How will Kamala Harris vote on California’s Prop. 36 to toughen some criminal penalties? She won’t say
LAT's NOAH BIERMAN, ANABEL SOSA: "Vice President Kamala Harris, a California voter and former attorney general, is declining to say how she will vote on one of the most consequential criminal justice ballot measures to come before state voters in years.
As she runs for president, Harris has emphasized her credentials as the former top law enforcement official for the country’s largest state, presenting herself as “tough” in advertisements and at the Democratic National Convention in August, going after smugglers and seeking justice for crime victims."
Gavin Newsom has not solved California’s housing crisis. Three lessons for Kamala Harris
CALMatters's ALEXEI KOSEFF: "For California political observers, the housing plan that Kamala Harris recently unveiled may have caused a twinge of familiarity.
As a central plank of her agenda to “lower costs for American families,” the Democratic presidential nominee pledged in August to build 3 million additional affordable homes and rentals over the next four years to address “a serious housing shortage across America” — echoing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s platform during his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018, when he called for California to add 3.5 million housing units by 2025."
Trump’s rhetorical walkabouts: A sign of ‘genius’ or cognitive decline?
LAT's JAMES RAINEY, HAILEY BRANSON-POTTS: "Is he rambling? Indifferent to his audience? Exhibiting symptoms of cognitive decline? Or, instead, could former President Trump’s extended discourses demonstrate his genius — an ability, as he says, to “weave” disparate stories into a beautiful tapestry?
The 78-year-old Republican nominee’s meandering speaking style — and what it might say about his mental state — has become a new fixation in a race already upended when President Biden, 81, dropped out this summer amid questions about his own age and mental acuity."
he FBI’s corruption probe in Oakland raises questions about Rob Bonta and a $700,000 mistake
The Chronicle's RACHEL SWAN, SARAH RAVANI, MEGAN CASSIDY: "The pitch had it all: a biodiesel plant in West Oakland that would turn grease and vegetable oils into renewable fuel, bringing green energy and union jobs to an area that needed both. And then-Assembly Member Rob Bonta was listening.
Ten years later, after an expenditure of almost $700,000 in state funds that Bonta helped obtain, the land remains vacant, the plant unbuilt, the company behind it defunct."
Can California’s skyscrapers survive a huge earthquake? L.A. County is about to find out
LAT's RONG-GONG LIN II, REBECCA ELLIS: "On paper, the deal makes sense.
Faced with the prospect of an extensive, and expensive, seismic safety retrofit for its 1960s-era downtown headquarters, L.A. County decided to vet an alternative: a far newer building, located just blocks away. Not only was it built under stricter standards, the reasoning goes, but it was available at a massive discount compared with its pre-pandemic price tag."
A new California law will scrub most medical debt from credit reports
CALMatters's ANA B. IBARRA: "Californians’ credit reports will be safe from most medical debt in the coming year under a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed today.
Medical debt can hurt people’s credit scores and harm their chances of negotiating a loan or mortgage on favorable terms. The law will not forgive someone’s debt, but by keeping it off credit reports, it might provide some reassurance that Californians won’t suffer more financial repercussions because of a medical balance."
Families squeezed by child care crisis, report finds
EdSource's KAREN D'SOUZA: "A year after pandemic-era federal funding expired, a new report released today by the Century Foundation (TCF) reveals that the child care industry has experienced soaring prices, staffing shortages, and falling wages for early childhood educators.
“Our findings show what any parent will tell you: finding and affording child care is taking a huge toll on families’ budgets and remains a big source of stress, as prices continue to outpace inflation and underpaid early educators are leaving the field,” said Julie Kashen, director of women’s economic justice at The Century Foundation, in a release. “At the same time, we’re seeing these are solvable problems: when elected leaders listen to parents and invest in care, it makes a difference.”"
Only 1 in 5 California community college students makes it to a university, audit says
CALMatters's ADAM ECHELMAN: "Many students start community college with the hope of getting an associate degree and then transferring to a four-year institution, such as a California State University or University of California campus.
But a state audit, released today, found that the vast majority of these students never accomplish their goal. “Only about 1 in 5 students who began community college from 2017 to 2019 and intended to transfer did so within four years,” the audit states. Transfer rates are even lower for students in less affluent parts of the state and in rural areas and for students who are Black or Hispanic, according to the audit."
