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Newsom breaks deal to lower price of health insurance. Lawmakers move to hold him to it
CALMatters, KRISTEN HWANG: "The adage “get it in writing” applies to politics as much as anything else, and it would seem the California Legislature could learn a lesson or two.
Legislators and advocates have been pushing Gov. Gavin Newsom since last year to make good on a longtime promise to funnel money from a controversial tax penalty into the Covered California marketplace, making health insurance cheaper for nearly 1 million enrollees. The problem — or at least the argument Newsom has always made — is that state statute doesn’t require the penalty money to be used on health care. It goes directly into the general fund — where it has stayed for most of the past four years.
But legislators say that’s not what they intended when they voted on the measure in 2019. Senate leadership signaled its intent last week to ensure in writing that the money will “further lower the costs of health coverage for lower- and middle-income Californians” moving forward. The Senate budget proposal rejects Newsom’s plan to temporarily move $333.4 million in penalty money from an affordability reserve to the general fund, calling it a “rip-off” of Covered California funds."
Facing California deadlines, automakers race to produce electric cars
CALMatters, NADIA LOPEZ: "Amid the clank and clatter of the factory floor in Dearborn, Michigan, self-moving robotic vehicles transport the 1,600-pound batteries that power Ford’s flagship electric pickup truck to workers in various stations, who rush to bolt them to other parts.
After workers inspect each battery, the robot moves it along a track to the next station, then wedges itself between two idling robotic arms. One arm is overhead, dangling the 2023 F-150 Lightning’s chassis, while the other swiftly moves to pick up the massive battery and attach it to the chassis.
Assisted by more robots, workers quickly assemble the remaining parts: the aluminum frame, tires, cab and truck bed. Then the completed pickup truck — which has a long wait list of potential buyers — undergoes a final round of inspections and testing here at Ford’s Rouge Electric Vehicle Center."
California reparations: What to know about the effort to pay Black residents
The Chronicle, DUSTIN GARDINER: "The movement for reparations in California faces perhaps its most crucial make-or-break moment this weekend.
After nearly two years of tense meetings and detailed research, the state’s task force on reparations for Black people is meeting in Oakland on Saturday to decide the central question of its work: How much restitution is due?
Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers created the first-in-the-nation task force in 2020, and directed its members to study the history of slavery in California and its enduring vestiges of white supremacy. The task force is also charged with recommending how much compensation is due, and who should be eligible."
California state senator arrested for driving under the influence
Sacramento Bee, ANDREW SHEELER: "State Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, a candidate for Congress, announced on Facebook Wednesday that he was arrested Tuesday night for misdemeanor driving under the influence.
“My decision to drive last night was irresponsible. I accept full responsibility and there is no excuse for my actions. To my family, constituents and supporters, I am so deeply sorry. I know I need to do better. I will not let this personal failure distract from our work in California and in Washington,” Min wrote in a Facebook post at 9:08 a.m. Wednesday.
According to the California Highway Patrol (the arresting agency), officers witnessed a silver Toyota Camry driven by Min traveling south on 9th Street without headlights at 10:23 p.m."
Rising Stars: Mae Gates, office of Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas
Capitol Weekly, LISA RENNER: "Only 24 years old, Mae Gates is already chief of staff for a state senator, owner of a political consulting business and a passionate advocate for food justice.
She is focused on empowering black women. “All the hardships I have had in my life, a circle of women around me have gotten me through,” she said. “Black women professionals saw something in me and helped me. I’m about uplifting black women wherever I can.”
As leader of the office team for state Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, Gates is believed to be the youngest chief of staff in the capitol now as well as the youngest woman and youngest person of color in that role."
Santa Clara Councilmember Anthony Becker pleads not guilty to 49ers report leak
BANG*Mercury News, GRACE HASE: "Santa Clara City Councilmember Anthony Becker pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges that he leaked a confidential civil grand jury report to the San Francisco 49ers last year and then lied about it.
Becker was indicted last month on a felony perjury charge and a misdemeanor charge for leaking the document — which criticized the council’s cozy relationship with the NFL team — to former 49ers spokesperson Rahul Chandhok and reporters or editors at the Silicon Valley Voice.
The 49ers have played at the city’s Levi Stadium since 2014 and the city’s relationship with the team has long been a point of contention."
