According to a report from the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, attended the 50th birthday party for Jason Kinney, a longtime political advisor, on Friday, Nov. 6, at the Michelin-starred restaurant in Yountville, located in Napa County.

In addition to advising Newsom, Kinney is a lobbyist who worked for California Strategies, a Sacramento firm, from Jan. 1, 2012, through Nov. 6, 2018, according to state lobbying records.

At the end of 2018, Kinney served on Newsom’s gubernatorial transition team and then registered as a lobbyist with Axiom Advisors, a recently-formed lobbying firm, CalMatters reported at the time.

Last month, Kinney made news again when Capital & Main, an investigative reporting website, broke news that Newsom’s administration had approved additional fracking permits for one of Axiom Advisors’ clients. The news came a month after Newsom signed an executive order to ban fracking in the state by 2024.

The Nov. 6 French Laundry dinner included at least 12 people, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which Newsom said on Monday was “a larger group than I had anticipated.”

“I made a bad mistake,” Newsom said. “Instead of sitting down, I should have stood up and walked back to my car and drove back to my house.”

Newsom acknowledged that he contradicted his own administration’s guidance on social gatherings, which discourages the mixing of more than three households, and noted that he has to practice the standards he’s laid out for the rest of the state.

Newsom added that he’s gone out to dinner only two other times since February, both times outdoors and alone with Siebel Newsom rather than with a larger group.

“I need to preach and practice, not just preach and not practice,” he said. “I’ve done my best to do that. We’re all human, we all fall short sometimes.”

At the time, Napa County was in the “orange tier,” the second least-restrictive tier of the state’s pandemic reopening system, allowing both indoor and outdoor dining at restaurants.

However, the state tightened restrictions on most counties Monday, moving more than two dozen – including Napa County – into the state’s most-restrictive, purple tier as cases rise across the state.

Newsom granted that he had concerns about losing political capital and public trust at a time when the state hopes to rein in riskier activities like indoor dining at restaurants and just over a week before Thanksgiving.

“You have to own it and you have to be forthright,” he said. “I’m doing my best every single day and trying to model better behavior. So I made one mistake, I should have just gotten up from that table and left. And so you own that, you move on and you continue to do the work that you were sent here to do.”

A total of 28 counties – including Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Napa, Santa Cruz and Solano counties – will be moved into the most-restrictive “purple tier” on Tuesday, part of what Newsom described as the state “pulling the emergency brake” on its reopening plans.

In addition, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties moved into the red tier, the second most-restrictive tier in the system.

According to Newsom, the state has seen its quickest increase in new cases statewide over the last 10 days since the pandemic began in earnest in March.

“Every age group, every demographic, racial, ethnic (group) in every part of the state, we are seeing case rates increase and positivity rates increase as well,” Newsom said during his Monday afternoon briefing on the pandemic.

“We are seeing community spread broadly,” he added.

The only counties in the greater Bay Area that did not move to a stricter tier were Sonoma and Monterey counties, which were already in the purple tier.

The state has also tweaked the way counties are assigned to tiers, moving them to a more-restrictive tier after only one week of rising cases rather than the previously established two.

Newsom said state officials are considering additional measures such as a statewide curfew to discourage people from social gatherings that increase the risk of spreading the coronavirus.

The tier changes will take effect Tuesday.

Positive cases in the county between Wednesday, Nov. 4, and Friday, Nov. 13, have increased by 357 to 2,432.

In Calistoga, mobile COVID-19 testing will be available by appointment Monday and Tuesday at the Calistoga Fairgrounds, 1435 N Oak St.

Testing is also available in Napa at the Napa County Expo, 575 Third St. in Napa.

Appointments can be made by calling (707) 253-4540 or online.

The Golden Gate Bridge District Board of Directors voted Friday to lay off nearly 150 employees to help shore up the district’s projected budget shortfall of some $48 million due to reduced ridership during the coronavirus pandemic.

By an 11-5 vote, the board chose to eliminate 146 filled staff positions and 59 vacant ones in early January. The board elected the layoffs in lieu of raising the bridge toll by up to $2 to replace the district’s lost revenue.

