Census data is four months late, so Calif. redistricting maps may be too, state Supreme Court says
The Chronicle's BOB EGELKO: "With the coronavirus putting U.S. census results on hold for at least four months, the California Supreme Court approved lawmakers’ request Friday to delay an independent commission’s once-per-decade redrawing of lines for legislative and congressional districts next year so that they can be ready by the 2022 elections.
Because the Census Bureau now plans to release population data to the states on July 31, 2021, four months later than originally scheduled, the Citizens Redistricting Commission will be given a four-month extension of its legal deadline, until Nov. 1, 2021, to prepare and release new district maps for public comment, the court said in a unanimous ruling.
The commission would then have until Dec. 15 to issue final maps for the 2022 elections for Congress, the Assembly and state Senate, and the state Board of Equalization. If the Census Bureau takes longer, the deadlines will be extended further, the court said, while urging the commission to act more quickly if census information is available earlier than expected."
Amid the pandemic, a Black housing crisis gets worse
LA Times's ANDREW KHOURI: "Veronica Sance’s rent for her one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles’ Crenshaw district ate roughly half her paycheck as a receptionist in the entertainment industry.
Then, Sance said, she was wrongfully fired in late 2018 because as a Black woman she was held to different standards from white employees. Sance filed a discrimination complaint and ultimately reached a settlement with the company, which didn’t admit wrongdoing, according to a document she shared.
But the 60-year-old said she’s had trouble finding a full-time job. And her savings and settlement money are dwindling, while a well-paying, part-time job with the U.S. Census Bureau was put on hold because of the coronavirus."
Killings in Bay Area up 14% in first half of 2020 as Vallejo homicides spike
The Chronicle's MEGAN CASSIDY: "With trains emptied, shopping districts shuttered and tourism on an indefinite timeout, Bay Area residents had some cause for relief during their pandemic-induced isolation: Crime, in many areas, stayed home too.
But while reports of robberies, rapes and smash-and-grab auto burglaries fell in the region’s largest cities, the most serious of violent crimes — homicides — crept up 14% during the first half of 2020, stalling a broader historical trend of fewer killings, a Chronicle analysis found.
Some of the increase can be traced to bloodshed in Vallejo. By the end of June, that city’s 13 killings were nearly triple the five recorded over the first six months of last year and had eclipsed the 12 total people slain there in all of 2019. On Thursday, the city recorded its 14th killing of the year when a 21-year-old man was shot to death."
Cutting bills and cleaning: How the California Legislature plans to finish its COVID year
Sac Bee's HANNAH WILEY: "Top California Democrats are asking lawmakers to consider pulling bills and limit policy hearings as they race to finish a 2020 legislative session that was disrupted twice by the coronavirus outbreak, according to a memo summarizing a recent call for lawmakers’ chiefs of staff.
Hundreds of bills are awaiting votes, and the direction, if followed, could squeeze many of them out of consideration.
Lawmakers were originally scheduled to head back to the Capitol from a summer recess on July 13. After two Assembly members tested positive for the virus, that date was pushed to July 27 over renewed health concerns."
READ MORE related to Pandemic: Open or closed? The struggle to find a working middle ground -- The Chronicle's ERIN ALLDAY; With coronavirus antibodies fading fast, vaccine hopes fade, too -- The Chronicle's PETER FIMRITE; Confused about new restrictions? Here's the latest on reopening in each Bay Area county -- The Chronicle's KELLIE HWANG; LA County continues dangerous coronavirus surge as Garcetti warns of new restrictions -- LA Times's HOWARD BLUME/ALEX WIGGLESWORTH
Cannabis farmers in a poor California town want to go legit, but the raids keep coming
LA Times's STEPHANIE LAI: "Ronnie Bell’s prized possessions aren’t the collectible toys or bongs that clutter his ranch-style house. What the 65-year-old values most is his extensive indoor marijuana grow.
Bell’s “bachelor pad” features a guest-bedroom-turned-nursery with a reflective grow-tent. There are racks of marijuana plants in the next room. This farmer, who served 21 years in the U.S. Marines and 21 years in the U.S. Postal Service, is one of many unlicensed marijuana cultivators in the unincorporated township of Anza.
Over the 24 years Bell has grown marijuana, he has been raided eight times and arrested seven. When he was arrested in May, Bell said, he suffered a torn rotator cuff. His old friend, marijuana, made the pain bearable."
Proposed change to Caltrain ballot measure could bankrupt railway, lawmakers say
The Chronicle's SHWANIKA NARAYAN: "A proposal by San Francisco and Santa Clara County officials to control funds from a November sales tax measure for Caltrain could mean the transit agency “never sees a dime,” a group of local, state and congressional lawmakers said in a statement Sunday.
