A gusher of campaign cash: Industry groups give big in California legislative races
CALMatters, BEN CHRISTOPHER/SAMEEA KAMAL: "Like many voters across California this fall, those in Hayward and Fremont have been flooded with mailers targeting the two Democrats tussling for a seat in the state Legislature.
Fremont Mayor Lily Mei is slammed for her role in a secretive severance payout to the former city manager, who has been charged with embezzlement. Her opponent in the state Senate race, Aisha Wahab, a Hayward city councilmember, is accused of “elder abuse” for supporting a landlord who evicted older tenants.
One thing the mailers have in common: They are funded not by the candidates, but by outside interests."
Coming California storm will likely end NorCal fire season
The Chronicle, HANNAH HAGEMANN/JACK LEE: "Remnants of an atmospheric river brought Northern California its first solid storm of the year - rain splattered across the Bay Area and Central Coast, while some parts of Tahoe saw snowfall boosted to above average levels for this time of year.
Despite a historic heat wave in September, weather unexpectedly turned colder and wetter. A rare September storm came after the record temperatures and stopped the fire season in its tracks. October was marked by a deep marine layer that sent fog to all corners of the Bay Area.
“That really made a decisive difference in that it decapitated, if you will, the peak of fire season,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the Nature Conservancy."
Gavin Newsom blocks $1B in homelessness funding for cities, counties, saying they aren’t doing enough
The Chronicle, SOPHIA BOLLAG/MALLORY MOENCH/SARAH RAVANI: "California Gov. Gavin Newsom will withhold $1 billion in state funding from cities and counties because he says local governments are failing to get people off the streets fast enough.
Newsom’s Thursday morning announcement represents some of the accountability Newsom has long promised on homelessness, one of the Golden State’s most pressing problems. His administration has put billions of dollars for housing and homeless funding in the state budget, which Republicans and some Democrats say isn’t being used effectively. The funds Newsom is now withholding include more than $180 million allocated for local governments in the Bay Area.
Newsom’s assessment is based on plans his administration required cities and counties to submit detailing how they would reduce homelessness. On Thursday, he announced that the plans local governments submitted would only reduce homelessness by 2% by 2024, which he called “unacceptable.”"
Gimme Shelter: Gavin Newsom promised 3.5 million homes. How’d he do?
CALMatters, MANUELA TOBIAS: "Gov. Gavin Newsom is once again on the ballot, and while his reelection is all but secure, it’s as good a time as ever to take stock of the promises he made about fixing the California housing crisis when running for office four years ago.
Newsom campaigned on spurring a never-before-seen wave of homebuilding to reign in the housing affordability crisis.
“As Governor, I will lead the effort to develop the 3.5 million new housing units we need by 2025 because our solutions must be as bold as the problem is big,” then-Lt. Gov. Newsom wrote on Medium in 2017."
Campaigning in California and New Mexico, Biden aims to ease voter anxieties
LAT, SEEMA MEHTA/ERIN B LOGAN: "President Biden, campaigning for an embattled Southern California Democratic congressman, argued that Tuesday’s election will have ramifications for generations on the future of the nation.
“It’s going to shape our country for decades to come,” Biden told a few hundred supporters in a community college gym in Oceanside. He acknowledged that politicians frequently call elections the most important in their lifetimes, but that this year is truly different.
“It’s going to determine the direction of the country for at least a decade or more,” he said. “Everybody talks about a referendum. It’s not a referendum. It’s a choice — a choice between two fundamentally different versions of America.”"
What happens to stolen catalytic converters? A look inside one $38 million California crime ring
The Chronicle, NORA MISHANEC: "Metal recyclers accused of orchestrating a multimillion-dollar, cross-country crime ring grew so successful trading catalytic converters that had been sawed from vehicles that they had a specialized phone app providing real-time prices for the stolen precious metals.
That startling detail — and others attesting to the increasing sophistication of metal thieves — was revealed in federal court documents recently filed in the prosecution of three Sacramento County residents charged with operating a Northern California-based crime operation from 2019 until last month.
The filings offered a rare and detailed glimpse inside the shadowy and lucrative world of illegal metal recycling. While the crisis of rampant catalytic converter theft is widely known, what happens after the devices are stolen has been more obscure, and prosecutions of metal recyclers suspected of trading illegal parts are uncommon."
