In August, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors appointed Dr. Grant Colfax as the new Director of Health Services. This hire comes at a hefty cost to taxpayers, with an annual total compensation package of about $708,000 including salary and benefits. Colfax, who previously led the San Francisco Department of Public Health, spearheaded some of the nation's most invasive pandemic-era policies, including lockdowns and vaccine verification requirements that hurt businesses across the Bay Area.

Lockdowns, or closures of “non-essential” businesses, were pioneered by Colfax and other Bay Area health officials on mid-March 2020 before being rolled out across the state and nation. While it can be argued that COVID-19 was a novel and very frightening event, we already knew by then that COVID deaths had a very steep age gradient meaning that it was not necessary to lock children and younger adults in their homes.

The social and economic fallout of the vaccine verification mandates is best exemplified by the high-profile conflict between the public health bureaucracy and In-N-Out Burger. In October 2021, Contra Costa health officials shuttered the Pleasant Hill In-N-Out over its refusal to check diners for proof of vaccination, a move that followed the closure of the chain's Fisherman’s Wharf location in San Francisco then under Colfax’s supervision. It is worth noting that by October 2021, public health officials understood that vaccinated individuals could get and spread COVID-19 (although they also argued that getting vaccinated reduces the likelihood of contracting the disease and its severity in the event of infection).

In-N-Out’s leadership identified these demands as unreasonable, invasive, and improper governmental overreach, yet the regulatory machinery persisted. The ultimate cost of this hostility is now clear: In-N-Out President Lynsi Snyder recently announced she is relocating her family and building a corporate office in Tennessee, stating that "doing business is not easy" in California anymore. By moving her primary residence, Snyder has also shielded her multi-billion dollar estate from the proposed 2026 Billionaires Tax Act, which aims to capture wealth from those residing in the state as of beginning of the year.

Contra Costa Health flagged the latest public health “crisis” surfaced in late December 2025, with a widely publicized measles exposure alert in Walnut Creek. Health officials identified exposure sites at Broadway Plaza retailers including Apple, Macy’s, and Alo, giving dates but not times at which an infected individual shopped at those stores. Notably, the infected individual was a fully vaccinated adult, a fact that undermines the case for expansive vaccine mandates and could increase vaccine hesitancy.

As we look back on the lockdown policies implemented by Colfax and encouraged by our Board of Supervisors, it is worth noting that school closures contributed to a 7.4 percentage point decline in math proficiency for eighth-grade students across California, with socioeconomically disadvantaged students suffering the widest performance gaps in the nation.

Rather than doubling down on its COVID-era policies, I respectfully request that Board members reconsider what they said and what they allowed the Health Department to do during COVID, so that they can improve their approach if and when the next pandemic arrives.

Please Share Your Thoughts

We welcome articles on Contra Costa issues from members and the public. If you have anything you’d like to share with our audience, please send it to marc@cocotax.org. I promise to read everything I receive, but I can’t promise to run it!

Upcoming Events (all lunches at Denny’s)

Friday. January 23^rd: Contra Costa Governments Spend Big – Get a breakdown of CoCo County’s $13 billion public sector from my recently released research paper.

Friday, February 27th: Get the Full Story on Marin Clean Energy from Coalition Of Sensible Taxpayer’s Director Kingston Cole.

Friday, March 27th: When Public Schools Stray from Education – Attorney and public school mother Laura Powell will discuss her thoughts about the waste and parental rights violations occurring as local school districts focus on student gender identity rather than teaching the ABCs.