California nears COVID-19 vaccine target that would ease more reopening rules
LA Times's LUKE MONEY: "California is on the precipice of administering 4 million COVID-19 vaccine doses in its most disadvantaged areas — a hurdle that, when cleared, would trigger a rewrite of the state’s reopening blueprint to make it easier for counties to more widely reopen businesses and other public spaces.
State data show that, as of Monday, providers had doled out 3.93 million doses in the targeted communities, which fall within the lowest quartile of a socioeconomic measurement tool called the California Healthy Places Index.
On reaching 4 million doses, California will relax one of the metrics necessary for counties to progress into the lower tiers of its four-rung reopening roadmap."
As S.F. students grapple with pandemic's emotional toll, mobile mental health team rushes in
EMMA TALLEY, Chronicle: "After a year of school closures and isolation, many Bay Area students are suffering. Parents and teachers have reported failing grades and rising depression. Suicide attempts in adolescents are skyrocketing.
To meet the emerging crisis, San Francisco is expanding a mobile response team that provides mental health and wellness services to children, including the school district’s students.
The mobile mental health crisis service, operated by nonprofit Seneca Family of Agencies, can “respond to whatever the need is, whenever the need is, wherever the need is,” said Amy Kirsztajn, regional director of San Francisco programs. The team provides non-police and age-appropriate help for children experiencing a mental health crisis or in need of preventative care, ranging from counseling to crisis prevention."
In massive reopening effort at 1,400 LA public schools, safety is priority
LA Times's HOWARD BLUME: "The complex logistics of awakening 1,400 Los Angeles schools are reaching a crescendo this week with officials especially focused on safety — announcing plans to open 25 community vaccination centers and urging all returning families to sign their students up for mandatory coronavirus testing.
Principals are jiggering schedules. Families are pondering whether to return. Teachers are moving school supplies from bedrooms, kitchen tables and garages into classrooms. The nation’s second-largest school system is ramping up to welcome back 465,000 kindergarten-through-12th-grade students next week after 13 months.
Safety continues to be the crux of planning — as emphasized in remarks broadcast Monday by L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner. He reminded families of all that has been done — including “doubling” custodial staff and installing improved ventilation systems and filters as well as markers and barriers intended to keep just about every human aspect of the school experience six feet apart."
Salesforce paid no fed income tax in 2020 despite $2.6B profits
The Chronicle's ROLAND LI: "Salesforce, San Francisco’s largest private employer, was among 55 major U.S. companies that paid no federal income taxes in 2020, according to a new report.
The cloud computing giant had $2.6 billion in net income in its 2021 fiscal year ending on Jan. 31, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Instead of paying around half a billion dollars in taxes — based on the corporate tax rate of 21% — the company is receiving a $12 million refund, according to the Institute for Tax and Economic Policy, a non-partisan think tank that issued the report.
Salesforce had no net tax liability over the last three years, with a net effective tax rate of -0.1%, according to the institute. FedEx and Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard were some of the other companies that didn’t pay federal taxes."
Trump's tax law capped a deduction that helped Californians. Newsom wants it restored
Sac Bee's DAVID LIGHTMAN: "Gov. Gavin Newsom and six other Democratic governors Friday joined a growing chorus of officials urging an end to federal limits on state and local tax deductions that were imposed in the 2017 tax law President Donald Trump signed.
“Like so many of President Trump’s efforts, capping SALT deductions was based on politics, not logic or good government,” the governors wrote in a letter to President Biden.
“This assault disproportionately targeted Democratic-run states, increasing taxes on hardworking families. This was unacceptable then, and is simply untenable given the dire economic conditions caused by the pandemic,” they said."
The Chronicle's BOB EGELKO: "A woman who was raped and beaten by a husband and a partner in Mexico for expressing feminist views — like saying she had the right to be treated equally and hold a job — is eligible for asylum in the United States because she would face persecution in her homeland, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
“Those men mistreated her because she expressly asserted to them her political opinion that she was their equal,” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in finding Maria Rodriguez-Tornes eligible to remain legally in the United States after fleeing Mexico.
Rodriguez-Tornes was brought up to be a victim, the court said: Starting at age 5, her mother told her to obey her future husband’s orders and accept spousal abuse, and beat her almost daily to prepare her for the future."
California prisons grapple with hundreds of transgender inmates requesting new housing
LA Times's LEILA MILLER: "Kelly Blackwell longs to escape her life as a transgender woman in a California men’s prison, where she struggles every day to avoid being seen in her bra and panties and says she once faced discipline after fighting back when an inmate in her cell asked for oral sex.
After more than 30 years, and two decades since Blackwell began hormone therapy, her chance to leave arrived last fall when groundbreaking legislation gave transgender, intersex and nonbinary inmates the right, regardless of anatomy, to choose whether to be housed in a male or female prison.
