“A year and a half, two years ago, we had a war metaphor and we were hoping there would be a day where there would be a ticker-tape parade à la World War II,” Governor Newsom said. “At the end of the day, though, I think we are realizing that we’re going to have to live with different variants and this disease for many, many years. And that’s what this plan does, it sets out a course to do it sustainably.”
The draft report, which was reviewed by The Times, praises the city’s emergency operations workers, who worked out of a downtown facility while much of the city remained shut down.
And Garcetti “acted quickly and decisively on many fronts, often with innovative initiatives to help protect the city and its people,” the report found."
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia and state Assemblymember Cristina Garcia are running to represent the new 42nd Congressional District, a Latino majority district that was created in December by the state’s redistricting commission as California loses a congressional seat for the first time in its history.
“It’s fair to say this is one of the more prominent Democrat-on-Democrat races” on the ballot, said Robb Korinke, a Democratic strategist who lives in Long Beach but is not aligned with either candidate. (Korinke was appointed by Robert Garcia to the city’s Technology and Innovation Commission in 2015.)"
The homecoming was met with mixed reviews by residents. Some said they appreciated the new stoves and refrigerators, and better lighting, but complained that they had lost square footage. Others said that their showers had low water pressure and took too long to heat up.
But for some of the tenants in the affordable complex at Golden Gate Avenue and Buchanan Street, the reopening is coming with a major downside: a scary jump in rent."
JOSHUA AALACIDES, Capitol Weekly: "For two years now, Shasta County has been the center of a fight between moderate Republicans serving on the board of supervisors and local far-right activists and militia groups who have taken issue with the state’s public health restrictions.
But what began as an intensely local political fight captured attention across the state, in part because others worry whether a similar battle could come their way.
“I’d like to say this is a canary in a coal mine, but it’s a whole flock of canaries at this point,” said Mike Madrid, a veteran California political strategist and cofounder of the Lincoln Project.
In addition to a number of local flareups, he noted that a member of the Proud Boys is running for the state Assembly in the 8th District in suburban Sacramento against Democrat Ken Cooley."
Extremists see opportunity as fury over Covid rules erupts in rural California
DANI ANGUIANO, The Guardian: "Residents of a California county are mounting an aggressive campaign to oust officials who have supported Covid safety measures and vaccines, the latest example of a growing extremism in local politics fueled by the pandemic.
A group in Nevada county, a rural expanse of about 100,000 people in the Sierra Nevada, is seeking to recall five county supervisors, saying that contact tracing efforts and the promotion of lockdowns and vaccines violate “religious freedoms and individual liberty”.
The effort comes on the heels of a successful recall campaign further north in Shasta county, where voters ousted Leonard Moty, a Republican supervisor and retired police chief. The Shasta county election, which followed nearly two years of threats and increasing hostility toward the longtime supervisor and his moderate colleagues, gave control of the board of supervisors to a group supported by local militia members."
Capitol Weekly Podcast: Mike Madrid on the rise of extremism
CW Staff: "Mike Madrid is a longtime Republican strategist, veteran of the Bush administration and acknowledged expert on Latino politics.
After a lifetime as a GOP stalwart, he denounced the party’s embrace of Trumpism in 2016, and later cofounded The Lincoln Project, an effort by disaffected Republicans working to derail Donald Trump’s re-election bid.
We invited him on the Podcast to talk about the recent flurry of recalls and whether this will be the “new normal” in California politics. He painted a much darker picture.
“The Republican Party is gone,” he told us."
Empty trains, deserted stations cost taxpayers billions. Will BART, VTA and Caltrain riders ever return?
ELIHYU KAMISHER, Mercury News: "At the North Concord BART station, an intercom rings out the arrival of a roaring train – but no one is there to hear it.
The platform is deserted on a Friday afternoon, as trains come and go, except for a handful of lonely passengers who eventually trickle down the stairs.
“I didn’t get off at the right station,” explained a slightly annoyed Dalton Fine, who sailed past his stop while absorbed in a work call. “So that’s why I’m here right now.”
Greater Los Angeles homeless count resumes after pandemic-related hiatus
RUBEN VIVES, LATimes: "After a yearlong hiatus during the pandemic, thousands of volunteers will fan out across Los Angeles County this week to conduct the annual count of the region’s homeless population.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) canceled the event last year and then delayed it last month because of COVID-19 surges spawned by the Delta and Omicron variants.
Known as the “point-in-time” homeless count, the survey helps Los Angeles County determine where to distribute resources for homeless people and allocate state and federal funding."
