Bay Area sets pace as California unemployment drops to pandemic low -- here are the numbers
The Chronicle's KELLIE HWANG: "As more businesses reopen from pandemic shutdowns in the Bay Area and California, the rebound is showing in the most recent unemployment data.
Two surveys conducted by the state’s Employment Development Department show the unemployment rate in February improved to 8.5%, down from 9% in January and the lowest level since the start of the pandemic, according to state Labor Secretary Julie A. Su.
The news is “a milestone in our ongoing recovery,” Su said in a joint statement with Dee Dee Myers, director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development."
Californians 50 and up say they are thrilled to become vaccine-eligible as of April 1
The Chronicle's STEVE RUBENSTEIN/TRISHA THADANI/NANETTE ASIMOV: "The race is on, now that Californians age 50 to 64 will become eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine as of April 1. But they will have only two weeks before millions of others can elbow them out of line.
“I’m thrilled! I went immediately to the MyTurn website to see if it’s possible to register for an appointment, and discovered that the site has not been updated,” said Mark Valentine, 59, a philanthropic consultant in San Francisco, referring to the state’s online portal where people can sign up for shots. He said he wants to get his quickly because he is desperate to visit his parents in Baltimore. He hasn’t seen them in a year and a half.
“I guess I’ll join the throngs of people who will try to register online,” he said."
California's election rules could make a Newsom recall a wild ride
LA Times's JOHN MYERS: "There is very little set in stone for a recall election in which voters could remove Gov. Gavin Newsom from office beyond the ballot’s basic question of whether the governor should keep his job.
Recall elections have been the electoral equivalent of a comet making its way through the solar system. Of the 55 attempts in California history to qualify a gubernatorial recall, only one, the dismissal of then-Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, has made it to the ballot. That is likely to change by year’s end, as backers of the effort to oust Newsom are on the verge of triggering a special statewide election this fall.
Though the tally of signatures on recall petitions won’t be complete until next month, there are significant issues to be sorted out. With flexible timelines and unusual rules, the coming months could be some of the most raucous political times in recent memory."
Here's where California's recall Newsom movement is strongest
The Chronicle's DUSTIN GARDINER: "No place in California has generated more fervent support for ousting Gov. Gavin Newsom than Calaveras County in the Sierra foothills.
More than 1 in every 10 residents signed petitions to put a recall election on the ballot, the highest per capita rate of any of California’s 58 counties, a Chronicle analysis shows. Calaveras was the starkest example of a statewide pattern — the way the recall election is all but sure to have qualified because of outsize enthusiasm from rural voters, driven by resentment of Democratic governance and especially of Newsom’s coronavirus pandemic policies.
Doug Rockey, owner of Spur R Guns, a gun shop in Copperopolis, started collecting recall signatures from his customers last summer. He said residents of the county despise the governor and the liberal politics of California’s big cities."
Bay Area temps to break 80s this week -- when will it rain again?
The Chronicle's JESSICA FLORES: "Warm and sunny weather will continue this week across the Bay Area, with temperatures reaching the upper 70s and low 80s inland.
The week will kick off with dry and breezy weather Monday, with temperatures in the 60s to low 70s inland. Temperatures along the coast will be in the upper 60s with northwest winds up to 20 mph.
Warm weather will return Tuesday and persist through Thursday across the Bay Area."
Bullet train contractor warns of further two-year delay as state struggles to secure land
LA Times's RALPH VARTABEDIAN: "A major construction team on the California bullet train project notified the state rail authority this month that it will not complete a 65-mile section of the future route in Kings County until at least April 14, 2025 — nearly two years after the date that the state included in a business plan adopted Thursday.
The additional delay could again boost costs and jeopardize the state’s funding plan to complete a partial operating system between Bakersfield and Merced by 2030. The project’s rising price tag has forced the state to repeatedly scale it back and delay indefinitely a goal to have the train running from Los Angeles to San Francisco — at speeds up to 220 miles per hour — by 2020.
The notification of the new delay came in a letter dated March 9 to the California High-Speed Rail Authority. A construction team led by the Spanish firm Dragados described a chaotic system for projecting future construction progress because of state delays in securing land for construction."
