June 15 marks a striking pandemic moment for California
The Chronicle, KELLIE HWANG: "Ever since the coronavirus entered the Bay Area last spring, numbers have stood as signposts along the path of the pandemic.
Case rates, deaths, hospitalizations, positive test rates: The numbers showed us the toll and our ever-changing state of risk. And for more than a year, the numbers have also served as the benchmarks for California’s health restrictions that have governed businesses, activities and much of our daily lives.
As the state retires its tiered reopening blueprint and lifts most restrictions on Tuesday, how do the current numbers compare to the beginning of the journey? And to the worst of the pandemic, during the harrowing winter surge? And what do they tell us about whether we’re really out of the woods?"
Legislature passes placeholder budget to buy time for a deal with Gov. Newsom
JOHN FENSTERWALD, EdSource: "The Legislature passed a state budget Monday that is a placeholder to satisfy a June 15 constitutional deadline and enables lawmakers to keep getting paid. The Senate passed it 30-8 and the Assembly 57-15 after about an hour of discussion in each chamber.
The final budget will come sometime before July 1, when lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom settle their differences. Even then, it may take through the summer to complete action on several trailer bills that will detail how the appropriated funding will be spent.
Moments after the votes, Newsom issued a statement stating that the largest surplus in state history would create a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to create an economic recovery that will leave nobody behind.”
California, battered by 2020, girds for more intense wildfires
CHUCK McxFADDEN, Capitol Weekly: "With 2020’s disasters in mind, the state is making elaborate plans to deal with an upcoming wildfire season made potentially more deadly by drought.
The challenge is there, and it’s a big one.
Last year’s 9,639 wildfires blackened 4,397,809 acres, making 2020 the most ferocious wildfire season in California’s modern history, according to the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The August Complex fire –a”gigafire” — burned over 1 million acres across seven counties, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. More than 10,000 structures were destroyed at a cost of more than $12 billion."
Inland Empire trio plead guilty in $1.2-million COVID-19 unemployment fraud
RICHARD WINTON, LA Times: "An Inland Empire woman pleaded guilty Monday to a federal fraud charge, admitting that she collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in bogus COVID-related unemployment benefits on behalf of California prison inmates.
Paris Thomas, 33, of San Bernardino used dozens of prisoners’ and other people’s identities to collect $477,000 in illicit payments from the state agency that processes unemployment payments, according to a plea agreement she made with prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office.
In pleading guilty, Thomas joined two other women who admitted to running the same scam."
UC reverses course, will require all students, faculty and staff to be vaccinated this fall
NANETTE ASIMOV, Chronicle: "In an about-face, the University of California will require all students, staff and faculty to be vaccinated against the coronavirus this fall, even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the vaccines only for emergency use.
UC President Michael Drake “does plan to move forward with the vaccine mandate,” Regent Eloy Oritz Oakley told The Chronicle on Monday.
The decision reverses a proposed policy UC announced in April of requiring vaccinations only after the FDA fully approved at least one of the three vaccines now being administered to American under emergency authorization. It’s not clear when the FDA will give full approval."
Capitol Weekly Podcast: California Labor Politics Update – and More
CAPITOL WEEKLY STAFF: "Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, joined Capitol Weekly’s John Howard and Tim Foster to chat about a number of labor issues, including the ongoing uproar over at SEIU 1000 following the election of outsider candidate Richard Louis Brown; the latest fallout from Proposition 22; and The PRO Act: what is it, and how will it impact California workers if passed?
Also: What the heck is going on at the Santa Barbara Citizen’s Independent Redistricting Commission? We invited two of the state’s top redistricting experts, Paul Mitchell and Matt Rexroad, to weigh in on our #WorstWeekCA."
Petitions out to recall entire Mount Diablo Unified school board
SHOMIK MUKHERJEE, Mercury News: "Voters in the Mount Diablo Unified community can decide if they want to see the entire school board recalled over a contentious reopening process earlier this year.
Petitions to recall each of the five board trustees are now being circulated in the district. If enough voters sign the petitions, the board members will automatically be placed in a special recall election this November against challengers in each of their respective districts.
It’s a campaign fueled mainly by some residual angst against the school board for not acting as quickly as some parents would have liked to fully reopen schools when coronavirus cases began declining in Contra Costa County during the winter. The recall petitions also cite what the parents call each trustee’s “inability to approve and oversee a sustainable budget, and failure to be good stewards of tax payer funds” as reasons to recall them."
PG&E's new CEO faces her greatest test yet -- the coming fire season
The Chronicle, JD MORRIS: "When Patti Poppe took the reins of PG&E Corp. in January, she assumed a sobering double challenge: rehabilitating one of the most criminally convicted companies in U.S. history while confronting climate change.
Poppe, 53, didn’t always accept the reality that humans are fueling global warming by burning fossil fuels. In fact, she calls herself a “recovered climate denier” who is now a “big climate believer” — a fervent convert who wants to help Pacific Gas and Electric Co. adapt to the changing environment while moving beyond its troubled past.