Should I bother getting a bivalent COVID booster now?
The Chronicle, KELLIE HWANG: "Dear Advice Team: I have held off on the bivalent COVID vaccine booster and now I’m wondering if I should get it at all. I am fully vaccinated (March-April 2021) and have had two doses of the original booster (November 2021 and April 2022), all Moderna. Then I actually got COVID — my first and only infection — in June 2022. I had intended to get the bivalent booster in the fall, but I was dealing with some other unrelated health problems, and because I have gotten pretty intense side effects from all my previous COVID shots (muscle aches, nausea, headache), I just couldn’t deal with the booster on top of that. But I’m now back in good health, fit, mid-50s, no risk factors.
I’m a year past my last booster and 10 months past COVID. I still wear a mask in some settings, mainly air travel and crowded indoor public places. I’ll be traveling some this summer, to the East Coast and Southern California. But I’m on the fence about the bivalent booster. I’m reading mixed things about its effectiveness against current variants."
Undocumented students qualify for financial aid in California. Why aren’t more of them using it?
CALMatters, CARMEN GONZALEZ: "When Deysi Mojica received her acceptance to UC Riverside, she was excited. Not only had she overcome her high school’s lack of resources to help undocumented students like herself apply to college, but the university was offering a financial aid package that would make her college dream possible.
“Even though I am undocumented,” said Mojica, now a first-year student, “the amount of money that they gave me was basically covering all my expenses.”
But an unexpected $13,000 charge from the university just before she was due to start classes quickly changed her excitement into confusion, leaving her wondering where the money she was awarded had gone. It was only after repeated calls to the financial aid office, Mojica said, that a helpful student assistant who was also undocumented gave her the information that saved her from dropping out: Her aid package was held up because a signature was missing from one of her application forms."
OUSD strike: Oakland teachers to leave 34,000 students without instruction in open-ended walkout
The Chronicle, JILL TUCKER: "Oakland teachers will strike Thursday, district and union officials confirmed late Wednesday, leaving 34,000 students without classroom teachers, despite nearly non-stop bargaining in recent days to avert the walkout.
District officials said Wednesday afternoon they were close to a deal, but well into the evening, they were still too far apart, prompting Oakland Education Association members to declare the progress wasn’t good enough."
Oakland teachers threaten strike to raise some of state's lowest salaries
EdSource, DIANA LAMBERT, DANIEL J. WILLIS: "Markedly higher pay tops an ambitious list of contract demands by Oakland teachers who could hit the picket lines early Thursday, potentially closing schools and classrooms to more than 34,000 students.
The district on Monday countered with a new salary schedule that would give TK-12 teachers varying pay increases depending on their experience and education level, as well as an ongoing 10% raise retroactive to November of last year, and a one-time $5,000 bonus. According to the district, first-year teachers would see their pay increase from $52,905 this school year to $63,604 next school year, with most teachers receiving at least a 13% salary increase.
Although the negotiations between the district and the union are getting closer on salary, they remain far apart, sources say."
Former Cal swimmers sue university for ignoring alleged abuse by coach
The Chronicle, NANETTE ASIMOV: "Eighteen former members of the Cal women’s swim team sued the University of California Regents on Wednesday, accusing UC of looking the other way for at least 20 years while Coach Teri McKeever allegedly abused student athletes psychologically and imposed “dangerous training conditions” that caused injuries. The suit says UC then repeatedly mischaracterized McKeever as a great coach, allowing her to continue.
UC Berkeley fired McKeever in January after an investigative report by the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson upheld the accusations of more than 40 swimmers that the women’s head swim coach insulted and humiliated them and singled out athletes for abuse on the basis of race and disability. McKeever’s career at Cal spanned three decades and included several stints coaching the U.S. Olympic women’s swim team.
Among the plaintiffs are Cierra Burnell of Arizona, an Olympic gold medalist in the 2016 summer games in Rio de Janeiro, and other accomplished athletes. They now live in 10 states, including California, and in the U.K., and were on Cal’s swimming or dive teams between 2000 and 2020."