Heat is expected to get far more brutal in certain parts of California. People are still moving there in droves
The Chronicle, YOOHYUN JUNG: "In the 1990s, Justin Johnson was one of two Black kids at his school in Roseville, a suburban community in Placer County northeast of Sacramento. The other one, he says, was his brother, Joel.
Fast forward decades, and that’s changed dramatically, Johnson said. Now, when he drops off his high school senior daughter at school, he sees dozens more Black kids. “Is it what you would consider diverse? Probably not in comparison to the Bay Area. But compared to what it was, it’s a night-and-day difference.”
Placer County is among the places in California where Black, Latino and Asian populations have grown significantly from 2010 to 2020 — and it’s also one of the places in the state that’s expected to get the hottest with global warming."
COVID in California: State epidemiologist ‘optimistic’ about the winter
The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI: "Bay Area health officials are starting to ramp up precautionary messaging about COVID and other viruses ahead of the holidays — especially as signs emerge of an uptick in cases nationwide. The advice is especially focused on bivalent booster shots, but an FDA commissioner also made a point of noting that the benefits of antiviral drug Paxlovid in reducing negative outcomes for people at risk far outweigh any concerns about a “rebound” effect that sometimes occurs in people who take the medication. Meanwhile, other precautions continue to be dismantled: Disney Cruise Line is dropping its requirement for pre-boarding virus testing regardless of vaccination status, effective Nov. 14.
Latest updates:
State epidemiologist “optimistic” about the winter, recommends masks for all viruses
California health officials are seeing an uptick of omicron COVID-19 subvariants, such as BQ.1 and XBB, in the state but are not yet concerned they will cause a substantial spike in cases and hospitalizations this winter. Erica Pan, the state epidemiologist, told The Chronicle on Thursday that California is not anticipating a new surge of the sort that can stress the health care system, comparable to what has occurred in some other parts of the world. She added that the emerging subvariants “don’t seem to be causing more serious clinical impact.” Pan did not offer a threshold for possibly reinstating a statewide mask mandate or any other mitigation measures if cases start to increase but instead encouraged Californians to get the updated bivalent booster to help blunt the impact of viruses currently in circulation. She did recommend voluntary masking in crowded indoor settings to help prevent the spread not just of the coronavirus but also other airborne pathogens, such as RSV and influenza."
Paul Pelosi released from the hospital but faces ‘long recovery process’
The Chronicle, RACHEL SWAN: "The husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was released from the hospital six days after an intruder broke into the couple’s Pacific Heights home and bludgeoned him with a hammer.
In a statement Thursday, Nancy Pelosi said Paul Pelosi “remains under doctors’ care as he continues to progress on a long recovery process and convalescence. He is now home surrounded by his family who request privacy.”
San Francisco police officers who rushed to the home after Pelosi surreptitiously called 911 from a bathroom entered the door to see two men struggling over a hammer — identified as Paul Pelosi, 82, and David DePape, 42, a blogger and right-wing conspiracy theorist."
Tom Girardi faced more than 150 complaints before State Bar took action, records show
LAT, HARRIET RYAN/MATT HAMILTON: "The State Bar of California received 205 complaints against Los Angeles legal legend Tom Girardi alleging he misappropriated settlement money, abandoned clients and committed other serious ethical violations over the course of his four-decade career, the agency disclosed Thursday in response to a lawsuit brought by The Times.
Despite the drumbeat of concerns that began in 1982, the State Bar took no public action against Girardi until after his Wilshire Boulevard firm collapsed two years ago.
As his stature as a trial attorney and political powerbroker grew, officials closed scores of complaints against him without doing any investigation and rejected dozens of others for “insufficient evidence,” the records show. In 13 cases where the agency did act against Girardi, it used “non-public measures,” such as a warning letter, that left his law license and reputation in the legal community unblemished."
Sacramento city manager to earn $400,000 salary after council votes to raise his pay
Sac Bee, THERESA CLIFT: "Sacramento City Manager Howard Chan is getting a raise.
Following a more than two-hour closed door meeting, the council voted 8-1 to give Chan a 7.5% raise Tuesday, which will increase his base salary from $372,700 to $400,652.
Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela voted against the raise, voicing concerns that the council had recently given several city unions smaller raises. Recent contract for police and firefighters, for instance, included 3.5% raises."
