California's public health director resigns amid questions about coronavirus test data
LA Times's JOHN MYERS: "Gov. Gavin Newsom’s director of the California Department of Public Health resigned on Sunday, an abrupt departure of a key advisor in the state’s coronavirus battle just days after the discovery of a computer system failure that resulted in the undercounting of COVID-19 cases.
Dr. Sonia Angell, who held the position for less than a year, announced her resignation in an email sent to department staff that was released by the California Health and Human Services Agency.
“Since January, when we got word of repatriation flights arriving from Wuhan, China, our department has been front and center in what has become an all-of-government response of unprecedented proportions to COVID-19,” Angell wrote in the email to public health staff members. “In the final calculation, all of our work, in aggregate, makes the difference."
California's spent $43M suing the Trump admin. It's paying off, officials say
Sac Bee's ANDREW SHEELER/KATE IRBY: "California has spent $43 million suing President Donald Trump’s administration over the past four years in a legal campaign that the state’s Democratic attorney general says has saved billions of dollars in funding the state would have lost had the White House carried out its policies.
The lawsuits have prevented or stalled the Trump administration’s efforts to put a citizenship question on the census, weaken climate change policies, revoke California’s authority to set its own car pollution standards and rescind an Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that protects young immigrants from deportation.
The lawsuits have also stymied some of Trump’s key campaign promises, at least temporarily, such as his assertion that he’d build a wall on the Mexico border and rescind the Affordable Care Act."
An all-star economic task force is advising Newsom during the pandemic. Little is known about its work
LA Times's PHIL WILLON: "Faced with a pandemic that has put millions of Californians out of work and eviscerated businesses large and small, Gov. Gavin Newsom promised that “health and science” would guide state officials in repairing the economy and steering it toward recovery.
But as Newsom rapidly reopened the state in May, he also received advice from an all-star roster of business titans. The Governor’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery is a 108-member group that counts former California governors, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, Disney Executive Chairman Bob Iger and former Federal Reserve Board Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen among its members.
For all the boldface names and huge stakes, little is known about the task force, including how extensive a role the group played in shaping the decisions to reopen California."
'Badge bending' and Vallejo's history of police killings: What's led to the crisis
The Chronicle's MICHAEL CABANATUAN: "Vallejo is in turmoil and under scrutiny over the police force’s history of killings and allegations of misconduct and abuse of people of color. The fatal shooting of San Francisco resident Sean Monterrosa in June tipped the scales, renewing attention on officers’ past killings of Willie McCoy in 2019 and Ronell Foster in 2018, among others. Each of the shootings was captured on video.
The state attorney general has opened a review into how the department operates. At the same time, the department is under fire for destroying evidence in the Monterrosa case and over allegations by a former captain that some officers marked killings by bending their badges. Here’s what you need to know:"
10,000 dead of coronavirus in California. 100 dead in its capital. How did we get here?
Sac Bee's MICHAEL MCGOUGH: "We have hit milestones and barely flinched.
More than 10,000 in California. More than 100 in the city of Sacramento. They are those grim milestones, the death tolls we eclipsed last week because of the coronavirus.
Like an odometer, the numbers continue to turn. Peer into the rear-view mirror and we can see how we got here, with a radical upending of how we live and, sadly, how we die. Gaze ahead, and we see we’re continuing on a road of closed schools, shut-down restaurants, mandatory masks, pervasive hand-washing, and questions about whether our numbers are even right."
READ MORE related to Pandemic: First San Quentin guard, 4th death row inmate from Sacramento dies from COVID-19 -- Sac Bee's DANIEL HUNT; California executions on hold, but coronavirus killing San Quentin inmates -- The Chronicle's JASON FAGONE/MEGAN CASSIDY; What's a coronavirus-free country look like? Ask a New Zealander -- AP
Billions for Californians riding on coronavirus stimulus talks in Congress
The Chronicle's TAL KOPAN: "California and its residents are waiting on the result of heated negotiations over the latest coronavirus stimulus package in Congress — and tens of billions of dollars are at stake.
From money directly into the pockets of millions Californians, to billions to avoid deep cuts to public universities and housing programs, the state has a lot riding on talks that hit a standstill Friday.
After the latest in a two-week series of meetings, congressional Democratic leaders and Trump administration officials said they were at an impasse."
California should allow its voters to fill US Senate vacancies -- not the governor
LA Times's GEORGE SKELTON: "Democrats accuse Republicans of trying to suppress voting all across America. But in California, Democrats actually ban voting to fill a vacancy in one of our most important offices: U.S. senator.
That’s hypocrisy, pure and simple.
A Republican legislator is trying to fix the autocratic practice. But he hasn’t a prayer with Democrats controlling both the legislative and executive branches of state government."
California congressman's Yosemite trip won't be investigated by Interior IG
Sac Bee's KATE IRBY: "The top ethics official at the Department of Interior is declining to pursue an investigation into California Democratic Rep. TJ Cox’s push to get two car tickets into Yosemite National Park on July 4 outside of the daily lottery system the park is using to release vehicle passes during the coronavirus outbreak..
Cox’s staff was told by National Park Service officials that he would have to apply for tickets through the lottery system if he wanted personal tickets into Yosemite on Independence Day
Cox then called Yosemite officials, telling them he needed the tickets in order to shoot a video that promoted the Great American Outdoors Act, and was granted the tickets."
How bullet train contractors botched a bridge project
LA Times's RALPH VARTABEDIAN: "A series of errors by contractors and consultants on the California bullet train venture caused support cables to fail on the massive bridge, triggering a stop work order and further delaying a project already years behind schedule, The Times has learned.
