Native Americans want to ditch the name Squaw Valley. A county supervisor says context matters
LILA SEIDMAN, LA Times: "As white settlers made their way west, so did the word “squaw.”
Eventually, it took root in nearly 100 California place names, possibly more — Squaw Creek, Squaw Peak, Squaw Hollow, Squaw Flat.
For a historic ski resort that hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics and was once known as Squaw Valley, the reckoning came last year. Visitors are now greeted by signs welcoming them to Palisades Tahoe."
COVID surge, nurse burnout make mess out of hospital staffing
BRITTNY MEJIA, LA Times: "The 28 patients had camped out for hours and even days in the emergency room of Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. With more than 100 COVID-19-positive patients in the hospital, there weren’t enough in-patient beds to put them in.
In the fourth-floor intensive care unit, tired nurses tended to three COVID patients at a time instead of their normal two. Five nurses were out sick and those tasked with scheduling staff likened it to a game of “Tetris,” fitting in people wherever they could.
Meanwhile, eight miles away that morning, a handful of Arrowhead nurses pleaded for help from the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and warned that the county-run hospital would continue to lose nurses if something didn’t change."
Number of S.F. hospital patients with COVID nears all-time high
The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI/ERIN ALLDAY: "The Bay Area’s postholiday omicron surge may be tapering off, but health officials remain on high alert as hospitalizations continue upward — San Francisco is on the cusp of its COVID patient record — and California’s infection rate hovers in reach of the all-time high.
As of Monday, the state has passed the 7 million mark for the number of Californians who have been infected by the coronavirus in the two years since the pandemic began. California reached the milestone barely a week after crossing the 6 million-case threshold in cumulative infections.
“We are not out of the woods,” Contra Costa County’s health services director, Anna Roth, declared on Tuesday."
California forcibly sterilized people for 70 years. Survivors can now get compensation
Sac Bee, NADIA LOPEZ: "Arcadia resident Mary Franco was in her first year of middle school in 1934 when she was forcibly removed from her home and institutionalized. Her parents didn’t know it at the time, but by committing her to a state hospital in Pomona, they were also signing away her reproductive rights to the state of California.
She was 13, alone and confused. She would never have children.
“She did know she was sterilized and she blamed her family for it,” said Stacy Cordova Diaz, Franco’s niece. “It was a super shameful thing that really tore the family apart.”"
Omicron may have peaked in parts of the Bay Area as California COVID surge slows
The Chronicle, ERIN ALLDAY: "For the first time in a month, average daily coronavirus cases have dipped week over week across the Bay Area, suggesting that much of the region may be near — or possibly past — the peak of the winter omicron surge.
Monday’s case reports from the California Department of Public Health — including total cases from Friday to Sunday — drove the seven-day average down about 4% for the Bay Area compared with Jan. 9. Statewide, average daily cases were up 6% week over week, but that was a far less striking uptick than the doubling or tripling reported in previous weeks.
Case numbers are an imprecise marker of the pandemic, but health experts said Monday that they are encouraged by what appears to be a leveling off and even slight decline across parts of California, including the Bay Area. The state’s positive test rate also fell slightly late last week, from 23.1% on Wednesday to 21.5% on Friday, after climbing consistently since mid-December."
Supreme Court hears Californians’ claim to painting taken by Nazis, sold to museum
DAVID G. SAVAGE, LA Times: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard a last-chance appeal from a Jewish family in California seeking to recover an Impressionist masterpiece that was seized by the Nazis in 1939 and has been on display in a Spanish museum since 1993.
At issue now after years of litigation, most of it in a Los Angeles court, is whether the dispute should be resolved under the law of California, where the family sued, or the law of Spain, where the painting was sold and displayed.
Under California law, “thieves cannot pass good title to anyone, including a good faith purchaser,” lawyers for David Cassirer and the Jewish Federation of San Diego County said in their appeal."
You can order free at-home COVID tests from government starting now. Here’s how
Sac Bee, BAILEY ALDRIDGE: "People in the United States can now start ordering free at-home, rapid COVID-19 tests from the government.
President Joe Biden’s administration is purchasing 1 billion of the tests to be made available to people in the U.S. for free as the omicron coronavirus variant — which evades COVID-19 vaccines and transmits more easily — spreads throughout the country. The first 500 million of those tests are now available online.
