California is swimming in money. How will Gavin Newsom spend California’s budget surplus?
SOPHIA BOLLAG, SacBee: "For the second year in a row, California’s budget is poised to avoid economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, leaving Gov. Gavin Newsom with a good problem: how to spend a projected $31 billion surplus.
By Monday, Newsom must unveil his proposal for the 2022-23 fiscal year, which starts July 1. His proposal will kick off months of negotiations with lawmakers, who face a June 15 deadline to pass a budget.
Analysts predict the state’s highest earners will continue to prosper and pay high taxes, resulting in another big surplus. The budget Newsom signed last summer included a projected $80 billion surplus, which allowed lawmakers to provide COVID-19 relief and send stimulus checks to millions of Californians."
Democrats propose California universal healthcare, funded by new income, business taxes
LA Times, JOHN MYERS: "California would enact a sweeping, first-in-the-nation universal healthcare plan under a proposal unveiled Thursday by a group of state Democratic lawmakers, providing health services to every resident and financed by a broad array of new taxes on individuals and businesses.
Though some of the policy details of the ambitious plan were laid out last year, the way to fund it had not been determined. The proposal, now laid out in separate pieces of legislation, faces significant hurdles in the coming months — first at the state Capitol, with opposition from groups representing doctors and insurance companies, and then possibly at the ballot box, as voters would have to approve the taxes in an amendment to the California Constitution.
“There are countless studies that tell us a single-payer healthcare system is the fiscally sound thing to do, the smarter healthcare policy to follow, and a moral imperative if we care about human life,” Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D-San Jose), the proposal’s author, said Thursday."
Republican Tom McClintock will run in new California congressional district
DAVID LIGHTMAN and GILLIAN BRASSILL, SacBee: "Rep. Tom McClintock, the outspoken conservative who could play a major role in immigration policy next year if Republicans control the House, will seek reelection in a newly drawn congressional district that largely covers territory south of his current seat.
The new 5th Congressional District captures parts of Modesto and Fresno along with the western Sierra Nevada, combining parts of districts currently held by McClintock and former Rep. Devin Nunes. It is staunchly Republican:
Voters there would have backed former President Donald Trump in 2020 with a 12% margin of victory, according to several election-tracking organizations, a strong signal they’re likely to favor a Republican candidate in the 2022 midterms."
Coveted COVID tests causing four-hour traffic jams as omicron explodes in Bay Area
JOHN WOOLFOLK and JULIA PRODIS SULEK, Mercury News: "On Wednesday, the backup on the Auto Mall Parkway was four hours. On Thursday, it was shorter, but Deven Chandani gave up, found a place to park and walked to Irvington High School instead.
All to get his hands on one of the most-coveted items in any medicine cabinet on the planet: COVID-19 tests so his kids can return to school when class resumes Monday.
He’s had just as much of a pain trying to schedule a test for his wife so she can fly to Bombay at the end of the month."
Court halts Northern California housing development over wildfire concerns
The Chronicle, KURTIS ALEXANDER: "A proposed luxury housing development in rural Lake County that has drawn widespread criticism for its location in the heart of wildfire country was put on hold this week largely because of concerns about fire safety.
A Lake County Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that the environmental review of the 1,400-home Guenoc Valley Project was inadequate, in part because county planners failed to evaluate what a large-scale fire evacuation of the area would look like.
The project is among a handful of development proposals challenged by the state Attorney General’s Office in a new legal front aimed at reducing California’s wildfire danger. The crackdown comes as devastation in Santa Rosa, Redding and other cities shows how housing sprawl can not only be hit by fires, but help fan flames across large urban areas."
Pandemic sidelines police, fire and teachers in California
BRIAN MELLEY, AP: "A dramatic surge in coronavirus cases has sidelined more than 800 Los Angeles city police and fire personnel and led to slightly longer ambulance and fire response times, adding to concerning absences statewide of public safety officers, health care workers and teachers.
Mayor Eric Garcetti said Thursday that more than 500 LAPD officers and other police employees and nearly 300 firefighters were off-duty after testing positive for COVID-19, though he said measures were being taken to ensure the safety of the public.
“This is an incredibly tough moment,” Garcetti said. “The omicron variant has taken off like wildfire.”
When should you go to the ER with COVID symptoms as California hospitalizations rise?
The Chronicle, GWENDOLYN WU: "When Santa Cruz County announced its latest COVID public health guidance on Wednesday, officials included a stark plea to people with only mild symptoms: "AVOID TRIPS TO HOSPITAL EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS."
COVID-19 hospitalizations are rising across California amid a record spike in cases from the omicron variant, and while levels so far don’t compare to last winter’s surge, officials are concerned about stress on medical facilities and resources.
But officials in Santa Cruz, the Bay Area and statewide said local ERs are seeing an influx of patients with asymptomatic or relatively mild COVID-19 cases, as well as flu and other seasonal illnesses."
L.A. County reports record 37,000 daily coronavirus cases but says Super Bowl still on
LA Times, LUKE MONEY/RONG-GONG LIN II: "Los Angeles County reported more than 37,000 new coronavirus cases Thursday, another record-breaking total as the Omicron variant continues to surge across the region.
