What's in Gov. Newsom's budget for middle-class Californians?
KPCC's DAVID WAGNER: "Housing. This is the issue,” Newsom said at a press conference earlier this month, unveiling his first budget proposal as governor. “Unless we get serious about it, this state will continue to lose its middle class, and the dream will be limited to fewer and fewer people."
"Middle-class Californians could find some relief under Newsom’s $209 billion budget, which includes new spending aimed at getting cities to approve more housing. Other proposals could bring down the cost of health care and higher education for Californians who currently make too much to qualify for state help."
"But middle-class California families won’t find much help shouldering other expenses, like the looming cost of caring for aging family members."
GOP heads to wall talks with a message: It doesn't have to be a wall
Sacramento Bee's DAVID LIGHTMAN/LESLEY CLARK: "Republicans sent a message on Tuesday to the lawmakers getting ready to start border security negotiations: “It doesn’t have to be a wall,” as House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy put it."
"President Donald Trump’s insistence that Congress approve wall funding triggered the longest shutdown in the nation’s history, and lawmakers have until Feb. 15 to find a way to avoid a sequel."
"Those talks start Wednesday, and key Republicans echoed Trump’s latest thoughts on border security. “Physical barriers would be fine,” said McCarthy, a California Republican."
LA Mayor Garcetti skips presidential race to 'finish the job' at home
LA Times's MICHAEL FINNEGAN/DAKOTA SMITH: "Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Tuesday that he will not run for president, declining to take a long-shot gamble that Democrats would pick a little-known local official to challenge President Trump."
"After nearly two years of flirting with the idea that he could leap from City Hall to the world’s most powerful job, the mild-mannered mayor reached a decision in keeping with his reputation for avoiding political risk. He also passed up a chance to run for governor last year when the odds seemed stacked against him."
"At a City Hall news conference, Garcetti said he decided over the last couple of weeks to stay put as mayor because he “realized that this is what I am meant to do and this is where I want to be.”"
Why dozens of people are likely to sue Caltrans and Redding over the deadly Carr fire
Sacramento Bee's RYAN SABALOW: "Setting the stage for lawsuits, more than 250 people who lost homes and property to last summer’s deadly Carr Fire in Redding have filed damage claims with the city and with the state’s highway department alleging the fire grew out of control because neither agency did enough to trim vegetation."
"One set of claims filed by at least 175 people alleges the California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, failed to trim vegetation in its right-of-way near the fire’s origin point on Highway 299 west of Redding."
"State fire investigators said a vehicle with a flat tire caused a spark July 23 that ignited vegetation at the intersection of Highway 299 and Carr Powerhouse Road."
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State report calls for over 40 changes at Sac PD in wake of Clark shooting
Sacramento Bee's SAM STANTON: "With two criminal probes and a $20 million civil-rights lawsuit pending over last year’s shooting death of Stephon Clark, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra released a new report Tuesday urging the Sacramento Police Department to adopt sweeping changes in its use of force training and dozens of other areas."
"The 96-page report offers 49 recommendations for changes in department policies and comes after a request by Police Chief Daniel Hahn for the state to take an in-depth look at how his department handles shootings and other critical incidents."
"The Sacramento Police Department is not interested in being ‘good enough,’ ” Hahn said at a news conference with Becerra, Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Pastor Anthony Sadler of Sacramento’s Shiloh Baptist Church, among others."
The Chronicle's TATIANA SANCHEZ: "A Honduran mother in San Francisco was reunited with her 17-month-old daughter on Tuesday night after spending a month desperately pleading with federal immigration authorities for the return of her baby who was separated from her father at the U.S.-Mexico border."
"The baby, Juliet, was sent to a shelter for migrant children in Texas after immigration officials took her from her father, whom they arrested Dec. 28 near Calexico. Juliet’s mother, Sindy Flores, told The Chronicle that the federal government kept adding requirements for the child’s release, including a credit card payment of up to $4,000 to fly the girl to San Francisco with a care provider."
"But on Tuesday, after The Chronicle and other news organizations inquired about the case, immigration officials notified the mother that they would immediately send Juliet to San Francisco. She arrived at San Francisco International Airport just after 10 p.m."
Hot air balloons took off from California veterans home without state noticing, audit finds
Sacramento bee's WES VENTEICHER: "A Napa Valley veterans home once criticized for building an adventure park on its grounds has been allowing a golf course to offer hot air balloon rides for years without a lease permitting the rides, according to a state auditor’s report released Tuesday."