Poppe worked at General Motors for 15 years before climbing the ranks at two Michigan utilities, eventually becoming CEO of CMS Energy. With a background in gas-powered cars and coal-fired power plants, she was inherently skeptical of the role that petroleum use plays in upending the Earth’s climate."
Is it over? How California will know when the pandemic ends
The Chronicle, NANETTE ASIMOV: "The 2019 birth of the coronavirus pandemic is baked into the name of the disease itself: COVID-19. But its demise, that longed-for time when the world can declare the scourge crushed, is a more slippery thing.
“There will not be a day, a month, nor perhaps a year when the pandemic will be over. It will not be like an epiphany — more likely, it will be quiet and subtle,” said John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley.
Yet Tuesday is an official turning point in California, the day doors are thrown open and most pandemic rules take a back seat to normalcy — no more social distancing or capacity limits in restaurants, stores, malls, movie theaters and most other public places."
After June 17th, vaccinated workers won't have to wear masks
Sac Bee, JEONG PARK: "California will let fully vaccinated workers go maskless after Thursday, June 17, pending a vote from the state’s workplace safety board, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday.
Newsom said he will issue an executive order on Thursday codifying the state’s new COVID workplace safety rule, which lets fully vaccinated California workers not wear masks at work and also ends social distancing. Those not vaccinated will still have to wear masks when working indoors or in vehicles.
“That should clear up any ambiguity,” Newsom said Monday. “We’ll be consistent with the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s) guidelines.”"
Over a million guns were sold in California last year. Here's a look at the data
The Chronicle, ABHINANDA BHATTACHARYYA: "Californians are on a gun-buying spree. In 2020, 1.26 million guns were purchased in the state, a 56% increase from the previous year, and the most since at least 2000. Sales data through May of 2021 show gun purchases in California remain well above pre-pandemic levels. Research suggests this increased circulation of firearms could foreshadow more gun violence.
The most significant spikes in gun sales happened at the beginning of the pandemic, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, and around the U.S. presidential election in November, according to sales estimate data from journalism non-profit The Trace. These estimates are based on FBI data on the number of criminal background checks conducted after gun purchases. The data is likely an undercount since it does not capture purchases not made at a store, which are estimated to account for 13% of all sales."
The last time California saw gun sales on a scale similar to 2020 was in 2016, another election year, when Californians also bought over 1.2 million guns. In 2019, Californians bought about 810,000 guns."
California state scientists to receive nearly 8% raise in deal ending pay cuts
Sac Bee, WES VENTEICHER: "California state scientists will receive a 7.63% raise in an agreement their union reached with the state to end the furlough-like personal leave program under which they’ve worked for the last year.
Like most of the rest of the state workforce, the state’s roughly 3,700 scientists took a 9.23% pay cut last July, when projections showed a $54 billion budget deficit on the way.
The reality turned out much different than the projections, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has been negotiating agreements to restore state workers’ pay against the backdrop of a budget surplus the administration estimates is $76 billion."
How can you gind a good job now that California is reopening? Here's what to know
Sac Bee, JEONG PARK: "The pandemic has led many Californians, by force or choice, to hit a reset button in their career.
The state lost more than three million jobs between February and April of 2020, the peak of the pandemic. Many of those lost jobs have come back. But California’s labor market is still more than 1.3 million jobs short of where it was before the pandemic.
As California lifts most of its restrictions on June 15, labor experts and career coaches expect the state to continue to regain lost jobs."
Youth activists descend on SF homes of Feinstein and Pelosi to demand climate corps
The Chronicle, NORA MISHANEC/SAM WHITING: "A group of youth climate activists scattered wildfire ashes on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco porch Monday, a final act of civil disobedience at the end of a 266-mile march meant to spur lawmakers to action on climate change.
Pelosi did not appear — nor did Sen. Dianne Feinstein when the activists stopped by her Pacific Heights mansion earlier in the day — but, if home, the Speaker may have spotted a glimpse of the giant street mural the activists left behind on Normandie Terrace. The 16-foot painting advertised the group’s goal: a civilian climate corps to combat global warming.
“Invest in us,” the painting read, above the fanning yellow rays emblematic of the youth-led Sunrise Movement that sponsored the protest."
Oakland council members clash with Mayor Libby Schaaf over their plan for more police cuts
The Chronicle, SARAH RAVANI: "Several Oakland City Council members proposed Monday cutting about $18.4 million from the Oakland Police Department to fund violence prevention and social services amid a debate over how to keep cities safe while addressing the need for more support in some communities.
In May, Mayor Libby Schaaf proposed a budget that allocated $700 million to the police department — meaning the council proposal would trim about 2.6% from the total, a small fraction of the 50% the council said last summer it planned to cut from the department’s budget.
Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas said the decision to chip away at the police budget in smaller increments is deliberate because the right systems and programs need to be in place to replace some police activities."