But even with the pandemic’s astonishing resurgence, health officials say they fully expect next month’s Super Bowl can take place as scheduled at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
“I feel really confident that this event will happen here in L.A. There’s no indication that it won’t,” county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told reporters Thursday."
California lawmakers stay home after possible COVID exposure at going-away party
LARA KORTE, SacBee: "Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon did not attend Thursday’s legislative session at the Capitol after potentially being exposed to COVID-19 at a going away party earlier this week.
Rendon, a Lakewood Democrat, attended a goodbye party for outgoing Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, on Tuesday, his office confirmed. State Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, also attended the the party in Sacramento.
The next morning, Becker announced he had tested positive for COVID-19 despite being vaccinated and boosted. Now Rendon is staying home, and asking other lawmakers who attended the party to do the same."
PG&E has been blamed for the Dixie Fire. Now what’s in store for the company?
The Chronicle, JULIE JOHNSON: "Cal Fire confirmed this week what many in California already suspected: The Dixie Fire was caused by PG&E, when a tree fell onto the utility’s energized power lines last summer in a remote mountainous canyon.
The fire, which grew into the state’s second-largest blaze on record and burned for 3½ months through towns and forests of the northern Sierra Nevada, remains a stark display of the company’s unmet challenge to secure a safe electrical grid.
Whether Pacific Gas and Electric Co., blamed for similarly starting dozens of fires from the Wine Country infernos to the deadly Camp Fire in Butte County, can and will improve safety remains a question. Critics of the utility say the company is still doing too little to reduce fire risk while its regulators are not doing enough to hold it accountable."
Sacramento County orders public boards to suspend in-person meetings due to omicron
MICHAEL McGOUGH, SacBee: "Sacramento County health officials have ordered that all public board meetings, council meetings and commission meetings be conducted virtually rather than in-person in response to extremely high transmission rates of the omicron variant of COVID-19.
“Due to the continued day-over-day case rate increases of COVID-19 from the highly infectious Omicron variant, the Sacramento County Public Health Officer has issued a health order requiring all public boards, councils, commissions, and other similar bodies suspend in-person public meetings and conduct all meetings virtually,” the county announced in a news release Thursday morning.
The order will apply to all city councils and school district boards located within Sacramento County, along with the county Board of Supervisors, as well as all commissions within those bodies.
Four UC campuses extend remote instruction through January amid worsening Omicron surge
LA Times, TERESA WATANABE: "Amid a worsening Omicron surge, four University of California campuses announced Thursday that they are extending remote instruction to the end of January.
UC campuses at Irvine, Davis, Santa Cruz and San Diego, whose winter quarters began Jan. 3, said that rising positivity rates for coronavirus infections had compelled them to exercise extra caution and push back the start of in-person instruction to Jan. 31. Davis had planned to return to campus on Monday, while Irvine, Santa Cruz and San Diego had announced a Jan. 18 start.
In a message to the campus community Thursday night, UC Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman said the campus positivity rate of those tested since Sunday was 13% — lower than the Orange County rate of 25% but still “simply too much disease transmission ... to assume safe in-person interactions.” He said the surge in coronavirus cases created a risk of staffing shortages and students who might not be able to attend classes in person, creating a burden on faculty to create both in-person and online options."
Surge and sickout: 20% of S.F. educators absent as district struggles to supervise classrooms
The Chronicle, JILL TUCKER: "Nearly 900 San Francisco teachers and aides were not in their classrooms Thursday, a significant increase in absences over the previous day, deepening a crisis that’s been unfolding since Monday as district officials scrambled to make sure enough qualified adults could fill in and families worried about whether their children’s education would be interrupted — again.
A group of teachers called for a sickout Thursday, arguing the district had not adequately protected them during the omicron surge, but it was unclear how many were participating in the sickout and how many were actually ill or caring for sick family members.
The number of absent aides and teachers represented about 20% of the school district’s educators."
Supreme Court weighs challenge to Biden’s vaccine rule for hospitals and big employers
LA Times, DAVID G SAVAGE: "President Biden’s plan to require about 100 million employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 faces a major challenge in the Supreme Court on Friday.
Attorneys for 27 Republican-led states and dozens of business groups argue that Biden has overstepped his authority, and they come before a conservative court that is increasingly skeptical of new and far-reaching federal regulations.
They asked the justices to issue an order that blocks Biden’s rules from taking effect. But before doing so, the court said it would hear arguments from both sides in a pair of related cases."
At S.F. vigil, marchers demand prosecution of Trump, Capitol insurrectionists
The Chronicle, ANDRES PICON: "Nancy Latham remembers the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 with a sense of anger and sorrow. One year after the riot, the images of smoke and Trump flags rising above the Capitol steps remain with her as symbols of a democracy under attack.
“It was really shocking and emotional and sad,” Latham, an organizer with the political advocacy group Indivisible East Bay, said Thursday, on the anniversary of the storming of the Capitol. “How could this be happening in my country?”
On Thursday, she joined a couple of hundred other Bay Area residents in front of San Francisco City Hall in a vigil and march that organizers said was a call to action: American citizens, lawmakers and law enforcement agencies must defend democracy, now more than ever, they said."