UC, Cal State, community colleges should work together to boost transfer rates, auditor says
EdSource's MICHAEL BURKE: "Few students who intend to transfer from California’s community colleges do so successfully. To reverse that trend, the state’s public college systems will need to work collaboratively.
That’s the finding of a report released Tuesday by the California State Auditor, which, at the direction of the state Assembly’s Joint Legislative Audit Committee, examined the state’s community college transfer system."
Will Mayor Breed’s intervention steady the reeling S.F. school district?
The Chronicle's JILL TUCKER, J.D. MORRIS: "After an extraordinary week of chaos, the future of San Francisco schools now rests on whether an unprecedented group of public agencies and officials can curb the district’s dysfunction before the money runs out and the state is forced to take over.
At the district’s head table now is a beleaguered superintendent, a rescue team of top city officials, two state advisers with veto power over spending and a seven-member school board that includes a new mayoral appointee and three lame ducks."
Column: How Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California recall inform the Harris-Trump race
LAT's MARK Z. BARABAK: "No one, as Donald Trump might say, has ever seen anything like it.
A presidential contest lasting just over 100 days — less time than it takes to complete a Major League Baseball season, or to gain fluency in a second language."
Column: Why we should care about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s scandalous relationship with a journalist
LAT's ROBIN ABCARIAN: "There are just so many cringey things about the New York magazine journalist Olivia Nuzzi‘s inappropriate relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
First of all, he’s married. (The political scion’s wife is the actor Cheryl Hines.) Second, Nuzzi is 31, and Kennedy, straying into Hugh Hefner territory, is 70. Third, she was until recently engaged to the political journalist Ryan Lizza, who was “MeToo’d” in 2017, when the New Yorker dismissed him for what it described as improper sexual conduct."
As investors replace residents, Cayucos, gem of the Central Coast, is becoming a seasonal ghost-town
LAT's JACK FLEMMING: "It’s quiet in Cayucos. Perhaps too quiet.
In fact, on a cloudy fall day on the beach in Cayucos, you might not find any Cayucans at all. You’ll find fishermen from Fresno and a few families vacationing from Visalia and Bakersfield. You’ll find a pair of European road-trippers scouring the sand with metal detectors and a handful of part-time workers commuting from Morro Bay and Los Osos."
New California law gives tenants more time to respond to eviction notices
CALMatters's FELICIA MELLO: "Tenants in California will have twice as much time to respond to eviction notices and potentially avoid losing their homes under a bill signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom today.
The new law comes amid a statewide housing crisis, and after a surge in evictions followed the expiration of pandemic-era tenant protections. Tenant advocates say Assembly Bill 2347, which doubles the time to respond from 5 to 10 business days, will help renters who live in areas where legal help is scarce or face other life circumstances that make it hard to meet the current deadline."
Businesses in most S.F. neighborhoods are still struggling to bring back customers. Here’s data for every area
The Chronicle's DANIELLE ECHEVERRIA: "Four years after the beginning of the pandemic, consumer spending in most San Francisco neighborhoods still hasn’t recovered to anywhere near pre-pandemic levels, according to city data.
Citywide, sales tax revenue from April to June this year was down 34% compared to the same period in 2019, adjusting for inflation. In over half of neighborhoods, revenues are down more than 25% compared to before the pandemic, according to a Chronicle analysis of city data."
SoMa merchants worry massive S.F. construction project will ‘kill the businesses here’
The Chronicle's ROLAND LI: "Jon Ojinaga is struggling.
The owner of bar and restaurant Azucar Lounge on San Francisco’s Folsom Street, Ojinaga has seen sales plummet 35% this year compared to last year."
Gunman hijacks L.A. Metro bus with hostages; wild chase ends with 1 killed
LAT's JOSEPH SERNA, RICHARD WINTON: "gunman hijacked a Metro bus and led Los Angeles police on a wild chase that ended with one passenger dead in downtown L.A. early Wednesday, according to police.
For more than an hour, a cavalry of officers in police SUVs followed the bus as it slowly made its way from Vermont Knolls in South Los Angeles north into downtown, where it ultimately came to a stop after police used spike strips on the tires and surrounded it with a SWAT team after 2 a.m."
