Here are 16 new laws Californians must start following in 2024
The Chronicle, SARA LIBBY, SOPHIA BOLLAG: "Lawmakers in Sacramento pass plenty of complex, arcane measures every year that can be hard to wrap your head around. But they also pass laws that can have a pretty direct impact on everyday Californians’ lives, including some coming online in 2024 that could affect your commute, your annual camping trip or your paycheck.
Here are 16 new laws that will kick in next year, beginning with the ones that go into effect on Jan. 1."
California Assembly has a new public safety committee leader. What are his crime priorities?
Sacramento Bee, ISHANI DESAI: "California Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, appointed last week as the public safety committee’s first new leader in seven years, vowed to champion bipartisanship when funneling bills through the powerful panel increasingly scrutinized by voters who rank crime as a top concern.
The Sacramento Democrat referenced his track record when promising balanced solutions to divisive criminal justice issues. McCarty has authored some significant police reform bills, such as Assembly Bill 1506 requiring the state attorney general’s office to review police shooting in which an unarmed person dies."
Why do California, Texas differ so much? Religion, priorities of white minority play huge roles, poll shows
LA Times, JACK HERRERA: "A Californian suddenly transported to this South Texas town on a Sunday morning, just in time for the service at the Tree of Life evangelical church, might be hard-pressed to know she wasn’t in California anymore.
California has more megachurches than any other state, so the nature of the congregation wouldn’t provide the tip-off. Rows of pickup trucks in the large parking lot might be a tell, but the percentage of Texans who drive trucks is actually around the national average."
‘No Party Preference’ voter registrations have plummeted in California. Here’s why.
Sacramento Bee, PHILLIP REESE: "For the first time in decades, the proportion of California voters registering “No Party Preference” has decreased in the lead-up to a presidential primary election.
About 22% of voters in early October did not claim a party preference, down from about 27% before the last presidential primary in 2019, according to new statistics from the California Secretary of State."
After a mild fire year, Southern California crews look ahead to 2024
LA Times, HAYLEY SMITH: "On a cool, cloudy morning one day last week, Albert Rivas approached a pile of dry wood in the Angeles National Forest and set it on fire.
The pile roared to life, and within minutes, it was spewing flames at least 10 feet tall. Rivas, a firefighter with the United States Forest Service, paused briefly to admire his handiwork before aiming his gasoline- and diesel-filled drip torch at another pile nearby."
The big three respiratory viruses are rising in California, but are causing fewer hospitalizations than last year
BANG*Mercury News, HARRIET BLAIR ROWAN: "Turkey dinners with family and friends may be in the rearview mirror, but COVID and influenza hospitalizations are both on the rise post-Thanksgiving — though less than at this time last year.
California ended its state of emergency for COVID-19 in February, and just this week the California Department of Public Health quietly replaced the state’s COVID dashboard with a new respiratory virus dashboard that tracks hospital admissions, deaths and test positivity rates for COVID and influenza side-by-side, marking COVID’s gradual evolution to an endemic virus, like the flu."
Biting, kicking, hurling blocks. Preschools struggle with California law limiting expulsion
LA Times, JENNY GOLD: "Kristin Hills is at her wits’ end with how to handle the chaos in her preschool classrooms.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, behavior among the children at the state preschools she oversees in Mendocino County has gotten out of hand. Biting has become more frequent among the 3-year-olds. Hitting and kicking is commonplace. A few children have started hurling wooden blocks and even chairs across the classroom. In at least a third of her 17 classrooms, she said, the behaviors may endanger other children and teachers."
Reading scores climb after targeted intervention at California’s worst-performing schools
CALMatters, CAROLYN JONES: "California’s $53 million investment in teaching its youngest and lowest-performing students to read has shown dramatic — and relatively fast — results, researchers at Stanford have found.
In a study released Sunday night, researchers at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education found that the percent of third-graders in the program who met or nearly met the state reading standards rose 6 percentage points, compared to students at similar schools."
Construction workers union to picket SFUSD amid allegations of unpaid wages, unfair labor practices
The Chronicle, NORA MISHANEC: "A construction union has accused the San Francisco Unified School District of violating state labor laws and announced a strike Monday to protest what it says are unfair labor practices that hinder workers’ ability to maintain district infrastructure.
About 80 district employees who oversee upkeep on public school buildings citywide plan to join the one-day strike, said Rudy Gonzalez, secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, which is representing them. Employees who planned to picket include plumbers, roofers, carpenters and other construction workers, he said."
Thousands of Cal State faculty to walk out in rolling strike, demanding higher pay
LA Times, DEBBIE TRUONG: "Thousands of California State University faculty are expected to walk out beginning Monday during the crucial end-of-term time, demanding higher pay and marking a high-profile escalation in contract negotiations between their union and the nation’s largest four-year public higher education system.