Like many transit agencies, Caltrain — which runs from San Francisco to the South Bay — is struggling financially as ridership plunges during the coronavirus pandemic. Previously, passenger fares accounted for 70% of Caltrain’s revenue, but its weekday ridership that averaged 65,000 has dropped by 95%.
The sales tax, initially proposed to fund a service expansion for Caltrain, is now needed as its own source of funding to keep the rail line operational, proponents say."
Longtime Sacramento councilwoman running for state Senate in 2022. See who else might run
Sac Bee's THERESA CLIFT: "Sacramento City Councilwoman Angelique Ashby is running for California state Senate.
Ashby, who has filed paperwork to run for Senator Richard Pan’s seat representing Sacramento in the 2022 primary election, has represented North Natomas on the council since 2010.
“When I first ran for City Council a decade ago, I was told I could not make a difference because I was ‘just a mom,’” Ashby said in a statement to The Sacramento Bee. “But that perspective was exactly what Sacramento needed, and it’s what our state Senate needs too. Our families are facing unprecedented challenges, and I want to build on what I’ve accomplished on the City Council – like establishing youth programs, funding for schools, libraries and community centers, policing reforms, advancing flood control, addressing domestic violence and human sex trafficking and bringing thousands of high-wage jobs to our community."
California progressives help move Biden left on some issues, but not all
The Chronicle's JOE GAROFOLI: "California progressives are not letting up on Joe Biden after he released a clean-energy plan last week that is more left-leaning than what he campaigned on during the primaries.
They want him to go further left on that and other issues — and they aren’t going to stop pushing him even if he defeats President Trump in November and winds up in the White House.
Progressives don’t expect Biden to shift course anytime soon and embrace their top priorities, including a Medicare for All health care plan and the Green New Deal environmental outline. But while many are pleased with some of the policy compromises that came out of a recent unity commission composed of Biden and Sanders supporters, they aren’t satisfied with everything in the 110-page document. Biden is reviewing the proposals that will shape the Democratic Party platform."
California is trying to crack down on power line fires. Will it work?
The Chronicle's J.D. MORRIS: "After years of failing to stop fiery catastrophes caused by California utility companies, state regulators are taking a different approach this year that they hope will prevent power lines from burning more neighborhoods to the ground.
Compelled by a 2019 law, the California Public Utilities Commission in January began a new safety unit focused entirely on averting more deadly wildfires linked to aging electric equipment. It’s an urgent task, because power lines were responsible for some of the state’s worst recent disasters, including the historically deadly and destructive 2018 Camp Fire.
In response to those calamities, state officials conceived of the commission’s new Wildfire Safety Division as providing a boots-on-the-ground approach to regulating fire prevention. The division has hired a team of inspectors to examine dangerous regions of the state and test whether electric companies are completing promised preventive work and complying with the law."
READ MORE related to Climate/Environment: There were no reports of coronavirus in Yosemite. Then they tested the park's sewage -- The Chronicle's KURTIS ALEXANDER
Essential and ignored: Working in a pandemic
The Chronicle's RYAN KOST/GABRIELLE LURIE: "Search inquiries for the word “essential” began to trend on Google the week of March 8. Seven days later they hit their peak. Same for phrases like “essential work” and “essential worker.” Then the inquiries dropped just as fast as they rose. The trend lines look something like a sharp mountain surrounded by plains. Something like this: ____/\____
This was the same time the Bay Area and (shortly after) the state of California issued the nation’s first stay-at-home orders — March 16 and March 20, respectively — and told residents to shelter in place while making an exception for “essential” work. Doctors and nurses couldn’t stay at home in the midst of a pandemic. That seemed clear. But neither could grocery store cashiers or farmworkers or food processors or social workers — and on and on the list went.
Their work, which doesn’t get noticed much, was suddenly essential. Or, as Merriam-Webster might put it: “of the utmost importance."
READ MORE related to Economy: How the unemployment crisis has hit the Bay Area's houses of worship -- The Chronicle's ANNA KRAMER; Did baristas lose their jobs because of COVID-19 or because they tried to unionize? -- LA Times's GUSTAVO ARELLANO
California's progressives know exactly which women they'd like to see as Vice President
The Chronicle's JOE GAROFOLI: "California Sen. Kamala Harris is widely believed to be on Joe Biden’s short list for vice president, but a group of Bernie Sanders supporters in the California Democratic Party wants the nominee-to-be to pick either Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee or one of two other Black women instead.
Lee, Los Angeles Rep. Karen Bass and Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator, would make excellent running mates, Sanders delegates to the Democratic National Convention wrote in a letter to Biden that was obtained by The Chronicle.
