Federal judge says California can enforce net neutrality law
ADAM BEAM, AP: "A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that California can for the first time enforce its tough net neutrality law, clearing the way for the state to ban internet providers from slowing down or blocking access to websites and applications that don’t pay for premium service.
Former Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill in 2018, making California the first state to pass a net neutrality law. Open internet advocates hoped the law would spur Congress and other states to follow suit. The Trump administration quickly sued to block the law, which prevented it from taking effect for years while the case was tied up in court.
The Biden administration dropped that lawsuit earlier this month. But in a separate lawsuit, the telecom industry asked a federal judge to keep blocking the law. On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge John A. Mendez denied their request, allowing California to begin enforcing the law."
Red alert sounding on California drought, as Valley gets grim news about water supply
Sac Bee's DALE KASLER/RYAN SABALOW: "A government agency that controls much of California’s water supply released its initial allocation for 2021, and the numbers reinforced fears that the state is falling into another drought.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday that most of the water agencies that rely on the Central Valley Project will get just 5% of their contract supply, a dismally low number. Although the figure could grow if California gets more rain and snow, the allocation comes amid fresh weather forecasts suggesting the dry winter is continuing.
The National Weather Service says the Sacramento Valley will be warm and windy the next few days, with no rain in the forecast."
Newsom signs California stimulus laws. When will checks be sent?
Sac Bee's KIM BOJORQUEZ: "Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Tuesday that will send state stimulus payments to low-income Californians and undocumented immigrants struggling financially amid the pandemic.
That means Californians who earn below $30,000 annually and qualify to receive the California Earned Income Tax Credit will see one-time $600 stimulus payments soon under Newsom’s $9.5 billion Golden State Stimulus plan.
Payments under the state’s stimulus plan are expected to be issued separately from an individual’s tax refund or state’s earned income tax credit, according to Sasha Feldstein, economic justice policy manager for the California Immigrant Policy Center. Those payments may take up to 45 days for direct deposit and 60 days for paper checks from the time any tax refund or state’s earned income tax credit is received."
California utility customers $1.25 billion behind on bills
ROB NIKOLEWSKI, Union-Tribune: "As the financial effects of the pandemic persist, more Californians are falling behind on paying their utility bills.
Looking across the customer base of the state’s major investor-owned utilities, the California Public Utilities Commission says 3.3 million residential customers have past-due bills and taken together, the amount eclipses the $1 billion mark.
Here are the figures in dollar amounts from data as of January for residential customers, compiled by the commission."
Road where Tiger Woods crashed known for high speeds, sharp turns and danger, residents say
FAITH E. PINHO, CHRISTINA SCHOELLKOPF and HAYLEY SMITH, LA Times: "The section of Hawthorne Boulevard in Rancho Palos Verdes where Tiger Woods lost control of his car Tuesday and was seriously injured in a rollover crash is known to local residents as a danger zone prone to accidents.
The crash occurred around 7 a.m. on a curvy, steep stretch of Hawthorne Boulevard near Blackhorse Road, where signs warn trucks to use lower gears when traveling downhill.
Donnie Nelson, a resident of Rolling Hills, said there are one or two serious crashes every year on the roadway."
CAROLYN JONES, EdSource: "Homeless students attending charter schools in Los Angeles County have significantly lower attendance and graduation rates than their peers at traditional public schools, according to new research from UCLA.
Homeless students in Los Angeles County charter schools had a graduation rate of 45% in 2018-19, more than 35 percentage points lower than the rate of homeless students at the county’s traditional public high schools, and 30 percentage points lower than the state average, according to “Unseen and Unsupported Students in Charter Schools,” published by the Black Male Institute at the university’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.
The rates are low, according to researchers, because charter schools often don’t provide the support they’re required to provide — such as transportation, groceries or school supplies — to homeless students and their families, as many traditional public schools do. As a result, homeless students may struggle more with school and have difficulty graduating, researchers said."