"The report draws attention to a mix of leases that the California Department of Veterans Affairs allows at its marquee property in Napa County, which the state dedicated to veterans in 1884. The audit found that the department has mismanaged the leases, allowing some tenants to pay below-market rent and allowing inappropriate activities to operate there."
"For instance, auditors found that Yountville Veterans Home failed to ensure about $610,000 in lease payments were set aside for veterans’ homes over the last three fiscal years. It also allowed a CalVet employee temporarily to pay below-market rent for a house on the property."
Spate of lawsuits challenge teachers' and other unions' dues collections
EdSource's JOHN FENSTERWALD: "Some teachers and other public employees are complaining their unions are wrongly continuing to collect union dues — despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision last June that said public workers are no longer required to pay fees to the unions representing them."
"The California Teachers Association says that these disgruntled workers, like other union members, have signed annual contracts to pay dues to the CTA and local affiliates. The CTA asserts that the agreements, which have had the effect, for now, of pre-empting a drop in memberships and revenue, are, like other contracts, legally binding and don’t abridge free-speech rights."
“Members can drop out (of the union) at any time. But, like a gym membership, they still signed a contract to maintain paying dues,” said Laura Juran, the CTA’s chief counsel. “I am confident we will prevail.”"
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OC Register's TERI SFORZA/TONY SAAVEDRA: "Irvine is the financially healthiest big city in America, while New York is the sickest, according to a new study by a nonprofit dedicated to financial transparency in the public sector."
"California’s other big cities fall firmly in the middle, with Southern California burgs healthier than many of their Northern California counterparts, says Chicago-based watchdog group Truth in Accounting."
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A new South Sac homeless shelter? Residents ask councilman pointed questions
Sacramento Bee's THEREESA CLIFT: "About 100 Sacramento residents attended a community meeting Tuesday, many to voice concerns that a proposed homeless shelter at the Florin light rail station could increase crime or decrease property values, while some supported the idea."
"Councilman Jay Schenirer is proposing the city open a 100-bed temporary homeless shelter on the northwest corner of a parking lot at the Florin light rail station for at least two years. Sacramento Regional Transit owns the south Sacramento lot where the proposed Sprung structure would go. Sprung structures are semi-permanent tent-like facilities that can be erected in a matter of weeks."
"As soon as Schenirer opened the meeting Tuesday in Burbank High School’s cafeteria and asked if everyone was in the right place, a woman responded “we’re in the right place, are you?"
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Police commission concerned about number of black drivers stopped by elite LAPD unit
LA Times's CINDY CHANG: "Members of the Los Angeles Police Commission expressed concern Tuesday that the disproportionate number of black drivers stopped by an elite unit is damaging the public’s trust in the police department."
"The remarks came in response to a Times investigation showing that the LAPD’s Metropolitan Division stops black drivers at a rate more than five times their share of the population."
"Since Metro doubled in size as part of an effort to combat rising crime, nearly half the drivers stopped by its officers have been black, in a city that is 9% black. That has helped drive up the percentage of African Americans stopped by the LAPD overall from 21% to 28%."
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Bay Area Walgreens' fake pharmacist handled more than 700k prescriptions, state agency alleges
BANG's JOSEPH GEHA: "California’s pharmacy board is investigating whether three Bay Area Walgreens stores allowed an employee without a pharmacist license to verify or dispense hundreds of thousands of prescriptions over several years."
"For more than a decade, Walgreens stores in Fremont, Milpitas and San Jose allowed Kim Thien Le to perform pharmacist duties — including reviewing patient drug use — for 745,355 prescriptions dispensed from a total of 395 Walgreens pharmacies, according to a California State Board of Pharmacy investigation."
"If the allegations prove true, each store faces a range of penalties from receiving a formal reprimand to having its pharmacy license revoked, said Bob Dávila, a spokesman with the pharmacy board."
'El Chapo' lawyers aim to portray Joaquin Guzman as the victim of a vast conspiracy
LA Times's IRENE PLAGIANOS/SONJA SHARP: "Federal prosecutors have spent months painting Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman as the most ruthless, brilliant and powerful trafficker who ever lived, marshaling reels of clandestine tape, mountains of interdicted drugs and a jury box worth of convicted felons to try the man they say was the Napoleon of a vast narco-empire."
"On Tuesday, Guzman’s team mounted its defense. It was done before lunch."
“With that, the defense rests,” attorney Jeffrey Lichtman told the court about 10 a.m. Tuesday, concluding his brief and largely redundant examination of his team’s lone witness."