CW PODCAST: Bill Wong
STAFF: "Veteran political strategist Bill Wong has been a longtime leader in California’s Asian Pacific Islander political community, and is a recognized expert on AAPI voters. While Wong should have been celebrating last week’s appointment of Rob Bonta as California Attorney General – the first Filipino American to hold the office – he was instead dealing with the fallout of a nationwide spree of racially-motivated attacks, culminating in a mass shooting in Georgia that claimed the lives of six Asian women.
He joined us this week to talk about the attacks, Bonta’s appointment and the importance of the AAPI community in California politics."
Biggest donor to Chesa Boudin recall campaign is a tech investor and former PayPal exec
The Chronicle's MEGAN CASSIDY: "A group seeking to oust San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has raised over $75,000 in the initial weeks of its campaign, according to the group’s campaign finance records .
More than 100 donors pitched in to the Committee Supporting the Recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin between Jan. 1 and March 15, with a single tech investor bankrolling nearly one-third of the war chest.
Richie Greenberg, a former Republican mayoral candidate and spokesman for the committee, said the campaign has raised even more than what’s been officially recorded so far — money that will be disclosed in subsequent finance reports. Greenberg said Thursday he was enthusiastic by the support but not surprised by it."
Taking on sexual harassment in the California Legislature in 2021
GIL DURAN in Sac Bee, OPINION: "On March 20, The Sacramento Bee’s Hannah Wiley broke a story about a new lawsuit filed against state Sen. Bob Archuleta, D-Pico Rivera, by a woman who formerly worked for him.
The lawsuit alleges she faced discrimination and retaliation after refusing the 75-year-old legislator’s advances. It claims she had “no choice but to resign because of her intolerable working environment.” Archuleta called the allegations “categorically false.”
The lawsuit identified the former staffer only as “Jane Doe.” Within days, however, a small publication in Southern California posted a story that claimed to reveal the woman’s identity. It seemed like a move right out of the era before the #MeToo movement: An attempt to intimidate a woman for speaking out against a powerful man."
From across the US, these nurses traveled to save Californians 'one vaccination at a time'
LA Times's BRITTNY MEJIA/IRFAN KHAN: "Reshicka Upshaw wakes before dawn to get her children ready for school. She makes sure their teeth are brushed, their clothes clean, their homework done.
Sometimes she prays with them before she starts work:
Holy Spirit You are welcome here. Lead us Guide us Teach us and Comfort us as only You know how. Hallelujah."
From empty shells to vaccination hubs: Why vast urban buildings can be essential in the pandemic
The Chronicle's JOHN KING: "Here’s a Bay Area trivia question that could only be asked in 2021: What do a produce market, an airport parking garage and at least two convention centers have in common?
The answer is an easy-to-miss sign of these strange pandemic times: They’re large urban structures that have been pressed into service to combat the spread of COVID-19.
Each holds a mass vaccination center that uses empty space as a choreographed and meticulously planned venue. There’s also a subtext that holds true throughout the evolution of cities: Once a building exists, it can live lives that nobody involved in its creation had planned."
SF's poorest areas still not getting enough vaccine access, Supervisor Matt Haney says
The Chronicle's NANETTE ASIMOV: "California has given San Francisco steadily more COVID-19 vaccine doses since California started an equity program this month directing 40% of the state’s supply to the lowest-income ZIP codes. But the city’s two qualifying neighborhoods have yet to receive any benefit from the influx of lifesaving shots, says the supervisor who represents them.
California allocated 62% more vaccine doses to San Francisco’s hospitals and its public health department by the third week of March compared with the first week — 42,640 doses compared with 26,260 — according to a Chronicle review of records. Within that, the public health department received 5% more doses by the third week: 16,260, up from 15,450.
But Supervisor Matt Haney says the low-income Tenderloin neighborhood and Treasure Island, which include the 94130 and 94102 ZIP codes on the state’s priority list, have seen no uptick in vaccine availability so far."
California paying $2.1M to settle state worker's lawsuit over office chair
Sac Bee's WES VENTEICHER: "A dispute that began with a disabled state worker’s request for a $1,200 office chair ended Friday with the Employment Development Department agreeing to pay $2.1 million to settle the employee’s retaliation lawsuit.
The dispute started when Laura Torres, an office assistant in San Francisco, requested a specific chair — the Verte Model 22111 — after returning to work from a back surgery, according to legal documents filed in San Francisco County Superior Court.
Torres, now 52 and living in Van Nuys, had suffered from sometimes-excruciating back pain since she was 35, when she was diagnosed with spinal stenosis. Her father and grandmother had severe cases of the condition in their later years. Doctors told her bearing twins might have triggered it at a young age, she said in an interview."
