Workers face layoffs at Cal Expo after pandemic prompts State Fair cancellation

Cal Expo plans to lay off at least half its staff after the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of the California State Fair and intensified what was already a difficult financial situation.

Tom Martinez, the agency’s chief deputy general manager, said Thursday that Cal Expo expects to lay off more than half of its full-time staff. The agency employs about 75 workers. He said he couldn’t provide exact numbers on the layoffs.

“Due to the ongoing and devastating financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, we must reduce the size of Cal Expo’s workforce,” the agency’s Chief Executive Rick Pickering said in a memo late last week to employees. “The event industry, including Cal Expo, has been decimated. Unfortunately, we do not know when events will return.” The memo said employees will get paid salary and medical benefits through Nov. 12.

The layoffs, which also are affecting other fairgrounds around the state, are the first significant cutbacks in state staffing since the COVID-19 pandemic wrecked California’s economy and forced Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature to wrestle with a $54 billion deficit.

Cal Expo workers have been receiving letters notifying them they could be laid off. The letters say workers will be given preference in hiring for other state openings.

The layoff announcements initiate negotiations between the state and public employee unions over the reductions.

Brandy Johnson, a union representative for the International Union of Operating Engineers, said the fairgrounds will keep running with a small crew.

Johnson said the union will try to minimize impacts to its workers.

In the near term, the fairgrounds will continue to be used for COVID-19 testing and housing homeless people in trailers and could be used as a staging area during fire season, she said.

“There is definitely a lot of uncertainty on what the future holds for Cal Expo as far as state fairs, events and all of those things,” she said.

Most of the state’s public employee unions agreed to deals with Newsom that reduce most workers’ pay by up to about three-quarters of what they make in two days of work. In exchange, workers receive two days off to use at their discretion.

The cutbacks are less dramatic than the reductions workers endured in 2010 under then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had a more contentious relationship with the unions.

Cal Expo is a state agency and has received taxpayer money for deferred maintenance programs as recently as last year. But in general it doesn’t get any public dollars for its day-to-day operations. Martinez said Cal Expo imposed layoffs during the recession in 2010.

In recent years Cal Expo’s finances have suffered largely because of lackluster attendance at the State Fair.

In January Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration proposed a nearly $2.3 million state subsidy for Cal Expo, warning that the ailing Sacramento fairground was in danger of going “insolvent in a few years” without taxpayer help. Cal Expo is a state agency but generally operates without any taxpayer money for daily operations.

However, Newsom removed the proposed aid to Cal Expo in the revised budget that passed the Legislature after the economy collapsed and a $54 billion deficit loomed.

In the meantime, Cal Expo’s board voted to cancel this year’s State Fair, the first such cancellation since World War II. The 17-day run would have started July 17. As a rule, the fair generates about half of Cal Expo’s annual revenue, and its cancellation has been a major source of frustration to Cal Expo’s management.

“Our fair should be going on right now,” Martinez said.

The smaller Sacramento County Fair, another Cal Expo mainstay, also was scrapped for 2020.

Meanwhile, with the coronavirus pandemic prompting the cancellation of the State Fair and a slew of county and regional fairs, a Central Valley congressman Thursday proposed the creation of a $5 billion nationwide bailout fund to help fairs recover.

Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock, said helping fairs “get through this crisis” is reasonable in a year in which Congress has directed money to major industries such as airlines.

“Fairs are job creators and economic engines,” Harder said on a Zoom conference call.

He said he’ll try to roll his proposal into the next stimulus package, which is being negotiated this week by congressional leaders and the Trump administration. He’s hoping to drum up bipartisan support, saying, “There’s nothing more American than apple pie and county fairs.” He said he won a blue ribbon for photography at the Stanislaus County Fair when he was 12.

Harder made his pitch in the heart of what normally would be fair season. Seventy of the 78 fairgrounds in California went dark this year, said Louie Brown of the California Fairs Alliance.

Angelica Anguiano, a board member of the Stanislaus fair, said “our fair will likely not survive” without federal help.

Other big fairs that have been canceled include the California Mid-State Fair in San Luis Obispo County.

This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Workers face layoffs at Cal Expo after pandemic prompts State Fair cancellation."