Where California's candidates for governor stand on fixing health care
The Chronicle's JOE GAROFOLI :"Gov. Jerry Brown never had to decide whether to support single-payer health care because a bill never reached his desk. But just because the Legislature isn’t considering it this year doesn’t mean the idea has died — and even without it, California’s next governor will have plenty of health policy problems to worry about."
"The top six gubernatorial candidates not only differ when it comes to single-payer, they disagree on what to do next to fix the state’s $400 billion health care industry. And few offer specifics on how they would implement their ideas."
"California’s next leader will inherit a long-standing problem that was only partly fixed by the Affordable Care Act, which President Trump and congressional Republicans have taken steps to weakensince 2017. Before the law was fully implemented in 2013, 17 percent — or about 7 million — of non-elderly Californians lacked health care coverage. Three million still aren’t covered, including 1.8 million undocumented."
Facebook, Instagram ads target Gavin Newsom over past relationships with women
Sacramento Bee's ANGELA HART: "A social media campaign attacking gubernatorial frontrunner Gavin Newsom for an old affair, and subsequent romantic relationship with a 19-year-old when he was 39 is seeking to raise moral and ethical questions about the former San Francisco mayor before the June 5 primary."
"An anti-Newsom independent campaign committee, which in the past has supported Democratic rival and state Treasurer John Chiang, has purchased a California-wide advertisement buy to draw attention to Newsom’s behavior more than a decade ago."
"Operators behind the Asian American Small Business political action committee, running the independent expenditure campaign, confirmed to The Sacramento Bee that it is funding ads on social media sites, including Facebook and Instagram, that include republishing old articles about Newsom's past."
Hot on the trail of the 'bots'
DYLAN SVOBODA in Capitol Weekly: "What’s in a name? When it comes to social media, maybe a lot more than you think."
"There is a move in the Capitol to force social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook to identify “bots,” those robot-like, automated accounts that move through the internet and interact with real people — and each other."
There's a California election coming up. But if history is any guide, most voters won't show up
LA Times's JOHN MYERS: "By the time California's primary election day arrives in June, it's possible the state will be very close to having 20 million registered voters — a historic milestone that state elections officials reported last week is within sight."
"Don't applaud just yet. The history of modern California politics suggests as many as two-thirds of those voters won't even cast a ballot next month. That's a civic dilemma, sure enough. But there's also a good chance the no-shows will affect one party's candidates in heated races for Congress differently than all others."
'A rogue state': As California defies federal immigration policy, calling itself a sanctuary, the state's conservatives are pushing back
WaPo's SCOTT WILSON: "For nearly two decades, Alameda County sheriff’s Sgt. Don Laventure has kept inmate records at what was once one of the nation’s largest jails, a campus of low cement buildings set among seasonally green hills. He knows his work."
"Yet since January, a flowchart drawn in green highlighter has hung over the window above his desk at Santa Rita Jail. It is a cheat sheet for how to follow the rules imposed by California’s “sanctuary state” law, which provides broad legal protection from federal deportation to the state’s estimated 2.5 million undocumented immigrants."
"The chart is a collection of arrows, some pointing sideways, some down, some toward U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and even more pointing away from it."
Jerry Brown holds the line in last budget
CALmatters's DAN WALTERS: "As billions of extra tax dollars poured into the state treasury this year, advocates for virtually every category of state spending ramped up pressure for increases in the 2018-19 budget that Gov. Jerry Brown had proposed in January."
"Higher education officials wanted more state aid to hold down tuition, advocates for the poor sought higher welfare grants and health care spending, while mayors wanted help dealing with rampant homelessness."
"All were targeting what the Capitol calls, i.e. ungrammatically, the governor’s “May revise” that sets the stage for the final month of budget dickering."
Rapes and burglaries had occurred. But this was the first time the East Area Rapist had killed.
Sacramento Bee's MARJIE LUNDSTROM/SAM STANTON: "On a clear winter night in February 1978, a young couple left their Rancho Cordova apartment around 9 p.m. to walk the dog."