Will a warning to drug dealers decrease overdose deaths? California families want to try
Sac Bee's ANDREW SHEELER: "As she stood before California lawmakers this week, Amy Neville held up a photo of her son, whom she found dead on the floor of his bedroom last year.
He had purchased a pill he thought was oxycodone from somebody he met online, she said. The pill turned out to be fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more potent than morphine.
“You might be asking yourself, ‘So where is this drug dealer now?’ It should come as no surprise to you that he is free, living his life, continuing to sell drugs to unsuspecting kids and adults, while my child is in an urn on a shelf in his bedroom,” Neville of Orange County said."
Easing the transfer path in California from community colleges to universities
EdSource's LARRY GORDON: "A second-year student at Long Beach City College, Emilio Mann is part of an experiment that aims to ease and improve the way he and classmates transfer to a public university and ultimately earn a bachelor’s degree.
So far, things are working well for him. Mann was recently accepted to California State University, Long Beach for next fall through a pilot program that connected him very early on as a community college student to the university with counseling, campus tours and other benefits. He also was directed to the courses he needs to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology, avoiding the confusions and delays that occur when a student takes the wrong classes.
The Long Beach pilot, called the “Long Beach College Promise 2.0,” goes a few steps further than other efforts underway around California to help more students transfer. It tries to make community college students feel a part of CSU years before they transfer, offering them a second educational home. Long Beach City students are invited early to CSU orientations and receive “future CSU student” identification cards that allow them to use the campus library, attend conferences, get career advice and join clubs there."
LAUSD goes to great lengths to show schools are safe to reopen. But it's a tough sell
LA Times's HOWARD BLUME: "Although Vicky Martinez has been dreaming of the day she could send her four children back to in-person instruction in the Los Angeles Unified School District, she thinks that, at least for now, she’s waiting.
But she has had second thoughts. And third thoughts. Her high school son wants to return. Her younger children are afraid of getting COVID-19.
“I am exhausted — physically, mentally, emotionally, financially — all of the above,” she said. “It has been a lot of work, and I feel like I’m failing every day as a parent.”"
Cal State students keep GPAs up during pandemic, but troubling equity gaps persist
LA Times's NINA AGRAWAL: "After a tumultuous year online and off-campus, students attending the nation’s largest four-year higher education system, the California State University, have persevered through the pandemic by largely maintaining their grades and course loads — although some troubling numbers point to the struggles of Latino and Black students, a Times survey has found.
Data provided to The Times by 18 of the system’s 23 campuses show that, on average, students’ unit loads and grades did not drop substantially in fall 2020 — the first full semester of online learning — compared with fall 2019.
In fact, average student GPA increased across the board, reflecting flexible grading and expanded withdrawal policies that were put into place during the pandemic, protecting students’ GPAs."
Mayor Breed is working on a huge expansion of SF's homeless housing. How much will it help?
The Chronicle's TRISHA THADANI/MALLORY MOENCH: "Felecia Smith doesn’t want to grow old in the room she calls home in the Tenderloin. She dreams of one day having her own apartment in a safe neighborhood — a long shot in San Francisco’s impossibly pricey housing market.
Smith, 59, pays nearly half her income to live in one of the city’s permanent supportive housing units, which help the formerly homeless. While she’s thankful for the roof over her head, she said the neighborhood she’s loved for four decades is becoming untenable, with drug dealers harassing her on the sidewalk.
“It’s getting pretty dangerous,” said Smith, who has bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders and is on permanent disability. “If they don’t clean up down here, I need to get out.”"
George Floyd arrest video could be early star witness as Derek Chauvin trial opens
AP's STEVE KARNOWSKI/AMY FORLITI: "A former Minneapolis police officer goes on trial Monday in George Floyd’s death, and jurors may not wait long to see parts of the bystander video that showed Derek Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck, an image that sparked outrage and demands for racial justice across the U.S. and beyond.
Prosecutors have not said when they will play the video, but legal experts expect it to be early — maybe even in the prosecution’s opening statement — as they seek to remind jurors of what lies at the heart of their case.
“If you’re a prosecutor, you want to start off strong. You want to frame the argument — and nothing frames the argument in this case as much as that video,” said Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor and managing director of Berkeley Research Group in Chicago."
