Secession talks emerge in one Northern California county. Is a new state a possibility?
Sac Bee, MICHAEL MCGOUGH: "When considering the possibility of a 51st U.S. state, places like Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico are likely some of the first to spring to mind.
But what about a sparser alternative, nestled between California and Nevada, with prime views of Lake Tahoe’s southern shore?"
‘Down to our last dimes’: State workers say California paychecks no longer cover the bills
CALMatters, JEANNE KUANG: "When Tammy Rodriguez landed a job with the California Department of Motor Vehicles 27 years ago, she felt like she had “struck gold.” It was her first job, she said, and she felt secure knowing she was earning not just a salary, but a pension for later in life.
Over the years she thought about looking for work at private companies to make more money, especially after she had a child. But she liked the other benefits of state work: the health care coverage, the flexibility of transferring departments when her family moved and the job security when she went on maternity leave."
Everyone hates the Swing Space elevators, but are they really dangerous?
Capitol Weekly, BRIAN JOSEPH: "In an environment as divisive as the California Legislature, it takes a common enemy to unite the community.
Republicans and Democrats, aides and outside advocates, Assembly and Senate, they may not agree on much. But there does appear to be consensus on at least one critical issue: the Swing Space elevators. They’re awful. Everyone seems to agree on that."
With key Democratic senators undecided, Julie Su’s bid for Labor secretary languishes
LA Times, OWEN TUCKER-SMITH: "Former California labor chief Julie Su’s bid to become President Biden’s Labor secretary is languishing, showing how hard it can be for a progressive Californian to win Senate confirmation in a deeply divided Washington.
Su, who would be Biden’s first Asian American Cabinet secretary, faces fierce GOP opposition and will need unanimous or near-unanimous support from the Senate Democratic caucus to win confirmation. But although Biden picked Su for the job in February, Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) have yet to make up their minds. Manchin, Sinema and Tester are up for reelection in 2024, raising the stakes of their decisions."
BANG*Mercury News, GRACE HASE: "Following a monthslong salvo over how to best spend tens of millions of dollars on the city’s homelessness crisis, San Jose has decided to move roughly $8 million away from affordable housing to support interim solutions — millions less than Mayor Matt Mahan initially hoped.
The debate came to a head Tuesday evening in the midst of budget discussions, with Councilmembers Dev Davis and David Cohen leading the charge to help all sides reach a compromise."
S.F. Mayor Breed defends controversial move to arrest drug users: ‘You’ve never lived in it’
The Chronicle, MALLORY MOENCH: "Mayor London Breed fiercely defended her controversial policy to arrest and detain drug users to get them into treatment against criticism from Supervisor Dean Preston on Tuesday, calling him a “white man who’s talking about Black and brown people as if you’re the savior.”
Breed has directed the police department to use public intoxication laws to arrest people who are high on drugs, detain them to sober up in jail and then offer them services. So far, officers have cited or arrested 38 people under the so-called “Intoxication Detention program,” 12 of whom already had arrest warrants issued against them, she said during the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday. She said none accepted drug treatment upon release."
Krekorian says he’ll move to suspend Price from City Council
LA Times, JULIA WICK: "Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian said Tuesday evening he will move to suspend Councilmember Curren Price, hours after Price was charged with 10 counts of embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest by the L.A. County district attorney’s office.
Price called the charges against him “unwarranted.”"
For Price, charges could threaten political career as ally of labor, low-wage workers
LA Times, DAKOTA SMITH, EMILY ALPERT REYES: "In April, Los Angeles City Councilmember Curren Price rallied with workers on the steps of City Hall to demand higher pay for hotel workers and janitors who clean Los Angeles International Airport.
“The living wage movement is a social justice movement,” Price declared alongside union members in purple shirts, before introducing a proposal to dramatically boost wages for workers who cater to tourists."
Charts show how unpredictable El Niño can be for California weather
The Chronicle, JACK LEE: "The official arrival of El Niño conditions raises fears for another wet California winter. But these conditions don’t guarantee that the state will face torrential downpours and floods, as it did during the infamous El Niño winters of 1982-83 or 1997-98, experts say.
“That, I think, is one of the huge misconceptions,” said Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services and adjunct professor at San Jose State University."
Battle for Oak Flat: How Apache opposition to a copper mine became a religious liberty test
LA Times, KEVIN RECTOR: "On a recent morning about an hour outside Phoenix, the pounding of tribal drums reverberated across the desert from a stand of oaks in the Tonto National Forest, where nearly 20 men had packed into a squat green sweat lodge to pray.
Members of several Native American tribes, the men had come to take part in the grueling spiritual ceremony under the guidance of Wendsler Nosie Sr., a 64-year-old Apache elder who has emerged in recent years as an influential religious and environmental activist — not only in this small pocket of Arizona, but nationally."
Lake Oroville is 100% full as California reservoirs are revived by historic rain and snowmelt
LA Times, NATHAN SOLIS: "California’s second-largest reservoir is now completely full after a historic rainy season recharged reservoirs across the state following years of drought.
Lake Oroville, fed by the Feather River about 80 miles north of Sacramento, is at 100% of its capacity, according to the California Department of Water Resources."
Famed musician’s former beach property to become new park on San Mateo coast
BANG*Mercury News, PAUL ROGERS: "For years, a mile-long stretch of sand on the rural San Mateo County coast was known for loud late night parties that left behind huge piles of litter.