“In order to meet this historic moment, Democrats must select an exceptional progressive vice presidential candidate who will both inspire the 90 million Americans who did not vote in 2016 to cast a ballot this November and lead America into a new era of equality, compassion, and economic justice,” the Sanders backers wrote."
Thousands expected to walk off the job Monday to protest racial inequality
AP: "Organizers of a national workers strike say tens of thousands are set to walk off the job Monday in more than two dozen U.S. cities to protest systemic racism and economic inequality that has only worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dubbed the “Strike for Black Lives,” labor unions, along with social and racial justice organizations from Los Angeles to New York, will participate in a range of planned actions. Where work stoppages are not possible for a full day, participants will either picket during a lunch break or observe moments of silence to honor Black lives lost to police violence, organizers said.
“We are ... building a country where Black lives matter in every aspect of society — including in the workplace,” said Ash-Lee Henderson, an organizer with the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of over 150 organizations that make up the Black Lives Matter movement."
SF's City Hall illuminated in honor of Rep. John Lewis
The Chronicle's LAUREN HERNANDEZ: "San Francisco City Hall will be illuminated in red, white and blue Saturday night in honor of Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon who died on Friday at age 80.
Mayor London Breed announced that San Francisco will also lower its flags to half-staff to honor the congressman, whose legacy of racial and social justice activism in the United States spanned more than half a century.
“He put his whole life into fighting the injustices that have long plagued this country, and he never stopped demonstrating unparalleled strength, perseverance, and dignity,” Breed said on Twitter."
What emerging Sacramento leaders say about racism, police and COVID-19
Sac Bee's MICHAEL MCGOUGH: "Local government leaders and citizens in oversight roles joined a Sacramento Bee-hosted discussion on systemic racism, sharing perspectives on topics from police reform and government accountability to the coronavirus pandemic’s devastation of California’s Latino population.
Sacramento Bee columnist Marcos Bretón hosted five guests for an hour-long “Breaking Point, a video conference Wednesday.
The talk came weeks after the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by Minneapolis police, ignited sweeping, nationwide protests against racism and police violence; and about four months into the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, which has killed more than 7,000 Californians and nearly 100 in Sacramento County while afflicting Black and Latino communities at disproportionate rates."
Teens, stuck inside, grappling with new kind of fear of missing out
The Chronicle's AIDIN VAZIRI: "As the coronavirus pandemic drags on, many of us are struggling with shutdown fatigue. But for teenagers whose families are taking public health orders seriously, the feelings of missing out can be even more intense.
“My friends are having sleepovers, ordering food, and going places. I feel left out,” said Amaya Wilson, 13, whose family in Petaluma has kept close to home since March. “It feels unfair. Summer is supposed to be the time when I can be free. But I’ve been stuck inside for I don’t know how long.”
Throw in uncertainty about the upcoming school year, canceled vacation plans, and a constant stream of images on social media showing friends flouting social distancing rules, and it’s an especially hard time to be an adolescent."
Bay Area protesters speak out about Portland
The Chronicle's RUSTY SIMMONS: "About 50 people gathered at Wallenberg High School in San Francisco on Sunday afternoon to spread their message about disbanding the police.
The group — all in masks, and observing social-distancing guidelines — followed a back-strapped sound system blaring inspirational music as they danced, chanted, and raised signs and fists while marching through the North of the Panhandle neighborhood to the Richmond Police Station on Sixth Avenue.
The thoughts of many were with fellow protesters 600 miles north."
Pandemic? What pandemic? Trump reelection ads ignore coronavirus
LA Times's MICHAEL FINNEGAN/SEEMA MEHTA: "The death toll keeps rising as COVID-19 rages across Florida, Arizona and other campaign battlegrounds, but the television ads President Trump is airing in those states say nothing about the coronavirus pandemic that has upended life for all Americans.
It’s a conspicuous omission.
Nearly every day, states that could decide the Nov. 3 election break new records of sickness and death. Nationwide, the virus has killed 140,000 people. Yet the $30 million in TV ads that Trump has run so far this month in his bid for a second term dodge the subject of how he is steering the country through one of the worst calamities any modern president has faced."
Insults, walkouts, fist-banging: EU coronavirus summit drags on into 4th day
AP: "Weary and bleary, European Union leaders were gearing up Monday for a fourth day of fighting over an unprecedented $2.1-trillion EU budget and coronavirus recovery fund after an acrimonious weekend of meeting walkouts, fist-banging and insults.
With a brilliant sun warming the negotiating sundeck at the Europa summit center early Monday, there finally was a glimmer of hope that talks to help the continent’s coronavirus-battered economies might not be doomed after all.
“It looks more hopeful than when I thought during the night: ‘It’s over,’” said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the target of much of the criticism. The meeting — one of the longest-running ever in the bloc’s history — broke up temporarily and is due to resume Monday afternoon."
