This year will likely be critically dry for California, state officials say
LA Times's ERIN B. LOGAN: "The winter storms that dumped heavy snow and rain across California early in 2021 are likely not enough to negate what will be a critically dry year, state water officials believe.
California’s Department of Water Resources on Tuesday recorded a snow depth of 56 inches and water content of 21 inches at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada. The water content of the overall snowpack was 61% of the average for March 2 and 54% of the average for April 1, when it is historically at its maximum.
Surveys of the Sierra snowpack, which normally supplies about 30% of California’s water, are a key element of the department’s water-supply forecast."
California to pay for quarantine of refugees seeking asylum
Sac Bee's KIM BOJORQUEZ: "California plans to spend $28 million to aid asylum seekers entering the country through the U.S.-Mexico border at the San Ysidro Port of Entry to await their court dates.
The state funding comes after the Biden administration announced in February that it would begin allowing immigrants with credible asylum claims, who were previously waiting in Mexico under former President Donald Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols program, to continue their immigration proceedings on U.S. territory.
“We have been in discussions ... with the Biden administration through the Department of Homeland Security about this change in policy on our side of the border and what we are willing to do to help that be as seamless a process as possible,” said H.D. Palmer, deputy director for external affairs at the California Department of Finance."
Single shot of two-dose COVID-19 vaccine can prevent serious illness and death
LA Times's MELISSA HEALY: "In a pinch, a single shot certainly helps.
A first look at the potential effect of stretching limited COVID-19 vaccine supplies has found that just one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 60% to 70% effective at preventing symptomatic disease in people age 70 and older.
That protection started 10 to 13 days after receiving the shot and lasted for more than six weeks, according to a preliminary report released Tuesday by Public Health England."
KELLIE HWANG and SUSIE NEILSON, Chronicle: "As California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday that another handful of counties could begin lifting some coronavirus restrictions, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared that he will reopen his state “100 percent” and lift its statewide mask mandate.
The country’s two most populous states have consistently diverged on policy throughout the pandemic, but their differences were particularly stark as Abbott issued his executive order, which goes into effect March 10.
“Make no mistake, COVID-19 has not disappeared,” the Republican governor said in a statement. However, “It is clear from the recoveries, vaccinations, reduced hospitalizations, and safe practices that Texans are using that state mandates are no longer needed.”
Capitol Weelkly Podcast: Delaine Eastin
CW Staff: "Today’s episode of the Capitol Weekly Podcast features Delaine Eastin, former Chair of the Assembly Education Committee, two term Superintendent of Public Instruction and now, candidate for California Democratic Party Chair.
Eastin joins Tim Foster and John Howard to make the case for her campaign, acknowledging that unseating current party chair Rusty Hicks will be a heavy lift, but expressing the optimism that is a hallmark of all of her efforts."
California commission calls for govt jobs program after pandemic
Sac Bee's JEONG PARK: "California labor and economic leaders in a new report are calling for a “social compact” for workers, including ideas such as generating a million new jobs in clean energy and providing a federal and state jobs guarantee by 2030.
Those were few of the ideas outlined in a report published Tuesday by the state’s Future of Work Commission, a group of leaders appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 to look at how California can prepare its economy for the next decade and beyond.
Its research began before the coronavirus pandemic sent the state’s economy spiraling last year, a crisis that members said underscored the urgency of the commission’s recommendations."
Who should pay for pension mistakes? California Legislature could make a change
Sac Bee's WES VENTEICHER: "A proposal aimed at ending surprise pension reductions for California retirees is back, accompanied by old questions over who should be responsible for mistakes that lead to benefit recalculations.
State Sen. Connie Leyva re-introduced the proposal, once vetoed by former Gov. Jerry Brown, as Senate Bill 278.
Under current practice, when CalPERS discovers in routine audits that a retiree is benefiting from an improper pension, the retiree receives a notice in the mail telling them their pension will be reduced, and often, that they must pay some of it back."
Fact check: Did Democrats plan to give COVID relief money to a 'pelosi subway'
Sac Bee's DAVID LIGHTMAN: "Claim: The economic relief plan Congress is now considering included “$140 million allocated to fund Speaker Pelosi’s subway in Silicon Valley,” House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday.
Ruling: Mostly true. The COVID-19 relief bill contained money for such a project — until the Senate parliamentarian ruled Tuesday night it didn’t belong in the bill. But the project was not Pelosi’s.
Details: The parliamentarian Tuesday ruled that the California project, as well as a New York bridge project, did not belong in the $1.9 trillion packaged aimed at helping people, businesses and state and local governments deal with the COVID-19 pandemic."
Lax enforcement results in 1/3rd of wild seafood imported into US being harvested illegally
The Chronicle's TARA DUGGAN: "Up to one-third of the wild-caught seafood imported to the United States is harvested illegally, and a new report from the environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council investigates why the problem is so pervasive and what could be done to prevent it.
Illegal seafood imports — known in the industry as illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing — are associated with marine habitat destruction, overfishing and human trafficking, according to the report. Though wild-caught and farmed seafood harvested and produced within the United States is highly regulated, regulation of the $20 billion annual imported seafood market could use much improvement, it found.
“We know illegal fishing is a huge problem, and that a lot of it happens overseas by vessels in other countries’ waters and on the high seas,” said Sandy Aylesworth, senior oceans advocate at NRDC and the author of the report. “It has these enormous consequences for fisheries management and really impairs our ability to make sure we have sustainable fisheries in the future. And it’s connected to these horrific human rights abuses.”"
How can we support teachers and their mental health amid COVID-19?
