As we prepare to enter the second half of 2020, we wanted to look back at how the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in the U.S. at the beginning of the year, from the vantage point of local officials. 

For the past few months, Reveal reporters Laura Morel and Lance Williams teamed up with reporters from WLRN Public Media in South Florida and KQED Public Media in San Francisco to dig into the actions taken by leaders in Florida and California to stave off calamity, and how individuals coordinated on the local level when state and federal officials were unwilling to take the lead. 

Networks of local officials helped to nudge one another to fast and dramatic action when state and federal responses lagged the spread of the virus. “On Friday, March 13th, I issued the order to ban gatherings greater than 100,” said Sara Cody, a health officer in Santa Clara County. “Never did I imagine that 48 hours later I would have come as far as thinking that we actually needed to completely shut things down and shelter in place.” 

The next Monday, March 16, Cody, along with a group of public health officers and lawyers in the Bay Area, issued the nation’s first shelter-in-place order, instructing nearly 7 million people to stay home.

Over the same weekend in Florida, the mayors of Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach conferred about whether beaches in their cities should remain open, as visitors flocked there for Spring Break. After Fort Lauderdale’s city manager sat on a call with officials from the West Coast, he heard one resounding piece of advice: “Don't wait for it to get worse before you decide to take action.”

So on Sunday, March 15, officials from the two cities announced the decision to close their beaches. Several neighboring cities soon follow suit.

This week’s episode is a vivid window into how a forceful local response emerged, often in the absence of state and federal leadership. You can listen to the full show at revealnews.org.

Key figure in our Amazon reporting resigns 

The state originally issued four serious violations against Amazon. However, the investigator on the case told us he’d been pressured by his bosses to drop the case, just as Gov. Eric Holcomb was trying to win the national competition to host Amazon’s HQ2. 

The whistleblower, John Stallone, said Indiana Labor Commissioner Rick Ruble told him to back off the Amazon case -- or resign. 

The state ultimately quietly dropped the citations against Amazon. But Stallone requested a federal investigation after our story, and in March, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that state officials improperly allowed Amazon to escape accountability.  

Now, Ruble has resigned, according to the Indianapolis Star. 

"Commissioner Ruble has been with the agency for a long time," a state spokesperson told the Star, "he’s accomplished what he’s wanted to do, and has the good fortune to pursue other interests."  
 

A win for public transparency

In their latest win, a federal judge ruled that the injury and illness records of America’s employers must be disclosed. 

Under an Obama-era rule, the U.S. Department of Labor required about 450,000 companies to electronically report their injury and illness records, known as 300As. The agency had intended to use the information to help prioritize OSHA investigations and post some of this data on its website. But the Trump administration halted those plans.

The new ruling has broad implications. It will allow workers, the public and reporters to hold employers accountable for dangerous workplaces.  
 

What we’re reading 

Why Minneapolis Was the Breaking Point

Wesley Lowery, one of the leading chroniclers of the Movement for Black Lives, examines how efforts to reform police after they killed other unarmed black men failed, and looks forward to what could come of this moment:  

The aftermath of Floyd’s death has left many activists as encouraged as they’ve ever been that true change is on the horizon. Still, if the aim is a full recalibration of the American justice system, the task ahead remains monumental. 

-- Andrew Donohue, managing editor

How America’s Hospitals Survived the First Wave of the Coronavirus

Why were the projections so wrong? And how can political leaders and hospitals learn from the experience in the event there is a second wave of the coronavirus this year? Doctors, hospital officials and public health experts shared their perspectives.

– Matt Thompson, editor in chief

Fact-based journalism is worth fighting for.