Sacramento has 37 portable toilets for 10,000 homeless people — and they could be removed
THERESA CLIFT, SacBee: "Sherry Aday camps by herself in a small green tent on the sidewalk along X Street in midtown, Sacramento. A city restroom sits just a just feet away from her tent, but it’s fenced off with gray metal chains and padlocks.
When she has to go, she ventures across busy W and X streets to use at restrooms at Southside Park, sometimes in the middle of the night. When she’s not feeling up to the journey, she pees in a bucket.
To get water, she has to walk over a block and then carry it — a difficult task with her chronic pain. Like thousands, she’s on the waiting list for a shelter bed. In the meantime, she wants the city to open the restroom closest to her at O’Neil Field, which has flushing toilets and sinks.
Column: Another misuse of environmental quality law affects UC students
DAN WALTERS, CalMatters: "Were I to write another book about California politics — which is very unlikely — it would be entitled
“Unintended Consequences,” detailing how political policy decrees mutate to have unforeseen effects.
Examples of the syndrome are legion, but here are just two:—In the 1960s, newly elected Gov. Ronald Reagan signed two pieces of legislation that purported to reform the care and treatment of the mentally ill. They set in motion a phaseout of the state’s extensive system of mental hospitals in favor of community mental health clinics.
Reagan wanted to save money and advocates for the mentally ill had decried the prison-like, abusive atmosphere of the hospitals.
U.S. Supreme Court declines emergency order in San Diego schools vaccine mandate caseTERI FIGUEROA, San Diego U-T, LA Times: "The U.S. Supreme Court declined Friday to grant an emergency order blocking San Diego Unified School District from enforcing its COVID-19 vaccine requirements, citing the district’s decision to delay implementing the policy.
“Because respondents have delayed implementation of the challenged policy, and because they have not settled on the form any policy will now take, emergency relief is not warranted at this time,”
the one-page court order reads.
The nation’s highest court left open the chance it would reconsider taking the case, should circumstances change."
California Dems to reject funding from some climate polluters, review police donations
JOE GAROFOLI, Chronice: "The California Democratic Party sent mixed signals to racial justice and environmental activists Sunday by refusing to accept further campaign contributions from some fossil fuel companies and pledging to review contributions from law enforcement organizations on a case-by-case basis.
The move, which has been under consideration for months, was seen as a way for the state Democratic Party — the nation’s largest — to align its rhetoric on racial justice and the environment with its financing sources — in other words, to refrain from raising campaign cash from sources that it clashes with on those political and policy matters. The party’s executive board, meeting virtually Sunday, agreed 192-48 to accept the changes. It will review the rules in two years.
“The California Democratic Party has taken an important step forward to more clearly fund our important work in line with our democratic values,” state party chair Rusty Hicks said Sunday in a statement after the vote. “We now turn our full attention to engaging 10 million California Democrats to protect our democracy and build a California that works for all of us.”
Investigators still trying to determine cause of deadly police chopper crash in Newport Beach
HOWARD BLUME, HANNAH FRY, JULIA WICK and LAURA NEWBERRY: "Investigators on Sunday were still trying to determine the cause of a Huntington Beach police helicopter crash in Newport Harbor that killed one officer and injured another.
The officer who died in Saturday night’s crash was identified as 44-year-old veteran Officer Nicholas Vella, according to the Huntington Beach Police Department. A second officer, who has not yet been identified, was released from the hospital Sunday morning.
Investigators have ascertained which officer was the pilot, but have not yet publicly released that information, said Jennifer Carey, the department’s spokeswoman. The wreckage was pulled from the water Sunday afternoon, she added."
These are all the reasons San Francisco small businesses say it’s so hard to stay afloat right now
CHASE DiFeliciantonio, Chronicle: "Erik Anderson’s love for craft beer and years in the restaurant and bar business drove him to take a risk during the pandemic. He opened his own bar and restaurant, Barley, on Polk Street, near the edge of the Tenderloin in early 2021.
He knew the risks of opening during a pandemic, taking out a small business loan and putting up money he’d carefully saved over the years. But it was worth it. He wanted to create a space where customers could have a craft beer or pick at a charcuterie board and forget about their troubles, if only for a while.
After more than a year, Barley is still open and Anderson is still able to pay his staff. But it has been hard going, opening during the winter when vaccines were just becoming available and statewide ICU availability was hovering around zero. Foot traffic in the city was down too, with many people sheltering in place as a holiday-driven virus surge swept through the state."