Faculty — including professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches — at four campuses will each participate in a one-day strike. Cal Poly Pomona faculty will strike Monday, followed by work stoppages later in the week at San Francisco State, Cal State Los Angeles and Sacramento State."
Stanford study wades into reading wars with high marks for phonics-based teaching
LA Times, HOWARD BLUME: "Test scores at 66 of the state’s lowest-performing schools strongly outpaced similar schools after educators adopted phonics-based instruction, offering some of the most compelling evidence to date that so-called science of reading methods are effective, a Stanford study concluded.
In science-of-reading practices, students are taught to use phonics, build vocabulary, pronounce words and read aloud, as well as develop an understanding of what they they read. The results of the Stanford study released Monday come as the nation’s educators wrestle with how to improve poor reading skills, especially among Black and Latino students and those from low-income families, a longtime problem made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic."
Border Patrol dropped 42,000 migrants on San Diego streets. Now county, groups are seeking help.
CALMatters, JUSTO ROBLES, ALEJANDRA REYES-VELARDE, WENDY FRY: "On a late September night, Rev. Brad Mills was surprised by the sound of knocking on his parish doors. His small San Diego church didn’t usually receive visitors past mass hours.
Two Venezuelan men at the door said they needed help and were looking for a place to sleep, Mills said."
‘Mass casualty attack’ thwarted at Elon Musk’s Tesla event, police say
The Chronicle, CHRISTIAN LEONARD: "Authorities have arrested a Florida man they say threatened to carry out a “mass casualty attack” at a Texas event launching Tesla’s new Cybertruck pickups.
Police said Paul Ryan Overeem, a 28-year-old from Orlando, told an Instagram group chat he planned to kill people at the public event Thursday, according to the San Antonio Express News. He was arrested Wednesday in Travis County, where Tesla’s factory outside of Austin is located, a day before the event."
It’s been the year of the worker. West Hollywood employers are so over it
LA Times, DON LEE: "Across the country, many American workers have enjoyed pay hikes unlike anything seen in decades. And for many American businesses, this also has been a good year for profits, with some corporations notching record or near-record gains.
But don’t try to sing that song of good times in West Hollywood: Business owners there say that paying workers more is killing them, and that goes for some of the low-wage workers that many liberal policymakers worry about."
Tens of thousands still waiting as California COVID rent relief program runs low on cash
CALMatters, BEN CHRISTOPHER: "In March 2021, the Los Angeles film industry was just beginning to roar back to life after a prolonged COVID-induced slump, but Michael Addis, a freelance filmmaker, was still deep in the hole. For more than a year he’d been racking up IOUs to his landlord and the tab stood at $43,792.
So Addis turned to an emergency state program designed to help people like him pay down rental debt accumulated during the pandemic."
1 in 8 home sellers in this part of the Bay Area is taking a loss
BANG*Mercury News, ETHAN VARIAN: "It might be hard to fathom in this real estate market, but one in eight home sellers in San Francisco and on the Peninsula is now taking a loss.
How can that be?"
S.F.’s crackdown on car break-ins has led to a staggering trend in the data. Will it last?
The Chronicle, RACHEL SWAN: "When San Francisco officials faced reporters outside the Palace of Fine Arts in August, promising to get tough on car break-ins, the moment seemed urgent.
Pressure was mounting on city leaders to alleviate property crime, yet up to that point, progress had been slow. Around the corner from the Palace of Fine Arts, glass quilted the sidewalk — debris from a rental minivan burglarized minutes before the news conference began. The year’s worst week for auto burglaries — right around Thanksgiving — was on the horizon."
Sacramento County pays settlement to man allegedly kicked by deputies for not showing ID
Sacramento Bee, THERESA CLIFT: "Sacramento County has paid a $45,000 settlement to a man who alleged he was kicked by deputies after declining to show them his driver’s license.
Nathan Schneider was working as a Lyft driver in July 2019 at around 9:30 p.m., driving a couple back and forth from an Orangevale storage unit facility, alleged a federal lawsuit Schneider filed in April 2020. After one of the drop offs, Schneider encountered an issue getting through the gate to exit and was trapped inside."
Mudslide risk forces partial closure of Highway 101 in Northern California
The Chronicle, NORA MISHANEC: "Heavy rain pummeled Northern California and Oregon on Sunday and sent debris cascading into Highway 101, forcing a partial closure at Crescent City in Del Norte County.
Multiple “ongoing mudslides” were reported in Del Norte and Humboldt counties, the National Weather Service said Sunday, hours after it issued a flood advisory for the region, warning that the rain could continue to inundate roadways with rocks and mud overnight and throughout Monday."