What we know so far about the anticipated University of California system strike
Sac Bee, JACQUELINE PINEDO/MAYA MILLER: "University of California academic workers are getting ready to go on strike in an effort to get higher wages and child care subsidies.
On Wednesday, 36,558 votes were cast from union workers and 97% voted yes to authorize a strike.
Here’s a breakdown of what we know so far:"
Tiny house construction training has Fresno students dreaming big about their futures
EdSource, ASHLEIGH PANOO: "At Fresno City College’s Career and Technology Center, tucked away in an industrial neighborhood near the city’s southern border, a dozen students gathered around the wood framing of a small exterior wall.
The construction students were raising the structures onto a trailer, beginning what will be the first of 24 tiny homes that will go to people in need. And beyond the charitable goal, this important real-life construction project is teaching work skills and is aiming to help students enter the workforce with valuable experience.
When the pandemic began shuttering campuses in 2020, construction classes stayed outside in person. But Fresno City College lost its usual community project – building a home for a family with Habitat for Humanity."
On eve of mass layoffs, Twitter employees say goodbye after being abruptly cut off from work emails, Slack
The Chronicle, JORDAN PARKER: "Twitter employees took to the social media site Thursday night to say they’d unexpectedly lost access to their work email and internal work communications accounts on the eve of massive layoffs planned by the company’s new CEO Elon Musk.
Many assumed the unexplained cut-off meant they lost their jobs, and began sharing their goodbyes to fellow employees.
“Looks like I’m unemployed y’all,” Twitter employee Simon Balmain said. Balmain said he got remotely logged out of his work laptop and removed from the company’s Slack messaging system. “#One team forever,” he said."
With Twitter layoffs set to start, employees worry about getting their severance
LAT, JAIMIE DING: "In recent years, big technology companies have dangled ever more generous benefits to entice engineers in a seller’s talent market. Layoffs, a rarity in Silicon Valley over the last decade, have typically come with the consolation of generous severance packages often including months of salary and healthcare coverage.
Now that expectation is collapsing — and nowhere more rapidly than at Twitter, where thousands of employees are suddenly facing the prospect of joblessness in a newly chilly employment landscape.
Under new owner Elon Musk, the social media platform is preparing to terminate a large portion of its workforce — about half of its 7,500 workers, according to Bloomberg."
Here’s how much Bay Area home prices would have to fall to offset rising mortgage rates
The Chronicle, KELLIE HWANG: "Rising mortgage rates have stunted the Bay Area’s housing market, with many buyers unwilling or unable to take on the significantly higher house payments resulting from interest rates that have doubled since January.
The drop in demand has led to price declines in recent months — especially in the South Bay, which has seen a 6% decrease in typical home values since May, according to listings site Zillow.
But given the huge run-up in home prices during the pandemic, how much further would they have to drop to totally offset the higher mortgage payments resulting from rate increases, thereby keeping that monthly expense flat for the typical Bay Area homeowner?"
Jury finds retired Santa Clara County sheriff Laurie Smith guilty of civil corruption
The Chronicle, JORDAN PARKER: "A jury in San Jose found Laurie Smith, the freshly retired Santa Clara County sheriff, guilty of six corruption and misconduct allegations on Thursday.
Smith, who served in the position since 1998 up until her retirement Monday, was convicted of abusing her power to grant concealed carry permits in exchange for campaign donations and mismanaging the county jail, the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office said. The civil complaint against her was filed in December by the Santa Clara County civil grand jury.
After the six guilty verdicts were delivered — following deliberations that began Oct. 28 — Smith could be seen wiping away tears, according to the Mercury News. She left the courtroom sporting a face mask and sunglasses."
The world needs chromite and lithium. Afghanistan has them. What happens next?
LAT, NABIH BULOS: "Somewhere in the Logar Mountains, overlooking the highway to Kabul, Asadullah Massoud trudged up to a four-story-tall cleft. Before him was a monochromatic pattern of gray stone, save for a seam of dull, almost-black rocks.
“Look there. See that black line?” he said. “That’s chromite.”
An explosion thumped in the distance. Massoud looked up at the sound, but appeared unconcerned. “That’s not fighting. We’re mining with the open-surface method, putting explosives and going from hill to hill,” he said."
