Gov. Brown and state lawmakers finally reached a budget agreement that will see the Governor's plans for childhood development and low-income housing subsidies realized.
Liam Dillon, Chris Megerian and John Meyers in The L.A. Times report: "Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders reached an agreement Thursday on a new budget to fund state government, a proposal highlighted by $400 million in low-income housing subsidies as well as expanded funding for child care and early learning programs."
"The plan received its first public vetting by the Legislature’s budget conference committee Thursday evening. A formal vote by both the state Senate and Assembly would come later, though the timing remains unclear. California’s new fiscal year begins July 1."
"We’re on a very good path right now and I think we can all be proud of what we’re going to be delivering to the people of California," said state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco).
SEE ALSO: Brown, lawmakers reach $122 billion budget deal -- Melody Gutierrez in SF Chronicle.
Medical professionals across California are concerned with the new aid-in-dying law, alleging that the measure's lack of oversight for the patients requesting suicide assistance will create a dangerous and unnecessarily fatal medical process.
Souya Karlamangala reports in L.A. Times: "As a law went into effect Thursday allowing physicians to prescribe medicines to terminally ill patients to hasten their deaths, a group of doctors tried to overturn it in court."
"The Life Legal Defense Foundation, American Academy of Medical Ethics and several physicians have filed a lawsuit in Riverside County Superior Court claiming that the state’s new aid-in-dying law is unconstitutional."
"The End of Life Option Act allows patients with less than six months to live to obtain medicines from their doctor that would kill them. On Thursday, California became one of five states in the U.S. where the practice is legal."
California's state air board is feeling the steam after a Superior Court Judge successfully reversed a delay intended to give Small Trucking time to meet pollution standards in an effort to catch up to the more well established Big Trucking entities.
The L.A. Times' Tony Barboza writes: "California air quality regulators failed to consider the environmental and business consequences of giving some heavy-duty truck operators more time to comply with tough diesel pollution rules and must set aside the delays, a Fresno County judge has ruled."
"The decision Tuesday by Fresno County Superior Court Judge Mark W. Snauffer is a victory for a contingent of trucking businesses that had complained that the California Air Resources Board created an uneven playing field by postponing deadlines for smaller firms to upgrade to cleaner engines or install better pollution controls."
"The California Trucking Assn. and Fresno-based trucking company John R. Lawson Rock and Oil Inc. sued the state air board over its April 2014 vote to delay emissions rules that many larger operators had already met."
Civil asset forfeiture is back in the spotlight as California's Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) is pursuing legislation that would require police to to get a criminal conviction on an individual before seizing property--a tactic aimed at mitigating blowback to innocent civilians who have suffered unjustly from false asset forfeiture.
Liam Dillon in L.A. Times: "Almost a year after California lawmakers rejected legislation that would restrict police departments’ ability to take cars, cash, homes and other property from suspected criminals without a conviction, the bill’s author is trying again as similar efforts succeed across the country."
"The practice, known as civil asset forfeiture, gained currency during the height of the drug war in the 1980s as a way for law enforcement to financially cripple drug lords and fund anti-narcotics operations. But advocates for reforming the laws say too often police officers ensnare innocent residents who are poor and have few resources to ensure their property is returned."
"A bill from state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) would require state and local police to get a criminal conviction before taking people’s money or other assets."
With a hike in the legal age for purchasing tobacco also comes a change to the modern vaping culture: exile from public space.
Sydney Maki in Fresno Bee reports: "To vape or not to vape? For anyone under 21, the answer just got a whole lot simpler."
"Californians must now be 21 years old to purchase tobacco products or electronic smoking devices, which was previously legal at 18. (The law doesn’t affect active duty military personnel, whose minimum age remains 18.)"
"Lawmakers also reclassified e-cigs and vapes as tobacco products, regardless whether they contain tobacco, nicotine or neither. That means electronic smoking is now banned in places where traditional smoking was already prohibited, such as public transportation, restaurants and schools."
An increase in ballot-casting options has also fashioned a spike in how long it takes to count votes.
Katie Orr reports in KQED: "It’s getting easier to cast a ballot in California. You can mail your ballot in, drop it off at a polling location or visit a voting booth. But all that flexibility comes with a price — it takes longer to get final voting results."
"Vince Hall is executive director of Future of California Elections, a nonprofit focused on expanding voter participation and improving elections in the state."
“We are moving toward a system that is more inclusive and more accessible,” Hall says. “Unfortunately, the consequence of that is complexity.”"
Drug-sniffing K9 units are a well-established and well-known deterrent against trafficking in California prisons, but how aboutt cell-phone-sniffing dogs that hunt down illegal handheld devices?
Maurice Chammah in Capitol Weekly reports: "Two years ago, a Belgian Malinois named Drako earned a flurry ofpress attention when his proud owners at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced he had found his thousandth contraband cell phone in the state’s prisons. He’d once found thirty stashed in a microwave, and one hidden in a jar of peanut butter."
"But Drako was only the most famous of a growing number of dogs around the country trained to find cell phones. Usually they are a specially-trained subset of canine units employed to find drugs. They have been used by prisons in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. Texas and California have 13 cell phone dogs each."
"The pervasiveness of illegal cell phones in American prisons is consistently described by officials as a security threat, allowing gangs to organize across the walls and prisoners to harass their victims. But some inmates have described the prevalence of cell phones inside as a product of their desperation to maintain contact with family and friends on the outside, since sanctioned phone calls are notoriously expensive."
New evidence has surfaced that suggests O.J. Simpson was taking arthritis medication (or lack thereof) during the time of trial, which could have greatly impacted the event that brought about his acquittal: the fitting of the glove.
Chicago Tribune writes: "Prosecutors in O.J. Simpson's 1994 murder trial didn't know that he had been taking arthritis medication before trying on the famous ill-fitting bloody glove, former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti said Thursday."
"Garcetti, who led the prosecutor's office during the trial, told ABC's "Good Morning America" that he learned about the medication from watching the new ESPN documentary: "O.J.: Made in America."
"What we didn't know until I saw it on this film was that O.J. Simpson was taking arthritic medication for his hands and he was told, 'If you stop taking this arthritic medication, your hands will swell. Your joints will stiffen,'" Garcetti said. "My God."
A transcript of the powerful letter written to Judge Aaron Persky from the victim of the Stanford rapist has been put online.
SFGate: "The 23-year-old woman who was sexually assaulted by Stanford University student Brock Turner wrote an emotional letter to Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky..."
"Your Honor, if it is all right, for the majority of this statement I would like to address the defendant directly."
Finally, for the person who had the worst week in California, #WorstWeekCA, we picked disgraced Navy high-ranking official Rear Admiral Robert Gillbeau, who recently pleaded guilty in a bribery probe centering around confidential information being leaked to a defense contractor, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, that cost the government roughly $34 million.
Associated Press' Julie Watson reporting: "A Navy admiral on Thursday pleaded guilty to lying to federal authorities investigating a $34 million fraud scheme involving a Malaysian contractor known as "Fat Leonard" — becoming the highest-ranking military official to be taken down in the wide-spanning scandal."
"It is extremely rare for an admiral to even face criminal proceedings."
"Rear Adm. Robert Gilbeau, 55, is believed to be the first active-duty Naval flag officer to be charged in federal court."