California legislators return for grim session upended by coronavirus
The Chronicle's DUSTIN GARDINER/ALEXEI KOSEFF: "Legislators return to the state Capitol on Monday for the first time in nearly two months, confronting an urgent need to deal with coronavirus legislation and a formidable budget deficit.
They must handle bills ranging from compensation for sick essential workers to planning for a November election that’s likely to be done mostly by mail. They also must work with Gov. Gavin Newsom to address a shortfall that could total $35 billion.
And they don’t have much time to get it all done. They must pass a balanced budget by June 15 or go without pay, and will have only a couple of months after that to consider other bills before the legislative session is scheduled to end."
A major solar energy player leaves some customers seething
Fair Warning's ELI WOLFE in Capitol Weekly: "This sounds too good to be true, was one of Brenda Ortiz’s first thoughts when a salesman showed up at her front door in Riverside County in October 2018. He was with Vivint Solar, Ortiz recalled him saying, and was working with her local utility, Southern California Edison, to find people who qualified for free solar panels.
Ortiz declined the offer. But she heard from neighbors that the salesman came back, stopping at homes along her cul-de-sac. One day, he swung by Brenda’s house and found her husband, Carlos, working in the garage. Carlos said he had been toying with the idea of getting a solar system, and he thought the salesman’s pitch to slash their electrical bill sounded good. He signed a power purchase agreement—a 20-year contract to pay Vivint Solar for power generated by the solar panels.
When the first bills came in, the couple realized their power costs were going up, not down. “I was literally physically ill,” Brenda Ortiz told FairWarning."
Drought makes early start of the fire season likely in Northern California
LA Times's PAUL DUGINSKI: "Expanding and intensifying drought in Northern California portends an early start to the wildfire season, and the National Interagency Fire Center is predicting above-normal potential for large wildfires by midsummer.
Mountain snowpack has been below average across the High Sierra, southern Cascades and the Great Basin, and the agency warns that these areas need to be monitored closely as fuels continue to dry out. The agency also cites a warm, dry pattern in Oregon and central and eastern Washington, and assigns all of these areas a higher-than-average likelihood of wildfires in July.
Precipitation was below normal in April, and the high-elevation snowpack in Northern California peaked in early April at 60-70% of normal snow-to-water content. But with a warmer, drier May predicted, the snowpack is expected to be gone by early June, several weeks earlier than normal. The outlook calls for normal to slightly warmer- and drier-than-average conditions through August, resulting in dry fuel conditions."
Why California dentists can't fix your teetrh right now: The state took their face masks
Sac Bee's RYAN SABALOW/TONY BIZJAK: "In mid-March, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration appeared to throw a lifeline to thousands of dentists who were terrified they’d have to close their offices, leaving cavities unfilled, cleanings unscheduled and dental diseases undetected.
As one of the most dangerous professions for catching airborne infections, the dentists were anxious to build a stockpile of personal protection equipment just like California’s hospitals were doing. State officials promised to deliver masks that would have helped dentists provide at least some level of basic services to patients.
“Per our phone conversation, the dental association will get 1 million N95s,” a California Department of Public Health official, Trang Nguyen, emailed to the California Dental Association, on March 13. “Please give me a confirmation later on your trucking arrangement.”
California no longer pays more to Washington than it gets back, study finds
The Chronicle's JOHN WILDERMUTH: "Ten years ago, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was complaining that California received only 78 cents back for every tax dollar it sent to Washington, arguing that the state’s budget woes would disappear if the federal government would only play fair with funding.
It’s too late for Schwarzenegger, but a new study found that California has moved off the list of donor states and now takes in almost exactly as much in federal payments as its businesses and residents pay in taxes.
While that’s great news for California, it’s not nearly so upbeat a statistic for the country as a whole, said Alan Auerbach, director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance at UC Berkeley."
California reopening would start slow, not be complete for at least a year, expert estimates
LA Times's RONG-GONG LIN II: "So when might California be ready to really loosen up its statewide stay-at-home order?
Gov. Gavin Newsom outlined a four-stage plan that envisions a process by which restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus are lifted gradually.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said he understood the frustrations and suggested he would announce an easing of some rules as early as this week."
Former Bay Area exec to pay $1.8M to settle sex harassment suit
The Chronicle's BOB EGELKO: "A former Bay Area venture capitalist and his companies will pay $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit by the state accusing him of sexually harassing an employee and repeatedly touching her without her consent.
The Department of Fair Employment and Housing announced the settlement Friday with Lee William “Bill” McNutt, the Silicon Valley Growth Syndicate, which he co-founded, and International Direct Mail Consultants, which he owns.
In a lawsuit last July, the department alleged that McNutt took the woman, the companies’ vice president for operations and communications, on trips in 2017 where he touched her under her clothes without her consent. On a company-mandated trip to La Jolla (San Diego County), the suit said, he took her to a nude beach, where he disrobed, and at their lodgings he later gave her a massage, sliding his hands under her shorts."
Tara Reade says her 1993 complaint against Joe Biden did not accuse him of assault
AP: "Tara Reade, the former Senate staffer who alleges Joe Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, says she filed a limited report with a congressional personnel office that did not explicitly accuse him of sexual assault or harassment.
“I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty and it made me uncomfortable,” Reade said in an interview Friday with the Associated Press. “I know that I was too scared to write about the sexual assault.”
Reade said she described her issues with Biden but “the main word I used — and I know I didn’t use ‘sexual harassment’ — I used ‘uncomfortable.’ And I remember ‘retaliation.’"
