Nearly half-century later, lawyers and doctors see peace over MICRA
CHUCK McFADDEN, Capitol Weekly: "The latest chapter in a decades-long battle between physicians and lawyers is unfolding through compromise in Sacramento and so far, almost everyone involved has come aboard.
The agreement caught the Capitol by surprise — the language was placed in an existing bill after it was gutted. Legislative leaders in both houses praised the compromise, as did the governor and representatives of the competing interests.
“I never envisioned a legislative compromise,” said attorney Nick Rowley, a backer and funder of a November ballot initiative this year targeting MICRA, “but I’m very proud that our work has led us to this point. When this becomes law, we will have changed history for the better.”
Here we go again: California coronavirus cases rising. Is a new wave coming?
RONG-GON LIN II and LUKE MONEY, LA Times: "After months of declining numbers, California has recorded a nearly 30% increase in coronavirus cases over the last week along with smaller rises in hospitalizations, causing some health officials to suspect that the state is headed into a new pandemic wave.
The increase coincides with a loosening of COVID-19 restrictions such as mask mandates and vaccine verification rules as well as the rise of new subvariants of the highly transmissible Omicron strain. The question now is how much higher cases will go and whether new government intervention will be needed.
“We’re expecting a small surge that may mirror something that we saw in Delta last summer, in early July, but it’s happening now, in May,” Dr. Curtis Chan, deputy health officer for San Mateo County, said in an interview."
After cops remove activists, L.A. mayor candidates take on homelessness — and one another
JULIA WICK, JEONG PARK and DAVID ZAHNISER: "Sunday’s mayoral debate began with a leader of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles being forcibly removed from the auditorium by multiple campus police officers just before cameras started rolling and ended with the candidates sharing their favorite locations to visit in the city.
During the intervening 90 minutes, five of the leading candidates for Los Angeles mayor traded arguments and accusations over how to address crime, homelessness, climate change and other issues. At times, they appeared almost as frustrated as the voters of Los Angeles.
Rep. Karen Bass, City Councilman Joe Buscaino, real estate developer Rick Caruso, City Atty. Mike Feuer, and Councilman Kevin de León all argued at different points that the city is facing a crisis. Caruso sought to pin the blame on the other four."
A long-forgotten toxic dump site is raising new worries for this Los Angeles neighborhood
LA Times, JONAH VALDEZ: “In the summer of 1984, investigators peered into a cave dug beneath the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles and found dozens of rusted 55-gallon barrels filled with toxic chemicals.
Some of the barrels lay nearly empty after their contents had leaked through corroded metal and escaped into the soil.
“I saw the hole and I said, ‘I can’t believe it — who would do something like this?’,’' recalled Barry Groveman, the head of the now-defunct Los Angeles Hazardous Waste Task Force. At the time, he described the dump as “a violent crime against the community.””
Homeless shelters begin to see value in making room for pets
CHRISTOPHER WEBER, AP: "eing homeless in Los Angeles and struggling with addiction is hard enough, but Rachel Niebur couldn’t imagine enduring it without her dog Petey.
Niebur credits her constant companion, an energetic black and white chihuahua mix, with helping her keep off drugs and giving her a reason to get up in the morning.
“She needs me. She gives me my focus. I have to feed her. I have to walk her. It’s a real relationship,” said Niebur, before following Petey to the small, fenced-in dog park on the grounds of the shelter in the Venice neighborhood where the inseparable pair have lived for about two years."
Kathy Boudin, formerly imprisoned radical leftist and mother of San Francisco D.A. Chesa Boudin, dies
The Chronicle, MEGAN CASSIDY: “Kathy Boudin, a former member of the radical Weather Underground who took part in a robbery that killed three people, an act that sent her to prison for 22 years and left behind a young son who would become the district attorney of San Francisco, died Sunday at 78.
Her son, Chesa Boudin, speaking to The Chronicle on Sunday, said he took a red-eye flight to New York overnight and was able to say his final goodbyes. In a statement, he said that “my mom fought cancer for seven years in her unshakably optimistic and courageous way. She made it long enough to meet her grandson, and welcome my father home from prison after 40 years.”
Kathy Boudin was released from prison in 2003 and went on to earn her doctoral degree and become a Columbia University professor of social work who focused on criminal justice reform.”
New California program could help first-time home buyers
LOUIS HANSEN, Mercury News: "Seeking to chip away at an ambitious goal of boosting home ownership in California, the state has launched a new program of forgivable loans for first-time home buyers.
The program, Forgivable Equity Builder Loan, allows qualified, first-time buyers to borrow up to 10% of a home’s purchase price, and have the debt forgiven if the buyer lives in the home for five years. The loans are available to middle-income families making less than 80% of their county’s annual median income, below $120,000 in all Bay Area counties.
