"In early 2012, state officials said construction would begin that year. Early this year, officials adjusted their sights, saying they would begin building the massive new transportation network in the spring, later announcing the groundbreaking would take place in July."
"Now, it appears that serious construction may not begin this year, and could be delayed into 2014."
Mentally ill inmates in the Fresno County Jail are being denied medications, at least in part because the county wants to save money.
From the Fresno Bee's Marc Benjamin and Barbara Anderson: "About one in six jail inmates is sick enough to need antipsychotic drugs to control schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and other psychiatric conditions, but many sit for weeks in cells without medication previously prescribed by private doctors, say family members, lawyers and psychiatrists. If the inmates do get medication, it’s often at a lower dose or is a cheaper generic substitute that doesn’t work as well, they say."
"Six years ago, the jail drastically cut back on psychiatric drugs. A county official said the intent was to curb drug abuse by inmates faking mental illness. Critics say it was part of the county’s cost-cutting efforts."
"But the drug policy has raised costs significantly in other areas. Taxpayers spend millions of dollars each year on the inmates — above and beyond the cost of caring for them in the jail. As their mental conditions deteriorate, many lose the ability to help in their own defense and must go to state mental hospitals for treatment. Fresno County has sent nearly 400 inmates since 2007 to state mental hospitals, more per capita than all of California’s largest counties except Kern."
That whooshing sound you hear is BART riders breathing a sigh of relief: The strike is off, at least for now.
From the Chronicle's John Wildermuth: "BART riders got a two-month strike reprieve Sunday when a San Francisco Superior Court judge ordered the 60-day cooling-off period requested by Gov. Jerry Brown."
"The injunction, which will stay in effect until midnight Oct. 10, blocks a repeat of the 4 1/2-day walkout in early July that snarled traffic and disrupted the commute of hundreds of thousands of workers across the Bay Area."
"Another strike would have had grave impacts on the riding and driving public," said Zakhary Mallett, a BART director who was in the audience for the rare weekend hearing."
Former Gov. Schwarzenegger's decision to sell off state property and then lease it back from the new owners has wound up in court -- which is probably where it belongs.
From the LAT's Marc Lifsher: "At the center of the legal battle is the Golden State Portfolio, a collection of 11 state office buildings, including two in downtown Los Angeles, that Schwarzenegger agreed to sell to investors for $2.3 billion before leaving office at the end of 2010."
"Schwarzenegger launched the deal to help fill a $25-billion deficit in the recession-racked state budget."
"But Brown, who took over in January 2011, promptly canceled the sale. He called it a waste of money to sell valuable office space, only to lease back the same property.
Now, frustrated investors who thought they had a deal are suing in San Francisco County Superior Court They want the state to complete the sale and pay economic damages that they say are in the "hundreds of millions of dollars at a minimum."
New money is starting to flow to California's schools, but it's a mixed blessing and a complication to collective bargaining agreements.
From the Cabinet Report's Tom Chorneau: "Uncertainty over how schools can spend billions of new state dollars delivered under a new funding formula is generating both conflict and complication between labor and management as districts statewide seek new collective bargaining agreements."
"After five long years of recession, California schools this month received their first share of new money distributed under the governor’s Local Control Funding Formula – but the regulations that will ultimately determine how the money can be used won’t be ready for months."
“This is becoming a really difficult process,” said Rob Ball, director of business support at Twin Rivers Unified. “Everyone thinks we are getting more money and of course we are getting some, the problem is that we believe most of it is going to be restricted.”
And from our "Notes from a Dinosaur" file comes the tale of old-fashioned, long--form print journalism from an old-fashioned, long-form print journalist.
"I concede, I’m a dinosaur. I’ve got three manual typewriters at home awaiting the Internet’s collapse, which I would celebrate. I dislike it — and not just because it’s killing newspapers. As I’ve written before, it creates societal vulnerabilities (cyberattacks on crucial infrastructure, privacy invasions by business or government) that may outweigh its benefits, many of which — tweeting! — strike me as frivolous. Although this is a serious issue, you can’t argue with success, or failure. On its surveys, Pew asks respondents where they got their news the day before. In 2012, 39 percent answered the Web, including social media, up sharply from 2004’s 24 percent, the earliest data. Meanwhile, only 29 percent answered newspapers in 2012, down from 47 percent in 2000."
"By these trend lines, the physical newspaper, which is still the industry’s main revenue source, is headed for history’s dustbin or, if not that, to boutique status. Forbes puts Bezos’s net worth at $25 billion. Graham argues that only someone like Bezos has the wealth, patience, technological aptitude and regard for newspapers’ importance to guide The Post from its storied past to a successful future. I confess that this argument initially seemed weak until my 26-year-old son called to see how I was holding up. Though commiserating with me, his message was: Hey, this could be good for The Post."
"For years, The Post enjoyed a quasi-monopoly of largely captive readers and advertisers. Now it faces the Internet’s Darwinian hyper-competition. In text and video come torrents of news, information, analysis, advocacy, comedy and criticism. People do not lack for things to read, but the quality is spotty and often unreliable. Good journalism, though hardly perfect, strives to discredit misinformation and half-truths. Papers such as The Post contribute to a free society by undertaking the expensive reporting that others won’t — and which informs us of who we are."