Can't find flour during the pandemic? Here's why -- and it's not 'pantry loading'
Sac Bee's DAWSON WHITE: "If flour shelves at your local grocery store have remained empty during the coronavirus pandemic, you’re not alone — but experts say there’s no grain shortage.
So what’s making flour so hard to find?
It’s simple: People are baking more."
What will a post-pandemic Hollywood look like? We asked Hollywood
LA Times's JEN YAMATO/MARK OLSEN: "Images coming out of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic seem like the stuff of a Hollywood post-apocalyptic horror movie that has become, frighteningly, all too real.
After all, just a decade ago Steven Soderbergh was preparing to shoot “Contagion,” about a fictional pandemic that wreaks havoc across the globe. Now he’s leading a Directors Guild task force devising workplace guidelines to address a real one.
When Hollywood hit pause along with many of the nation’s industries, the shutdown rippled across the film ecosphere, touching everyone from those in studio boardrooms to the crews that keep movie sets running to the audience now staying home. As the industry tries to figure out how to move forward, professionals from across the production pipeline are wondering not just when they might get back to work, but also what a post-pandemic movie set will even look like."
Chasing a killer
The Chronicle's STAFF: "In late February, the virus expert Nevan Krogan called an early morning meeting at his UCSF lab in Mission Bay and told 20 fellow scientists that their lives were about to change.
The new coronavirus, which emerged in China, was now spreading from person to person in California. Health authorities had just confirmed it. Soon the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 would be everywhere, Krogan realized, and many were bound to die. But maybe the San Francisco scientists could do something to help, Krogan told the group, if they agreed to work through the night at the lab, achieving in months or weeks what normally would take years, racing to complete one big project.
“I just kind of flipped out,” recalled Krogan, 44, a tall, energetic Canadian native. “We have to do this now. And they’re like: ‘Yeah."
READ MORE related to Pandemic: Coronavirus could push politics to the left, progressives hope -- The Chronicle's TAL KOPAN
California's pharmacies haven't tested for coronavirus, unlike in other states
The Chronicle's CYNTHIA DIZIKES: "California must dramatically increase coronavirus testing to reopen the state, but one widely available resource remains untapped: pharmacies.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services cleared the way last month for licensed pharmacists to order and administer coronavirus tests that have been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. Most states, including New York, Florida and Texas, have since allowed pharmacies to swab people and test them in hopes that it will help make testing more readily accessible. Ninety-one percent of the U.S. population lives within 5 miles of one of the roughly 60,000 community pharmacies nationwide, according to industry groups.
But in California, pharmacies can administer only tests that are explicitly referenced in state regulations or are considered to be low-complexity, like a blood glucose test where a pharmacist analyzes a drop of blood taken with a finger prick. That means that the state would have to issue a waiver or the governor would have to sign an executive order to allow coronavirus testing in pharmacies, said Steven Chen, associate dean for clinical affairs at the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy."
Gig workers now eligible for special unemployment benefits. But many won't get them
LA Times's KIM CHRISTENSEN: "The good news for nearly 3 million self-employed Californians, gig workers and independent contractors is they are now eligible for special unemployment benefits.
The bad news for many is they probably won’t get them.
“For folks having to deal with this, it has been insanely frustrating,” said Kyle Petrozza, 38, a Los Angeles freelance commercial photographer."
SF a magnet for homeless seeking free hotel rooms pandemic
The Chronicle's PHIL MATIER: "Mayor London Breed’s call to “draw the line” on who gets emergency housing during the coronavirus outbreak was prompted by field reports of a sharp increase in the number of homeless people coming into the city looking for a free hotel room.
“People are coming from all over place — Sacramento, Lake County, Bakersfield,” Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson said. “We have also heard that people are getting released from jail in other counties and being told to go to San Francisco, where you will get a tent and then you will get housing.”
As an example, Nicholson said that up to 75% of the estimated 100 campers living in tents along the Fulton Street side of the Asian Art Museum appear to have come to the city with the hope of getting a hotel room."
Homeless activists are losing patience with LA
LA Times's DOUG SMITH/BENJAMIN ORESKES/DAVID ZAHNISER: "Not long after L.A. County reported more than 1,000 new coronavirus cases on Friday, Davon Brown decided he was done putting himself at risk. So he put on a blazer and went to the Ritz-Carlton Los Angeles.
Joined by activists from Street Watch L.A., he told hotel staff they were interested in renting several rooms but wanted a tour first. The concierge happily obliged, he said, and took the group to room 2221.
Then he revealed his plan: “I’m homeless in Echo Park and I’m not leaving this hotel.”
Beautiful bioluminscence: Surfers ride spectacular blue waves off San Diego
Scripps Institution of Oceanography's DR. MICHAEL LATZ: "Bioluminescent waves, caused by a red tide stretching from Baja California to Los Angeles CA, have been putting on a spectacular show. April 25 2020 video, from scientist Dr. Michael Latz, shows surfers enjoying riding blue waves."
What's open outdoors? Parks, trails and beaches to visit during shelter in place
The Chronicle's TOM STIENSTRA: "Restrictions on outdoor activity were loosened in Bay Area health orders announced on April 29. In San Francisco, for example, it’s fine under the latest orders, which take effect May 4, to take transit to go to a park, where the city previously asked people to limit recreation to places they could walk or bike to. But it’s still confusing to know where you can go outside and what you can do there.
The Bay Area has more than 20 agencies and districts that manage more than 150 recreation destinations. Each works with its own county health department to set guidelines independently of other counties, park districts and watersheds. That leads to a patchwork of rules that differ everywhere you go. Here’s what you need to know about getting outdoors in Northern California.
Q: Where are the rules the most open?"
