It probably won’t surprise any of our readers to learn that wealthy neighborhoods use more water per capita than the rest of us. The surprise is that some use seven times more water than nearby communities. Paul Rogers and Denis Cuff, San Jose Mercury News:
“[The] residents of San Lorenzo, a working-class Alameda County suburb along Interstate 880, use a mere 51 gallons of water per person a day. In Diablo, an affluent community just over the hills in Contra Costa County known for its country club and tree-lined private streets, residents use nearly seven times more water -- 345 gallons per person per day.
“The massive difference highlights an issue that has become more clear across California as the drought has worsened: Wealthy areas are using dramatically more water than lower-income areas.”
Speaking of water use… as California looks for new ways to combat the drought, tiny “Special Districts” that provide water for relatively few households could be consolidated with other, larger water districts. Morgan Cook, U-T San Diego:
“On Friday, the state legislature passed late-emerging budget legislation that will allow the State Water Resource Control Board to order consolidations, if it determines that doing so would improve residents’ water supply.
“Defenders of special districts say the drought has given policymakers cover to make sweeping changes that would give the state power to rob communities of locally-controlled governments.”
LAT columnist George Skelton says that Governor Brown will be using the special session to push taxes for badly needed infrastructure fixes. Shocker: Allan Zaremberg gives the plan a thumbs up.
‘If Republicans want to vote for taxes for transportation, I'm absolutely fine with it,’ says Allan Zaremberg, president of the state Chamber of Commerce. ‘I just want to make sure the money is spent on transportation.’"
Also on tap for the special session is a fix for the “billion-dollar hole” in Medi-Cal. Virginia McCormick, Capitol Weekly:
“Gov. Brown called for the session to cover losses caused stemming from the way taxes are levied on managed care organizations, or MCOs, that focus on providing services for reducing health care costs and improving benefits. The governor announced the session this week after reaching a $115.4 billion budget agreement with legislative leaders.
“The Legislative Analyst reported earlier that the managed care organization tax failed to comply with new Medicaid law and regulations. That regulation stated that the tax must be broad-based and not limited to Medi-Cal, the program that provides health care services for millions of low-income people.
“Brown had proposed in February that the managed care organizations tax be restructured to comply, following the Legislative Analyst’s report. The current structure, which generates over $1 billion, is set to expire at the end of the 2015-16 fiscal year.
“’If we don’t find a substitute for the MCO tax, then we’re looking at a billion-dollar hole next year,’ said Brown during the Tuesday conference.”
Over at the Bee, columnist Dan Morain offers a cautionary tale about the reporting of the scandal that engulfed gay San Diego Republican Carl DeMaio’s campaign for congress.
“A CNN reporter assigned to the outlet’s investigative team in Washington, D.C., broke the tawdry story in October, a few weeks before Election Day. It opened with this tease: ‘He is a young rising star in the Republican Party who took a former opponent to task for sexually harassing women. But now he is facing sexual harassment allegations himself. Will this derail his campaign?’…
“Once the CNN story broke, DeMaio spent the remaining days of the campaign trying, as he said, to disprove the negative. He lost to Democratic Rep. Scott Peters by 6,080 votes….
“And nine months later, an important missing piece of the story emerged. DeMaio’s main accuser, Todd Bosnich, appeared in federal court in San Diego June 12 and pleaded guilty to obstructing justice by lying to FBI agents, who were investigating his claim that someone in the DeMaio campaign had used email to threaten him.”
California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is spending $8 million this year to stem the flow of drugs into California prisons, where inmates die of drug overdoses at three times the national rate – but it doesn’t appear to be having an impact. Don Thompson has the story at the AP:
“Corrections officials believe the stepped-up efforts are discouraging smuggling, but the data that's available so far doesn't support that — more than 6,000 scans have been done on visitors and employees at 11 prisons since December without finding anyone with drugs….
Meantime, criticism is mounting about false-positive results by the scanners and dogs that can lead to strip searches. Concerned lawmakers who oversee state prisons included language in the California budget plan passed this week that would end the searches and require an evaluation of the department's other efforts.”
The New York Times looks at Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Sacramento backstory as the nation waits for SCOTUS to rule on a landmark gay marriage case this month. An Orange County couple are among the plaintiffs seeking to have their marriage recognized in another state. Emily Foxhall, Los Angeles Times:
“Matthew Mansell and John "Johno" Espejo are… among more than 30 plaintiffs in a potentially historic U.S. Supreme Court case that could finally establish national law on same-sex marriage, potentially as far-reaching as a ruling that states have a constitutional obligation to marry same-sex couples. A decision is expected this month.
“Their case deals with one end of the constitutional question the high court is facing: Should the marriages of couples who've been legally wed in one state be recognized in a state where gay marriage is illegal? Mansell and Espejo were married in California but their union counted for little when they moved to Tennessee.
“In their petition to the court, Mansell and Espejo said that in Tennessee, where they moved after a job transfer, they were denied ‘the protections, obligations, benefits, and security’ the state guarantees to other married couples.”
And finally: we’ve heard of drug busts, but this is ridiculous.
“A Honduran woman carrying 1.5kg (3.3lb) of liquid cocaine in breast implants was arrested at the airport in Colombia’s capital, Bogota, police said.
“Paola Deyanira Sabillon, 22, had been attempting to travel to Spain when her apparent nervousness aroused suspicion in the security line, Colonel Diego Rosero of the airport police told journalists.
“X-rays revealed a recent surgery on Sabillon’s breasts and she confessed that an unknown substance had been implanted that she was meant to take to Barcelona, police added.”