LA Times's ADA TSENG: "Teachers have recently been at the center of one of the more volatile debates of the pandemic — when to reopen in-person schooling.
The last year has been a wake-up call for parents of school-age children. By now, we fully understand what life is like without in-person school — and the teachers, day-care workers,
after-school instructors, bus drivers, custodians and other essential staffers who keep schools running. Workforces depend on their parent employees having a place to send their kids while they are working, and last year, researchers estimated nearly 10% of economic activity won’t return until schools and day cares open.
But these reopening conversations often focus on the needs of the students and parents, with less consideration for the needs of the educators."
The Chronicle's TRISHA THADANI: "San Francisco has hired a new chief for its sprawling network of substance use and mental health care programs — a critical position that has been held by acting directors for the last two years amid a deadly drug epidemic and an often crowded psychiatric emergency room.
Dr. Hillary Kunins, who will join the Department of Public Health later this month, will take charge at a particularly distressing time in San Francisco. About 700 people died of an overdose in 2020, a nearly 60% jump over the year prior, mostly due to fentanyl. Meanwhile, 2021 is already off to a tragically deadly start: 61 people died of an overdose in January, compared with 38 during the same month last year.
Drug use, mental illness and homelessness often cannot be addressed separately, but San Francisco is woefully short of services for all three. As the new Behavioral Health Services director, Kunins will help improve the city’s disjointed system of mental health and drug treatment programs, which serves some 30,000 vulnerable people a year. She will also lead Mental Health SF, a massive $100 million-a-year initiative intended to overhaul the city’s entire system of care."
QAnon and conspiracy theories are taking hold in churches. Pastors are fighting back
LA Times's JAWEED KALEEM: "The congregation was in the middle of an online service when a longtime churchgoer in her 60s texted her pastor to complain that his prayer lamenting the riot the U.S. Capitol in January was “too political.”
The woman later unloaded a barrage of conspiracy theories. The election of Joe Biden was a fraud. The insurrection was instigated by Black Lives Matter and antifa activists disguised as Donald Trump supporters. The FBI was in on it all. The day would soon come, she said, “when all the evil, the corruption would come to light and the truth would be revealed.”
Startled and moved to tears, Pastor David Rice told the woman she had been “tricked by lies.”"
Silicon Valley BART extension axed from fed stimulus bill after GOP protests
The Chronicle's MALLORY MOENCH/TAL KOPAN: "
Funding for a Silicon Valley BART extension in a federal coronavirus stimulus bill that drew the scorn of Republican lawmakers has been removed from the package, a spokesperson for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday.
The Senate parliamentarian, the official adviser to the legislative body, ruled that the extension doesn’t meet rule requirements for being included in the bill because it’s part of a pilot project, spokesperson Drew Hammill said in a statement.
The $1.9 trillion coronavirus package that the House passed last week contained $30 billion for public transit systems whose budgets have been decimated by the pandemic. That included $1.4 billion for dozens of capital projects for transit systems nationwide, of which $140 million would have gone to the envisioned BART extension into downtown San Jose and Santa Clara. The $6.9 billion Silicon Valley line would stretch BART 6 miles from its current terminusc in San Jose’s Berryessa neighborhood, with construction starting next year."
Rep. Devin Nunes misleadingly attacks BART extension as 'tunnel from SV to SF.'
The Chronicle's MICHAEL CABANATUAN: "In the wake of the House’s approval of the $1.9 trillion recovery bill, California Rep. Devin Nunes misleadingly characterized the BART extension in San Jose and Santa Clara, which would receive money as part of the bill, as “a tunnel from Silicon Valley to San Francisco” for “tech oligarchs...who sure as hell don’t need anyone’s money.”
The extension isn’t near San Francisco. It will extend BART service a total of 6 miles, from Berryessa, a San Jose neighborhood, passing beneath downtown San Jose in a 5-mile subway before ending in Santa Clara.
Nunes, R-Tulare, made the remarks Saturday during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla. Republicans who oppose the $1.9 trillion recovery bill have characterized it as larded with pork, and made the funding for BART’s long-planned extension into downtown San Jose and Santa Clara their prime example."
NatSec officials set for Senate grilling on Capitol riot missteps
AP's MARY CLARE JALONICK/ERIC TUCKER: "Federal national security officials are set to testify in the second Senate hearing about what went wrong on Jan. 6, facing questions about missed intelligence and botched efforts to quickly gather National Guard troops that day as a violent mob laid siege to the U.S. Capitol.
Senators are eager Wednesday to grill the officials from the Pentagon, the National Guard, and the Justice and Homeland Security departments about their preparations as supporters of then-President Trump talked online, in some cases openly, about gathering in Washington and interrupting the electoral count.
At a hearing last week, officials who were in charge of security at the Capitol blamed each other as well as federal law enforcement for their own lack of preparation as hundreds of rioters descended on the building, easily breached the security perimeter and eventually broke into the Capitol itself. Five people died as a result of the rioting."
FBI director says Capitol riot was 'domestic terrorism'
LA Times's DEL QUENTIN WILBER: "FBI Director Christopher A. Wray called the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol an act of “domestic terrorism” and defended the bureau’s handling of intelligence in the days before a pro-Trump mob stormed past police and threatened the lives of lawmakers.
“I was appalled that you, our country’s elected leaders, were victimized right here in these very halls,” he told senators Tuesday. “That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior. It is behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism.”
Wray faced questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing that delved into the bureau’s handling of threats posed by domestic terrorists and right-wing extremists before the Capitol siege."