The bridge is longer than two football fields and is needed to shuttle vehicles over the future bullet train right of way and existing BNSF freight tracks in Madera County.
Authorities have yet to finalize a plan to repair the bridge. Late last year, crews installed temporary steel supports to prevent it from collapsing."
Can SF realize the dream of public internet?
The Chronicle's GREGORY THOMAS: "The city considered to be the nation’s tech capital can’t escape some troubling statistics: One in eight San Francisco residents doesn’t have access to high-speed internet at home, and 1in 7 public-school families doesn’t have a computer with internet connection. Like education and income gaps, the “digital divide” separating technological haves and have-nots across the U.S. looms over the Bay Area as well, intensifying the region’s widening economic disparity. The 100,000 or so San Franciscans without fast, affordable, reliable connections tend to have a tougher time applying for jobs, educating their children and staying healthy, among other challenges that make it hard to keep up with life in 2020.
The past five months of lockdown have cast a spotlight on the problem, as white-collar workers with fast home internet manage to avoid the harshest consequences of the coronavirus pandemic and the state’s shelter-in-place mandates.
“This issue rang true five-plus years ago … and unfortunately it has manifested itself during COVID as one of the most pressing issues that exacerbates the inequality in our city,” said former San Francisco Supervisor Mark Farrell, who served as the city’s mayor for a six-month period in 2018."
UC schools to require flu shots for all students, staff
Sac Bee's MOLLY BURKE: "A new item on back-to-school to-do lists: get your flu shot.
The University of California announced Friday that all students, staff and faculty will be required to get a flu shot prior to Nov. 1. Those with approved medical exemptions will not face this new requirement.
The school system’s administration consulted with the UC Health leadership in an effort to combat strains on the healthcare system due to the coronavirus pandemic."
Here's how to view the Perseid meteor shower in the Bay Area
The Chronicle's STEVE RUBENSTEIN: "More than one meteor every minute will streak across the night sky when the annual Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak this week.
The meteors are expected to appear low in the northern sky and much of the show will be blocked by the horizon, according to astronomer Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society.
The Perseids, which occur every midsummer, are caused by the debris left behind by the Swift-Tuttle comet, which orbits the solar system once every 133 years. It last entered the inner solar system in 1992."
Understaffed SF sheriff leaning in to OT. One deputy boosted pay to $445K
The Chronicle's DOMINIC FRACASSA: "San Francisco Senior Deputy Sheriff Michael Borovina Jr. was a busy man last year.
On top of the customary 2,080 hours he spent working on the patrol unit that provides security services for the city’s hospitals and clinics, Borovina worked 3,133 hours of overtime, netting him nearly $318,000 on top of his almost $128,000 base salary.
With that much time spent on the job, Borovina became the highest overtime earner among all city employees in 2019, new municipal salary data show."
Developers tried to build housing at SF's Balboa Reservoir for decades. Now 1,100 homes are on the cusp of approval
The Chronicle's JK DINEEN: "The first time San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Norman Yee heard about a proposal to build housing on the Balboa Reservoir it was the late 1960s and he was a young student at San Francisco City College.
“They were talking about it even way back then,” Yee recalled.
That proposal went nowhere, as did three subsequent efforts by San Francisco mayors Dianne Feinstein and Art Agnos to develop the 17-acre property in the 1980s and 1990s. All of the proposals were blocked by a combination of neighborhood opposition and resistance from City College staff and students looking to preserve the land for future expansion."
Trump aides struggle to defend his pandemic relief orders as US cases reach 5 million
LA Times's LAURA KING: "As the United States surpassed 5 million confirmed coronavirus cases, President Trump’s senior aides on Sunday defended his handling of intertwined economic and public health crises, declaring that Democrats would bear the blame for millions of Americans’ financial distress if lawmakers challenged Trump’s controversial new directives on pandemic relief.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) denounced the orders unveiled by Trump on Saturday at his New Jersey golf resort as “meager, weak and unconstitutional.” In multiple interviews on Sunday’s news talk shows, she did not say whether Democrats would go to court to try to overturn the measures but urged a return to negotiations on the $3-trillion-plus relief package passed by the House in May.
“We have to reach an agreement,” Pelosi said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Lebanon questions security chief over Beirut blast as pressure on govt mounts
AP: "A Lebanese judge Monday began questioning the heads of the country’s security agencies over last week’s devastating explosion in Beirut as another Cabinet minister quit in protest and rumors grew that the government could resign en masse.
Judge Ghassan El Khoury began questioning Maj. Gen. Tony Saliba, the head of Lebanon’s State Security agency, according to the state-run National News Agency. The report gave no further details, but other generals are scheduled to be questioned.
Justice Minister Marie-Claude Najm, who was sprayed with water and verbally attacked last week while visiting a damaged area, handed in her resignation to the prime minister on Monday, the news agency said. She is the third Cabinet minister to resign over the blast."
Alex Azar's visit to Taiwan is a fresh thorn in prickly US-China ties
AP: "The visit by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to Taiwan this week comes amid mounting tensions between Washington and Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary.
On such topics as the South China Sea, TikTok, Hong Kong and trade, China and the U.S. find themselves at loggerheads just months ahead of the American presidential election. In a throwback to the Cold War, the two ordered tit-for-tat closures of consulates in Houston and Chengdu and rhetorical sniping is now a daily occurrence.
Washington potentially exacerbated those frictions by sending Azar to Taiwan, making it the highest-level visit by a U.S. official to the self-governing island democracy since formal diplomatic relations were severed in 1979 in deference to China."