Father and son from Southern California must pay millions for national drug rehab fraud, judge says
TERI SFORZA and TONY SAAVEDRA, OC Register: "A father-son team must pay $26.7 million in restitution, and do time in federal prison, for fraudulently signing up addicts for health insurance and getting kickbacks from treatment centers in California.
Jeffrey White played the dominant role creating the scam, leading his son Nicholas White into a scheme that used fake addresses to buy policies for clients in states where they didn’t actually live, but where Obamacare health care exchanges offered the most generous reimbursements for addiction treatment, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
The Whites, of Twin Peaks, paid the clients’ insurance premiums, arranged to have them transported to California and admitted into expensive treatment centers. In exchange, those centers paid the Whites as much as $7,500 per patient. The centers then went on to bill insurers thousands of dollars for treatment and expensive lab tests each week, prosecutors said."
Califo rnia waiving millions of dollars in state business fees in new COVID stimulus
Sac Bee's JEONG PARK: "Hundreds of thousands of small businesses from restaurants to nail salons will not have to pay licensing fees until 2023, under California’s $7.6 billion stimulus measure signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Tuesday.
Many of their professional employees also can skip state licensing fees.
About 59,000 restaurants and bars won’t have to pay annual fees to renew their Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control licenses, which can range from $455 to $1,235."
San Diego Unified sets April 12 target date for reopening schools
KRISTEN TAKETA, Union-Tribune: "Nearly a year after San Diego Unified closed its schools due to the pandemic, the state’s second-largest district plans to reopen schools for all grade levels the week of April 12 — but that target date is contingent on the county getting out of the most-restrictive purple tier and on school staff getting access to both COVID vaccine doses, the district announced Tuesday.
The district set this target date after being told by San Diego County officials that the county will open up COVID vaccinations to school staff and other essential workers starting Monday, San Diego Unified Board President Richard Barrera said. The district struck an agreement for the April 12 target date with its teachers union, the San Diego Education Association, on Monday night, Barrera added.
“Getting our kids back in the classroom is one of our highest priorities and I want to commend San Diego Unified and the San Diego Education Association for reaching this agreement,” County Board of Supervisors Chair Nathan Fletcher said in a statement. “At the County, we will do everything possible to get our school staff vaccinated so our classrooms can be open to in-person learning.”
L.A. school reopening contingent on full staff vaccinations, making for uncertain date
HOWARD BLUME, LA Times: "Los Angeles schools Supt. Austin Beutner on Tuesday presented a plan to the school board for reopening campuses that includes the full period needed for employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, delaying the return of elementary students to early April at best.
School officials repeatedly targeted April 9 for a campus reopening date, but Beutner described the date as an estimate, saying that the crucial issue is access to vaccines for the 25,000 employees needed for the operation of elementary schools serving 250,000 students in the nation’s second-largest school system.
He discussed no timetable for the return of students in middle and high schools."
Black students are succeeding in college at higher rates, but far behind white peers, report says
LA Times's NINA AGRAWAL: "It took 10 years for Jamaal Muwwakkil, who grew up in Compton and was the first in his family to go to college, to navigate his way through the California community college system and ultimately transfer to UCLA.
“I attended all the community colleges and worked all the jobs,” he said during a webinar Tuesday, recounting the classes he took at Cerritos, East L.A., Santa Monica, Coastline and L.A. City Colleges, all while working various full-time jobs, including at Foot Locker, Disneyland and AT&T.
“It’s unfortunate that my scenario is very common for first-generation Black college students,” Muwwakkil said."
California is struggling to reopen schools. Could it spell trouble for Newsom in a recall?
LARA KORTE, SacBee: "The final day of the California Republican Party convention last weekend opened with an advertisement.
Images of Gov. Gavin Newsom flashed on the screen, criticizing him for sending his children to private schools while public schools remain closed.
“Gavin Newsom, taking care of himself while our kids suffer,” the ad read, as somber piano music played in the background. “It’s time for Gavin to go.”