The board also pushed back the effective date for the layoffs from Dec. 5, which was recommended by the board’s staff, to Jan. 4 to avoid laying workers off during the holiday season.

“Sadly, it’s clear we need to take affirmative action to either reduce costs or raise revenue,” said Director Brian Sobel, the chair of the district’s Budget and Finance Committee.

With no authority to tax Bay Bridge, bus or ferry users, Sobel argued that paring down the district’s staff is the only way to cut costs without raising toll prices.

The district is expected to exhaust its remaining federal relief funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act by the end of November, at which point its coffers will be nearly empty, according to district officials.

In addition to reduced traffic from the Marin headlands into San Francisco, bus ridership is down 75 percent from normal levels while ferry ridership is down 96 percent, according to Sobel.

District officials have faced public pushback in recent weeks, as well, when they’ve suggested the need to raise toll prices for the district to remain solvent.

The board also heard from multiple bus operators and union representatives arguing that the district was treating them as numbers on a spreadsheet rather than dutiful employees.

“This is a horrible and difficult situation that puts our duties as directors at odds with our feelings of compassion for our employees who work hard in our transit and ferry divisions,” Sobel said.

Board Director Sabrina Hernandez said it was painful to hear employees say that they feel undervalued by the district, adding that their work has not gone unnoticed.

“We recognize that you come to work, that you’re committed, that you’re making your own sacrifices on a day-to-day basis and face the unknown with people walking in the door and, perhaps, bringing COVID on board, exposing you and the rest of those riders on the bus,” she said.

Multiple board members expressed varying levels of optimism that President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration would be able to work out a new pandemic relief package, or that one could be passed during congress’ current lame duck session.

However, the level of funding for beleaguered public transit agencies in a potential relief bill remains up in the air, Sobel said.

Board Director David Rabbitt, who also serves on the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, suggested potential federal funding for the Bay Area’s 25 Federal Transit Administration-eligible transit agencies would have to eclipse the $1.3 billion included in the CARES Act to adequately meet the needs of agencies like the district and BART.

“We got $1.3 billion and we thought that was a fabulous number, quite frankly,” Rabbitt said. “But that won’t be enough moving forward with the situation in front of us.”

Should the district receive more federal funding before Jan. 4, the board would be able to call a special meeting and reduce the number of layoffs or avoid layoffs entirely, according to district officials.

The board unanimously approved a $2.1 million severance package for the employees who will be laid off, offering them four months of medical benefits for the employee and their family and four weeks of severance pay or a $600-per-week stipend for 10 weeks.

The board also voted 14-1 to temporarily reduce pay for mid-managers, deputy general managers, district officers and members of the board by 10 percent.

“The district is clearly faced with an extreme financial deficit,” Board President Barbara Pahre said. “And it’s our responsibility, fiduciarily, to make the difficult decisions.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, along with Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, issued a travel advisory today asking people entering or returning to the three states to self-quarantine for 14 days to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The advisory applies to those traveling for non-essential reasons, such as tourism or recreation, and does not pertain to those traveling for essential work, including critical infrastructure support, economic services and supply chains, urgent medical care, safety and security.

“California just surpassed a sobering threshold—one million Covid-19 cases—with no signs of the virus slowing down,” Newsom said in a Friday morning news release. “Increased cases are adding pressure on our hospital systems and threatening the lives of seniors, essential workers and vulnerable Californians. Travel increases the risk of spreading Covid-19, and we must all collectively increase our efforts at this time to keep the virus at bay and save lives.”

On top of the travel advisory, state health officials are also urging residents to limit interactions with other households.

On Thursday, California became the second state, behind Texas, to surpass one million cases of Covid-19. The rise in cases has prompted cities to rollback reopening plans with Sacramento, San Diego and Stanislaus counties moving back into the most restrictive tier this week—marking the highest number of counties in the purple tier since Oct. 6.

In Sonoma County, cases are also on the rise. As of Thursday, the county of nearly 500,000 people had recorded 10,679 Covid-19 cases and 149 deaths. Sonoma County remains in the state’s most restrictive tier.

Napa County, which has a population of nearly 140,000, had recorded 2,432 Covid-19 cases and 17 deaths as of Thursday.