California lawmakers earmarked $100 million in the state budget for the first-time homeowner loans. The goal is to help working families with enough income to pay a mortgage but not enough savings to ante up for a down payment."
Column: Sheriff Villanueva acts like he’s above the law in L.A. County. What if he’s right?
LA Times, ERIKA D SMITH/ANITA CHABRIA: “Week after week, we’ve come to expect certain things from Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, among them wild accusations, a penchant for petulance and more than a bit of bravado about legally dubious behavior.
This past week did not disappoint.
At a news conference ostensibly called to tamp down on a widening scandal over a deputy who knelt on the head of a handcuffed inmate, Villanueva announced that he was investigating our Times colleague, Alene Tchekmedyian, for reporting about it.”
Critics of plan to relocate youths from L.A. juvenile hall increasingly vocal before move
LA Times, LIBOR JANY: “A plan by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to move juvenile offenders to a probation camp in a remote area of Malibu has run into increasing opposition, amid a broader debate about what the county’s youth justice system should look like.
The first juveniles were set to be transferred to Malibu’s Camp Kilpatrick on Sunday, but the county Probation Department decided at the last minute to postpone the move because security enhancements at the facility have not yet been made, officials said.
Plans call for gradually moving most of the youths housed at the troubled Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar to three smaller camps across the county: Kilpatrick, Camp Scott in Santa Clarita and Dorothy Kirby Center in Commerce. Under the county plan, male offenders will be housed at camps Kilpatrick and Scott, while female offenders will be at Camp Kirby.”
How some Bay Area home buyers are saving thousands a year in property taxes
The Chronicle, KATHLEEN PENDER: “When Bob and Melissa Mischak sold their townhome in Alameda and bought a condo in Tiburon in April 2021, they became the first home buyers in Marin County to apply for a new statewide tax break that is saving them more than $5,000 a year in property taxes.
The tax break vastly expanded the ways people older than 55 or severely disabled can sell their primary residence and transfer its assessed value to a new primary residence, rather than having the new residence reassessed at full market value. This reduces or eliminates the big property tax increase that hits many longtime homeowners when they move to a new house, even a less expensive one.
The expansion was one half of Proposition 19, which California voters narrowly approved in November 2020. The California Realtors Association pumped $40.4 million into the Yes on Prop. 19 campaign, hoping it would stimulate housing sales by getting seniors to move to more suitable homes or neighborhoods.”
Democrats’ fate lies in the nation’s political battlefield: Orange County
The Chronicle, JOE GAROFOLI: “Orange County is at the center of the political universe again, the battleground where upward of $35 million — or about 10 times what’s typically spent on Bay Area House campaigns — will shower each of two key races that will help determine whether Democrats keep control of Congress.
But a lot has changed since 2020, when Republican Reps. Michelle Steel and Young Kim made history by being the first GOP Korean American women to ever serve in Congress. Or 2018, when Democrats flipped four GOP seats here to help take the House. Now, Steel’s race is rated a “toss-up,” while Kim is seen as having a slightly better chance of holding her seat.
For starters, both must introduce themselves to a new crop of voters after California’s redistricting commission redrew the state’s political boundaries. Plus, a number of outside factors could reshape their races, from abortion to Donald Trump to COVID to a battle to win over Asian voters that is among the most intense — and complex — in the country.”
Inside the DIY effort to deliver tiny homes to homeless people: $1,000 apiece, built without permission
The Chronicle, LAUREN HEPLER: “Three NASA engineers huddled around a big plywood box they’d just built in a San Jose driveway.
A few feet away, an environmental activist, whose building plans they were all using, installed a solar panel on an identical box, a “CLIMATE EMERGENCY” tattoo peeking out from his sleeve.
Their goal: Turn as many of these DIY structures as possible into roughly 4-by-6-foot mobile huts on wheels, like one with a bright orange and blue paint job already loaded on a trailer. If all went well, it would soon be a micro home for someone on the street in Silicon Valley.”
At a garrison church in a western Ukrainian city, the martial mingles with the sacred
LA Times, LAURA KING: “Sunday’s mayoral debate began with a leader of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles being forcibly removed from the auditorium by multiple campus police officers just before cameras started rolling and ended with the candidates sharing their favorite locations to visit in the city.
During the intervening 90 minutes, five of the leading candidates for Los Angeles mayor traded arguments and accusations over how to address crime, homelessness, climate change and other issues. At times, they appeared almost as frustrated as the voters of Los Angeles.
Rep. Karen Bass, City Councilman Joe Buscaino, real estate developer Rick Caruso, City Atty. Mike Feuer, and Councilman Kevin de León all argued at different points that the city is facing a crisis. Caruso sought to pin the blame on the other four.”