READ MORE on Newsom: Newsom feuds with fellow California Democrats over schools -- MACKENZIE MAYS, Politico
Extremists on cops’ radar — even in ‘progressive’ California
ANTHONY ROBERT, Capitol Weekly: "As the role of violent extremists captures the public’s attention, law enforcement and other groups in California are trying to answer basic questions: Who are they? Where are they?
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has tracked extremist groups for years, recently released its annual state-by-state rundown of extreme right- and left-wing organizations, reflecting in part the Jan. 6 assault on Congress.
Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at SPLC concluded that the number of extremist and hate groups across the country had actually declined from 940 in 2019 to 838 groups in 2020. Their activity, however, appears to be increasing.
He wants to kick Jim Crow out of the California Constitution
LA Times's MARIA L LA GANGA: "Dorsey Nunn knows more about one particular line in the California Constitution than anyone would ever want to. It’s the line that harkens back to the dark days after the Civil War, the one that bans slavery — more or less.
“Slavery is prohibited,” says Article 1, Section 6 of the Constitution, the set of fundamental principles that defines what this state stands for. “Involuntary servitude is prohibited except to punish crime.”
The 69-year-old spent a decade behind bars for a 1971 robbery in which his accomplice killed a man. At San Quentin State Prison, he mixed chemicals for detergents that cleaned California’s tunnels and highways and hefted 50-pound sacks for later delivery. Two of his brothers were in prison at the same time."
California waiving millions of dollars in state business fees in new COVID stimulus
JEONG PARK, SacBee: "Hundreds of thousands of small businesses from restaurants to nail salons will not have to pay licensing fees until 2023, under California’s $7.6 billion stimulus measure signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Tuesday.
Many of their professional employees also can skip state licensing fees.
About 59,000 restaurants and bars won’t have to pay annual fees to renew their Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control licenses, which can range from $455 to $1,235."
Newsom vows changes after vaccine earmarked for hardest-hit communities improperly used by others
JULIA WICK, MAYA LAU and LAURA J. NELSON, LA Times: "In Los Angeles, the rumor spread like wildfire through group texts and email chains: The government was testing the appointment system at a new COVID-19 vaccination site at Cal State L.A., and you could help by using a special access code to sign up for a shot.
In the Bay Area, the gossip took a slightly different form: Doses at the Oakland Coliseum were about to expire, and you could do your part by making an appointment, again, with a special access code.
The problem, of course, was that none of this was true. There were no expiring doses at the Oakland Coliseum earmarked for use with special codes, and the Cal State L.A. site had no appointment testing program."
LAPD captain’s home searched as part of investigation into alleged sale of stolen guns
RICHARD WINTON and KEVIN RECTOR: "Los Angeles Police Department detectives searched the home of a captain Thursday as part of an investigation into the alleged sale of more than 20 firearms stolen from the police academy gun store, according to law enforcement sources.
The commercial crimes detectives were seeking evidence linked to the guns and who might have received them. They were also looking for any communications between Capt. Jonathan Tom, who oversees the West Los Angeles station, and Archie Duenas, a former assistant manager of the gun shop who was charged with stealing the weapons last year, sources said.
A Superior Court judge signed off on the warrant to search Tom’s Long Beach home; LAPD Chief Michel Moore also approved the warrant, sources said."
False claims in texts, emails led to misuse of vaccine codes intended for those in need
LA Times's JULIA WICK/LAURA J NELSON/MAYA LAU: "
In Los Angeles, the rumor spread like wildfire through group texts and email chains: The government was testing the appointment system at a new COVID-19 vaccination site at Cal State L.A., and you could help by using a special access code to sign up for a shot.
In the Bay Area, the gossip took a slightly different form: Doses at the Oakland Coliseum were about to expire, and you could do your part by making an appointment, again, with a special access code.
The problem, of course, was that none of this was true. There were no expiring doses at the Oakland Coliseum earmarked for use with special codes, and the Cal State L.A. site had no appointment testing program."