Capitol Basement

Since late March, California’s case rate has nearly tripled and the Bay Area — which historically experienced a lower case rate than the rest of the state — has emerged as a COVID hotspot.

Though cases are still one-tenth of what they were during January’s omicron surge, the region has more than three times as many positive cases than it did six weeks after the winter surge. That trend started in San Francisco around mid-March, followed by Santa Clara, San Mateo and a little later the other counties."

AL SARACEVIC, SF Examiner: "The Sixth Amendment guarantees citizens the right to “a speedy and public trial” without unnecessary delay. Let’s just say our Founding Fathers might be a little disappointed with San Francisco’s court system.

At the start of this year, there were just under 250 people in our county jails whose trial dates had passed, according to the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. It’s a legal logjam that grew during the height of the COVID pandemic. But it’s not getting better.

In fact, it’s gotten so bad that Public Defender Mano Raju has filed a petition with the California Court of Appeals, asking the higher court to force the reopening of more courtrooms in The City."

PAUL MITCHELL, Capitol Weekly: "For the past two years, redistricting experts and politicos, myself included, have been building toward the 2022 election cycle.

A big part of this included building tools for analyzing potential new districts for their partisan breakdown and likely voting behavior. Getting these kinds of metrics was critical to the drawing of lines by legislatures that still have the control, and performing advocacy before commissions in states, like California, that have transitioned to a public and open redistricting process.

Just 10 years ago there were few who could distill this kind of information, and for the most part the analysis around these districts was kept under wraps."

ROSANNA XIA, LA Times:"At a point in the year when California’s water storage should be at its highest, the state’s two largest reservoirs have already dropped to critically low levels — a sobering outlook for the hotter and drier months ahead.

Shasta Lake, which rises more than 1,000 feet above sea level when filled to the brim, is at less than half of where it usually should be in early May — the driest it has been at this time of year since record-keeping first began in 1976. Lake Oroville, the largest reservoir in the State Water Project, a roughly 700-mile lifeline that pumps and ferries water all the way to Southern California, is currently at 55% of total capacity.

In the U.S. Drought Monitor’s latest report, officials described both reservoir conditions as “critically low” going into the summer. Other water officials in recent days have called this “the worst drought in the history of the State Water Project.”

Sonoma State president ‘should step down’ amid sex harassment scandal, lawmakers say

COLLEEN SHALBY and ROBERT LOPEZ, LA Times: "Two state senators on Monday called for embattled President Judy Sakaki of Sonoma State to step down after a no confidence vote by faculty amid a scandal over her alleged retaliation against a former provost who reported sexual harassment claims against her husband.

“The faculty has spoken and it’s time for the healing process to begin,” Sens. Bill Dodd (D-Napa) and Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) said in a statement. “President Sakaki should step down for the greater good of the university,”

Dodd represents a district that includes Sonoma State, and McGuire represents the adjacent district. McGuire graduated from the university and was honored as its 2015 distinguished alumnus."

ROSALIO AHUMADA, SacBee: "A Sacramento man on Monday pleaded guilty to submitting false payroll records and other documents to claim more than $1.2 million in federal COVID-19 relief loans intended for small businesses suffering financially during the pandemic, prosecutors said.

Aaron Ashcraft, 42, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of bank fraud for the scheme he carried out from May 2020 through April 2021, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento.

As part of his plea agreement, Ashcraft also admitted he embezzled at least $780,000 from his former employer, a street-sweeping company in Sacramento, and he admitted he defrauded the Maine Department of Labor to obtain unemployment compensation of more than $58,000, federal prosecutors said

With the recent introduction of California bills such as SB 906, requiring parents to disclose their possession of firearms at home, debates about whether states and schools are doing enough to keep their students and staff safe have only intensified. As California leads the nation in the number of mass shootings in the past 40 years, students, teachers and parents are seeking ways to ensure safety in schools.

We asked students who have survived a school shooting or shooting threats about how those experiences have impacted them."

Since last summer, Santa Clara County residents have been asked to cut water use by 15% from 2019 levels to conserve as the state’s drought worsens. But they continue to miss that target — and by a growing amount.

In March, the county’s 2 million residents not only failed to conserve any water, but they increased use by 30% compared to March 2019, according to newly released data."

BOB EGELKO, SF Chronicle: "The Supreme Court denied a right to racial integration in 1896, then granted it 58 years later. The court upheld a state ban on interracial marriage in 1883 and, after an even longer interval, recognized a right to marriage between races in 1967, in the aptly named case of Loving v. Virginia. The justices rejected a right to gay and lesbian sexual relations in 1986 and reversed themselves in 2003.

In the other direction, the court has weakened rights granted by Congress, notably in 2013, when it struck down a key enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act. A 1990 ruling allowed the government to prosecute religious observers whose practices violated criminal law — in that case, a ban on peyote — as long as the law applied generally and did not target religious practices. Congress later narrowed the scope of that ruling, and several justices have advocated overturning it.

But if the court, as indicated in a leaked draft opinion supported by five justices, overturns the constitutional right to abortion that it declared in Roe v. Wade in 1973, it will arguably be the first time it has withdrawn a substantive individual right it had previously granted. And other court-approved rights, like contraception and same-sex marriage, could be on the line as well."

PATRICK RILEY, SacBee: "Following in the footsteps of other local governments, Sacramento County is considering cracking down on illegal fireworks amid concerns over wildfires. County supervisors this week are expected to introduce a proposed ordinance that would hold property owners liable for illegal fireworks being used on their property if they knew or should’ve known the prohibited activity was happening.

The cities of Sacramento, Folsom, Elk Grove and Citrus Heights have similar rules on the books, known as host ordinances.

“Like other jurisdictions who have passed such ordinances we seek to balance protecting the community and avoiding unduly burdening a property owner that might not have known fireworks were being set on their property,” Eric Jones, who heads the county’s public safety and justice agency, told supervisors last week."

Why are Riverside County government employees leaving?

JEFF HORSEMAN, Press-Enterprise: "Riverside County is having problems recruiting and retaining employees, with some departments seeing turnover rates of 30% and job vacancy rates of 40%, a report states.

Supervisors Kevin Jeffries and V. Manuel Perez, who wrote the report, want county officials to look into the labor shortage and respond in 90 days. Their proposal is on the Board of Supervisors’ agenda for Tuesday, May 10.

County government isn’t alone in its struggle to find workers. In January, the U.S. had 11.3 million available jobs and not enough employees to fill them, CNN reported in March."

COVID rising -- again