On Tuesday, the stunning property, once owned by rock singer Chris Isaak, moved a big step closer to becoming a new public park — the first of its kind in more than 50 years."
COVID leaves millions of Americans with lingering loss of smell and taste, study shows
The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI: "Millions of Americans who contracted COVID-19 have not fully regained their senses of smell and taste.
According to a recent survey of nearly 30,000 adults conducted by researchers from Massachusetts Eye and Ear and published in the medical journal The Laryngoscope, approximately 1 in 4 individuals infected with the virus during the early stages of the pandemic has yet to recover these crucial senses."
Fentanyl-tainted pills now found in Mexican pharmacies from coast to coast
LA Times, CONNOR SHEETS, KERI BLAKINGER: "Some of the pills looked just like antibiotics. Others were unlabeled white tablets. Several mimicked well-known American pills, and a few came in sealed bottles.
They were all purchased in Mexico, at legitimate pharmacies from Tulum, at the country’s southeast tip, to Tijuana, at the northwest border with California."
UCSF doctor fighting back as drugmaker halts research on lifesaving medicine
The Chronicle, GABE CASTRO-ROOT: "Diana Mansfield credits her life to a miracle drug.
Since undergoing a kidney transplant at UCSF in 2001, Mansfield has received infusions of an immunosuppressant every two months that prevent her body from rejecting the organ."
How California schools are spending billions in record pandemic aid
LA Times, HOWARD BLUME: "California schools districts are largely on track to spend billions of dollars in pandemic aid before their 2024 deadline — with much of the funding targeting summer and after-school learning — but questions persist over how well the money is being spent to help students make up ground academically, researchers have concluded.
The report, released Wednesday, examines the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Act (ESSER III) — the third, last and largest tranche of federal aid that went to schools to offset the harms of the COVID-19 pandemic. This round of aid totaled $122 billion nationwide, including about $15.1 billion for California. That’s an amount equal to about 19% of what the state provides annually for its schools."
California professors test out AI in the classroom, even as cheating debate continues
CALMatters, ROCKY WALKER: "This spring, as debates were raging on college campuses about the proper role of generative AI in higher education, Diablo Valley College adjunct professor Frako Loden created an assignment to see how students in her American Cinema class interacted with ChatGPT.
For their final opinion piece of the semester, they were to pick a discussion question about the 1950’s movie “A Place in the Sun,” insert it into ChatGPT as a prompt, and then grade the response themselves. The AI got key details of the plot wrong in some cases, Loden said."
Report: Eight Silicon Valley households have six times more wealth than bottom 500,000
BANG*Mercury News, JOHN WOOLFOLK: "Silicon Valley is an embarrassment of riches for some and a struggle to get by for many who live there, but a report Tuesday puts the gap between rich and poor in the cradle of technology and innovation into stark relief: Just eight households in the region hold more wealth than the 500,000 at the other end of the earnings scale.
The Fourth Annual Silicon Valley Pain Index published Tuesday by San Jose State University’s Human Rights Institute features new data that highlights the region’s persistent earnings inequalities and the astronomical concentration of wealth into the hands of a very small number of households and companies."
Surge in Oakland robberies are pushing some businesses to stop accepting cash
The Chronicle, RACHEL SWAN: "After suffering three burglaries in two years, workers at Asha Tea House — a small shop in Uptown Oakland — made a wrenching but practical decision: They stopped accepting cash.
“We’re hoping it solves the problem,” assistant manager Angel Her said on Friday morning, standing over a flat-screen register bearing a small “credit cards only” sign."
Skid Row receivership in danger of financial collapse, leaving 1,500 tenants at risk
LA Times, LIAM DILLON, DOUG SMITH: "The receivership overseeing the welfare of 1,500 tenants in Skid Row is verging on insolvency, unable to borrow money and piling up $1.7 million in unpaid bills.
The financial circumstances have become so dire that Mark Adams, the receiver in charge of 29 properties owned by Skid Row Housing Trust, is asking for emergency action from a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, or else he said he’ll have to cancel security contracts, lay off his staff and surrender the effort."
Another dilapidated downtown Sacramento hotel set to be redeveloped into homeless housing
Sac Bee, THERESA CLIFT: "Another dilapidated downtown Sacramento single room occupancy hotel is set to undergo a major redevelopment.
The Sacramento City Council Tuesday unanimously approved $3.5 million in mixed-income housing funds toward the project, to redevelop the Sequoia Hotel at the corner of 9th and K streetsD."
The Chronicle, MATTHIAS GAFNI: "A San Mateo County Superior Court judge ruled Monday that Dharmesh Patel, the Southern California doctor accused of intentionally driving his Tesla off a Devil’s Slide cliff with his family in the car, can no longer practice medicine while his attempted murder case is ongoing.
The Medical Board of California asked the judge to intervene, calling Patel a “danger to the public,” according to court records. Judge Rachel Holt granted the request Monday, after postponing Patel’s preliminary hearing scheduled for that morning."
House to consider resolution to censure Adam Schiff
The Hill, MYCHAEL SCHNELL: "The House is looking to consider a resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) this week after a Republican lawmaker moved to force a vote on the measure. Rep.
Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, called the censure measure to the floor as a privileged resolution on Tuesday, forcing action on the legislation. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said the measure would likely come to the floor on Wednesday."