.

But she says the disruptions of a pandemic and, more directly, the myriad complex, contradictory, and burdensome government edicts it has generated have left her at wit’s end.

The tipping point came early this month when her recently reopened salon received an unexpected visit from an inspector with the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs. The inspector was investigating rumors that she was flouting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s pandemic-related executive orders.

It seems the salon had been reported to LARA after Gutierrez said in a Facebook post that she seldom donned a face mask while serving her customers. The small business owner wrote that most of those customers were comfortable with her other precautions, and that a medical condition makes it uncomfortable for her to wear with a face covering.

Gutierrez says she asks each person in for an appointment, “Do you need me to wear a mask?” The overwhelming majority, she says, reply “No.” She sanitizes everything at every step of the process, and avoids speaking to or even breathing on her clients. The governor’s executive orders limit the shop to one customer at a time, with the door locked between appointments.

The inspector — who Gutierrez said was very nice — ultimately determined that her operation was safe and met the standards required by government orders. But Gutierrez is bothered that it took a single Facebook post to triggering the visit.

“It irritates the hell out of me,” Gutierrez says. “The governor is putting out these executive orders that are pitting people against each other.”

Whitmer is making it a top priority for regulators to enforce her COVID orders, Gutierrez said, at the same time police made a large methamphetamine bust in Gladwin in July.

“That kind of thing is going to bring problems to my kids in high school. Maybe that should be a top priority,” Gutierrez said.

Like many Michigan residents, Gutierrez initially suffered a setback from the pandemic. Her children’s schools closed. She shut down the salon and avoided contact with people.

“I was afraid we were all going to die,” she says.

With the salon closed, the small business owner had trouble paying her bills, property taxes, car payments and insurance. Her savings evaporated.

In the middle of the crisis, Gutierrez, a member of the Gladwin County Emergency Response Team, spent hours addressing the devastation resulting from the collapse of dams on the Tittabawassee River.

Then, as the state authorized businesses to open on a limited basis, came all the restrictions on dealing with clients and sanitizing the salon.

Gutierrez has not been able to bring back a pair of stylists who leased space in her building; her income is approximately 50% of what it had been.

And then came the LARA inspector. Gutierrez says the official determined she was following all the COVID protocols, but advised her not to post comments about her practices on Facebook.

She’s not sure she will heed that advice. Instead, she is participating in the effort to repeal a law that gives the governor open-ended authority to declare and address an emergency.

“The most important thing I’ve learned is that we need to let our (legislative) representatives be a voice for us,” she said. “The people pitted against each other need to remember they are members of a community. You have to take care of your family, your neighbors, your community.”

Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.