A seventh proposed water bond has entered the legislative fray.
Mark Grossi reports for the Fresno Bee: Assembly Member Henry T. Perea, D-Fresno, and state Sen. Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton, are the latest to propose a new bill tweaking the California water bond scheduled for November.”
“There are seven versions now, if you include the twice-delayed $11. 2 billion version on the ballot now.
It's a crowded, confusing field at a time when President Barack Obama and Gov. Jerry Brown have drawn attention to an intense drought.”
Nearly a month since his conviction, state Sen. Rod Wright announced yesterday he would be taking a leave of absence.
From Jon Fleischman: “Rod Wright wants to take a leave of absence, continue to hold his high office, and continue to take a government paycheck for an indeterminate period of time. If he is allowed to do this — if he is permitted to continue to be the longest serving convict in the State Senate… Then his personal victory comes at a very terrible price. State Senators should seriously consider whether the rule of law matters, and whether they feel that those who create laws should have to abide by them. The Senate is at the crossroads.”
The Employment Development Department erroneously denied jobless benefits to hundreds of thousand of Californians.
Marc Lifsher in the Los Angeles Times: “After holding hearings, administrative law judges at the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board rejected many of the EDD's cursory, highly technical decisions. They threw out or revised more than half of the earlier denials, belatedly awarding long-sought assistance of up to $450 per week.”
“The lengthy appeals added one more layer of woe for the state's jobless to troubles at the EDD that included unanswered phone calls, glitchy computers and confusing paperwork.”
Details have surfaced in the investigation of a Petaluma slaughterhouse that recalled 8.7 million pounds of beef.
From SF Gate’s Stacy Finz and Carolyn Lochhead: “Rancho was allegedly buying up cows with eye cancer, chopping off their heads so inspectors couldn't detect the disease and illegally selling the meat, the sources said.”
“Although it's against federal law, experts say eating the meat isn't likely to make people sick. So far, no one has reported becoming ill from eating the meat.”
Asiana Airlines was hit with an unprecedented fine for its fatal crash at SFO.
Dan Nakaso reports in the Mercury News: “In an unprecedented move, federal transportation officials penalized Asiana Airlines $500,000 Tuesday for failing to adequately help victims and their families in the aftermath of the South Korean airline's fatal July 6 crash at San Francisco International Airport.”
“The announcement from the U.S. Department of Transportation vindicated the frustrations of victims' families who were unable to get information about their loved ones directly from Asiana. Some families were not contacted by the airline until five days after the crash, and the airline was so slow in setting up an emergency phone number that relatives were forced to go through a cumbersome reservation line to reach an employee.”
There are new revelations in the case of Tim Donnelly’s gun toting travels.
Jessica Garrison and Chris Megerian report in the Loa Angeles Times: “The handgun that GOP assemblyman and gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly attempted to take through airport security in 2012 was not registered to him, according to a police report reviewed by The Times.”
“Donnelly told officers who questioned him that he had bought it five years before and never registered it in his name.”
Clinics with tainted audit reports have remained operational despite of the recent state crackdown on rehab fraud.
Will Evans reports for the Center for Investigative Reporting: “State regulators have frozen funding to scores of clinics since The Center for Investigative Reporting and CNN uncovered rampant fraud in Drug Medi-Cal, part of the nation’s biggest Medicaid system. The crackdown has hit 88 clinics with 135 satellite sites – including half of Los Angeles County’s centers.”
“Still, a CIR analysis indicates that about a dozen clinics with similar track records remain open in L.A. County. CIR obtained the names of suspended clinics from sources after months of state refusals to provide the information and compared them with past government audits.”
It’s not 1848, but one California couple struck gold.
John Rogers reports for the Associated Press: “Northern California couple out walking their dog on their property stumbled across a modern-day bonanza: $10 million in rare, mint-condition gold coins buried in the shadow of an old tree.”
“Nearly all of the 1,427 coins, dating from 1847 to 1894, are in uncirculated, mint condition, said David Hall, co-founder of Professional Coin Grading Service of Santa Ana, which recently authenticated them. Although the face value of the gold pieces only adds up to about $27,000, some of them are so rare that coin experts say they could fetch nearly $1 million apiece.”