The demand has been high, with 261 requests for transfers since SB 132 took effect Jan. 1, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. It’s the start of a hugely sensitive operation playing out in one of the largest prison systems in the country."
Kamala Harris: Oakland Coliseum vaccination site will stay open
The Chronicle's JOE GAROFOLI/MEGHAN BOBROWSKY: "Vice President Kamala Harris said the federal government plans to keep a mass vaccination site at the Oakland Coliseum open beyond its scheduled closure Sunday, after local officials expressed concern about the planned shutdown just as demand for inoculations is about to explode.
“We are going to keep the site open,” Harris told The Chronicle on Monday during her first trip to Oakland since she became vice president. “We are extending it.”
However, there was no immediate clarity on how it would run, given that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has said it will stop providing vaccine doses after this week. FEMA, which is running the operation with California’s Office of Emergency Services, has offered its support to keep the site open and is in discussions with the state about how to proceed, according to a letter that the federal agency’s acting administrator sent to the state last week."
More than 2M Californians may be leaving stimulus money on the table. Here's how to get it
LA Times's MADALYN AMATO: "More than 2 million Californians have fallen into a “stimulus gap,” in which they are entitled to money from federal COVID-19 relief programs but haven’t yet received it. And they may be in danger of never collecting the money, according to a new report from the California Policy Lab.
Since April 2020, three payments totaling up to $3,200 per person have been sent to qualifying Americans. Of the 2.2 million Californians in the so-called stimulus gap, 1.4 million may have missed out on all three rounds of payments. Those who filed their state taxes in 2018 but not 2019, an estimated 424,000 Californians, are at risk of not receiving their second and third payments. And with the most recent relief package, an estimated 360,000 dependents may also be missing out.
The California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley estimates that $5.7 billion in stimulus money could go unclaimed."
Biden boosted by Senate rules as GOP bucks infrastructure
AP's LISA MASCARO/JOSH BOAK: "With an appeal to think big, President Joe Biden is promoting his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan directly to Americans, summoning public support to push past the Republicans lining up against the massive effort they sum up as big taxes, big spending and big government.
Republicans in Congress are making the politically brazen bet that it’s more advantageous to oppose the costly American Jobs Plan, saddling the Democrats with ownership of the sweeping proposal and the corporate tax hike Biden says is needed to pay for it. He wants the investments in roads, schools, broadband and clean energy approved by summer.
On Monday, Biden received a boost from an unexpected source. The Senate parliamentarian greenlighted a strategy that would allow Democrats in the evenly-split 50-50 chamber to rely on a 51-vote threshold to advance some bills, rather than the typical 60 votes typically needed. The so-called budget reconciliation rules can now be used more often than expected — giving Democrats a fresh new path around the GOP blockade."
Chesa Boudin supporters have outraised the recall campaign. Here's who donated the most
The Chronicle's MEGAN CASSIDY: "A political action committee created to keep San Francisco top prosecutor Chesa Boudin in office now appears to be financially outpacing a recall effort against him, new campaign finance records show.
Financial disclosures made public Monday show the camp supporting Boudin edged out the district attorney’s foes by about $20,000.
The San Franciscans Against the Recall of Chesa Boudin committee raised a total of $160,000, while the Committee Supporting the Recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin raised about $139,800 by the most recent filing deadline."
SF schools chief, who resigned a month ago, decides to stay amid controversy and crisis
The Chronicle's JILL TUCKER: "San Francisco schools Superintendent Vince Matthews plans to remain on the job for another year, rescinding his retirement announcement as the embattled school district navigates a series of crises.
His decision, announced Monday, offers the school board a reprieve from managing a superintendent search amid reopening classrooms for the first time in a year while dealing with upheaval, controversies and chaos.
The school district has struggled to reopen schools while facing an uproar over racist tweets from a school board member who in turn filed an $87 million lawsuit against the district and five colleagues over the issue; a recall of three school board members; a pending legal fight over changing the admissions process to Lowell High School, and a lawsuit over the board’s vote to rename 44 schools. The board is expected to reverse the renaming Tuesday with another vote."
Video shows Danville police officer shoot homeless Black man
The Chronicle's RACHEL SWAN: "A video obtained Monday by The Chronicle shows the fatal shooting by a Danville police officer of 32-year-old Tyrell Wilson, a homeless Black man who had been staying near a public parking lot used by carpoolers.
The video, taken by a witness to the shooting, does not appear to capture Wilson advance toward Officer Andrew Hall, as Danville police said he did before he was shot on March 11. It shows the two men facing one another, standing feet apart shortly before noon that day at Sycamore Valley Road and Camino Ramon.
Danville police said Hall had responded to the scene after dispatchers received reports of a person throwing rocks from the overpass at Sycamore Valley Road onto Highway 680. When Hall arrived he saw Wilson standing in the street, police said. The police released still photographs that show Wilson holding the bag in his left hand and a folding knife in his right."