LA County Supervisor dines at restaurant hours after voting to ban outdoor dining

Just hours after Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl voted to ban outdoor dining at L. A. County’s 31,000 restaurants over COVID-19 safety concerns, she visited a restaurant in Santa Monica, where she dined outdoors, FOX 11 learned on Monday.

FOX 11 received multiple tips that shortly after her vote on Tuesday, Kuehl was seen dining outside at Il Forno Trattoria in Santa Monica, an Italian restaurant near her house that she has previously described as one of her 'favorite' restaurants.

When FOX 11 investigative reporter Bill Melugin stopped by the restaurant to ask about Kuehl’s visit, managers told him they “didn’t want to get involved”, and they have no comment.

A spokesperson for Kuehl provided FOX 11 the following brief statement:

“She did dine al fresco at Il Forno on the very last day it was permissible. She loves Il Forno, has been saddened to see it, like so many restaurants, suffer from a decline in revenue. She ate there, taking appropriate precautions, and sadly will not dine there again until our Public Health Orders permit.”

During Tuesday’s L. A. County Board of Supervisors meeting, Kuehl referred to outside dining as “a most dangerous situation” over what she described as a risk of tables of unmasked patrons potentially exposing their servers to the coronavirus.

“This is a serious health emergency and we must take it seriously,” Kuehl said.

“The servers are not protected from us, and they’re not protected from their other tables that they’re serving at that particular time, plus all the hours in which they’re working.”

Kuehl went on to vote in support of restricting outdoor dining in Los Angeles County, which pass... (Read more)

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