A day of school stabbings, crashes and suspected fentanyl overdoses sparks alarm at LAUSD
LA Times, HOWARD BLUME, NOAH GOLDBERG: "During one school day this week, Los Angeles Unified grappled with three emergencies: a double stabbing outside a high school, multiple suspected fentanyl overdoses at a middle school and a traffic collision outside an elementary school that badly injured a child.
The Monday violence and trauma was so alarming that it prompted a Tuesday morning phone call between Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho; the two pledged to work together to confront what feels to many parents like a school-safety crisis.
The two leaders identified key safety concerns to address urgently: traffic, violence, drugs."
Why Hollywood writers strike won’t end soon. Here are six sticking points
LA Times, ANOUSHA SAKOUI, MEG JAMES: "Hollywood’s writers strike that triggered nationwide protests and halted productions this week could be the beginning of a months-long standoff.
The Writers Guild of America and the media companies abandoned their talks several hours before a Monday night deadline to reach a new contract, stunning industry observers who had expected a suspenseful night.
But negotiations had collapsed earlier in the day when it became clear the two camps were far apart on key issues — and that neither side was willing to bend to close the gap, according to interviews and WGA documents."
Richer people left San Francisco. Here’s how many billions they’ve taken with them
The Chronicle, CHRISTIAN LEONARD: "As San Francisco residents left the city in the early years of the pandemic, they took billions of dollars in income with them.
About 32,000 more people left San Francisco than migrated to the city from 2020 to 2021, according to newly released tax return data from the IRS. That’s slightly less than the 39,000 more who left than came to the city from 2019 to 2020."
Here’s how many more Meta layoffs hit the Bay Area
The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI: "Meta is poised to shed an additional 1,500 workers in the Bay Area as part of its 21,000 layoffs. The social media titan will be slashing jobs across its San Francisco, Burlingame, Sunnyvale, Fremont and Menlo Park offices, according to letters sent to state and local officials on Monday.
The affected employees include hardware and software engineers, product managers and staff from its artificial intelligence teams. These layoffs are expected to be permanent and will take place in June and July, according to the documents submitted by Lori Goler, the company’s head of people.
The latest round of layoffs comes after the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp reduced its workforce by 11,000 jobs in November, resulting in more than 2,300 layoffs in the Bay Area. Another 10,000 layoffs are planned this year."
S.F. layoffs: Three more companies are cutting employees
The Chronicle, CHASE DIFELICIANTONIO: "Two San Francisco tech companies, Upwork and Unity, said they would make cuts to their workforces, while Wells Fargo revealed in a state filing that it had laid off several dozen employees in San Francisco.
Unity, a video game and 3D software company, is laying off about 600 people, or 8% of its workforce, in the third round of cuts dating to last year, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The company did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment, but rounds of layoffs started after the company’s $4.4 billion acquisition of tech firm IronSource, which The Chronicle reported had created duplicative jobs."
A chill descends on Davis as the probe into brutal stabbings intensifies
LA Times, JESSICA GARRISON: "Amid a series of brutal and seemingly random stabbings that have left two men dead and a woman in critical condition, life in Davis is proceeding as if under a curfew.
In a town that usually bustles with bikers and joggers on almost every street and path, its parks bursting with the sights and sounds of youth sports, city life is suddenly eerily quiet.
The unease began with Thursday’s fatal stabbing of a well-known town character, 50-year-old David Henry Breaux, a Stanford University graduate who slept in the town’s Central Park and was known for his gentle proselytizing on the need for human compassion. Two days later, on Saturday night, UC Davis student Karim Abou Najm, 20, was viciously stabbed and killed about 9:15 p.m. in Sycamore Park in a residential neighborhood near campus as he biked home from an event at the university."
Menendez brothers cite documentary as evidence it’s time they were freed; petition filed
LA Times, SALVADOR HERNANDEZ: "Erik and Lyle Menendez, the brothers who shot and killed their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion, are asking the courts to vacate their 1996 convictions, citing new evidence from a documentary series alleging that their father sexually assaulted a former underage member of Menudo.
Roy Rosselló, a former member of the internationally popular boy band in the 1980s, alleged he was drugged and raped when he was 13 or 14 years old by Jose Menendez, an RCA Records executive at the time.
The allegations were first raised in the Peacock docuseries “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed,” a three-part series that looks into allegations that band members were abused by the group’s creator, Edgardo Díaz."