"With a quarter moon in the sky, and only a sprinkling of porch lights, the middle-class neighborhood of weathered fences and winding streets was especially dark."
"Residents were on edge."
Commencements, state funding hang in balance amid UC, union stand off
Sacramento Bee's CATHIE ANDERSON: "The University of California and the AFSCME 3299 union representing 24,000 service and patient-care workers have no plans to return to the bargaining table and each side is blaming the other for reaching a final impasse and an ensuing three-day strike that began on May 7."
"UC spokesperson Claire Doan wrote in a prepared statement last week that the university isn't budging for now on the 2 percent, across-the-board raise it gave service workers for the 2017-18 fiscal year. "AFSCME will need to return to the bargaining table with UC in order to negotiate any additional increases as part of a multiyear contract," Doan said."
Judge says LA County wrongly booted tens of thousands of residents off Medi-Cal
LA Times's SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA: "Los Angeles County has wrongly canceled Medi-Cal coverage for thousands of residents, often leaving them without access to healthcare and needed medicines, a judge has ruled."
"In a decision Thursday, L.A. County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant wrote that the county violated state law by terminating Medi-Cal coverage for beneficiaries even though they turned in their renewal paperwork on time. The ruling orders the county to fix the problem."
Homeless outreach teams reach to bring services to the streets
LA Tmes: "The eight outreach workers sat around a conference table in Long Beach wrestling with a dilemma involving one of their clients: a homeless man who needed to start dialysis immediately."
"Placing him in short-term housing would get him off the streets, but it also might cost him a chance at a permanent apartment because he could then no longer be considered chronically homeless."
READ MORE related to Housing & Homelessness: Millennials are finally ready to buy homes. Here's what they want in the Sacramento region -- Sacramento Bee; Lawsuits target city over new laws for homeless housing projects and motel conversions -- LA Times's DAKOTA SMITH
The mystery of how 3 SF rental scooters ended up on their way to the dump
The Chronicle's MATIER & ROSS: "One of the enterprising independent contractors who make a buck rounding up and recharging the new electric scooters on San Francisco’s streets recently made an unlikely appearance at garbage giant Recology’s Tunnel Avenue transfer station in the Bayview."
"The man’s cell phone GPS had pinpointed three scooters as being somewhere on the garbage company’s sprawling, 25-acre property."
After losing home in wildfires, veteran lobbyist battles PG&E
The Chronicle's DAVID R BAKER: "Since last year’s Wine Country fires, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has been pushing hard in Sacramento for legislation to protect utility companies from full liability in case their wires accidentally spark a blaze."
"And Patrick McCallum has been pushing back."
"The veteran Sacramento lobbyist leads a campaign called Up From the Ashes whose sole focus is to deny PG&E the legislative victory it seeks. The campaign’s web address neatly sums up its pitch: www.holdpgeaccountable.com. The group, funded by law firms suing PG&E, blames the disaster on the utility, though California fire officials have not announced the causes."
Silicon Valley faces regulatory fight on its home turf
NYT's DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI: "The staging ground for one of the biggest regulatory fights facing the technology industry is far removed from Washington or Brussels, tucked into an alley next to a wine and cheese shop about 30 miles from Silicon Valley."
"A barely furnished real estate office in an upscale Oakland neighborhood is the headquarters for backers of a proposed California ballot measure that would provide consumers with increased privacy rights, including the ability to demand that companies do not sell their personal data."
"If the initiative, called The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, passes, privacy advocates say it will be one of the most meaningful checks in the United States on the growing power of internet behemoths"
Jared Kushner may face new scrutiny over tangled financial holdings
LA Times's DAVID WILLMAN: "President Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner has enjoyed the gilded highs of White House life — attending Trump's first official state dinner last month, conducting secret diplomacy in the Middle East and counseling the president on fast-paced foreign trips."
"Kushner also has endured the lows — he's been pulled into the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign for his still-murky private meetings with Russians, including a Kremlin-connected lawyer from Moscow who spoke almost no English."