The website through which to order the tests was set to launch Wednesday, Jan. 19. But orders opened a day earlier than expected, on Tuesday, Jan. 18."
Juneteenth would become a paid holiday for California state workers under new proposal
Sac Bee, WES VENTEICHER: "Juneteenth could become a California state holiday under a new proposal from Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles.
Jones-Sawyer on Friday introduced the proposal, which would give state workers a 12th paid holiday. California has recognized Juneteenth as a holiday since 2003, but hasn’t given state workers the day off.
The holiday would fall on June 19, the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas learned they had been freed."
L.A. Unified agrees to $14.7-million settlement with sex abuse victims
GREGORY YEE, LA Times: "Attorneys representing seven students who were molested by their former elementary school teacher have reached a $14.7-million settlement with Los Angeles school officials.
The Los Angeles Board of Education approved the settlement Tuesday, said Michael Carrillo, an attorney representing five of the victims.
Carrillo said that although the settlement does not undo the abuse suffered, it provides a measure of closure."
Sacramento unemployment fraud scheme topped $2.75 million, used 166 IDs, officials say
Sac Bee, SAM STANTON: "When Sacramento law enforcement officials arrested 35-year-old Jamie Williams-Major and six others last year they thought they’d broken up an unemployment fraud scheme involving more than $250,000 in phony payments.
Turns out, the total was 10 times higher, Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert’s office announced Tuesday.
After obtaining a search warrant for Williams-Major’s cellphone, authorities now believe the fraud perpetrated on the California Employment Development Department was more than $2.75 million, the largest EDD fraud scheme in Sacramento since inmates and others began targeting unemployment funds during the COVID-19 pandemic."
Investigation into S.F.’s acting DBI director finds no evidence of wrongdoing
The Chronicle, J.K. DINEEN: "An investigation into allegations that Interim Department of Building Inspections Director Patrick O’Riordan favored politically connected developers in a previous role a decade ago found no evidence of wrongdoing, according to City Attorney David Chiu.
The investigation looked at three controversial projects — 3418 26th Street, 220 25th St., and 700 Valencia St. — all of which were permitted between 2009 and 2012 when O’Riordan was senior building inspector.
All three projects were the subject of whistleblower complaints by Norman Gutierrez, a former DBI Inspector, and Christopher Schroeder, a current DBI Inspector. Gutierrez and Schroeder both alleged that O’Riordan, who was their supervisor at the time, “inappropriately took over the inspections and stopped them from enforcing the building code because the projects were associated with influential and politically connected builders,” according to the report."
CalPERS board president announces resignation after cancer diagnosis
Sac Bee, WES VENTEICHER: "CalPERS Board of Administration President Henry Jones is resigning from the board Friday to focus on his recovery from cancer, he told the board over the weekend.
Jones told the California Public Employees’ Retirement System board in a Sunday resignation letter that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in September. He said a surgery was largely successful but that he is not entirely cancer-free.
“I have decided, after much consideration and in consultation with my doctor over the past weeks, to limit the statewide and international activities in which I am involved so that I may focus on a complete recovery,” he said in the letter."
California college students can get $10,000 for community service under new program
Sac Bee, SOPHIA BOLLAG: "Sacramento college students will soon be able to participate in a new community service program aimed at helping them pay for college and reducing the amount of debt they take on.
Sacramento State University, Sacramento City College, Woodland Community College and University of California, Davis were among 45 schools selected Tuesday for a new state-funded program aimed at eliminating college debt for California students who serve their communities.
The California College Corps will give students who do 450 hours of service work in a year $10,000."
Study: Battles over critical race theory in school districts won’t go away anytime soon
The Chronicle, JILL TUCKER: "The effort to stifle the teaching of race and racism in schools has prompted 54 bills in 24 states in the past year, while nearly 900 school districts nationwide serving 17.7 million students have grappled with similar bans on race-based instruction in public classrooms.
California, with 70 of those districts, has in no way been immune, according to a report by UCLA researchers with the university’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access.
The numbers offer the first look at how public schools at a local level have responded to the conflict over critical race theory — a broad law-school concept that opponents have used to describe many race-related issues. Critical race theory has now become a symbol of what the right has described as left-wing overreach, and Republicans are likely to use it as a symbol and a key message in the 2022 and 2024 elections."
These are the jobs Bay Area employers are having the hardest time filling
The Chronicle, CHASE DIFELICIANTONIO: "Which job is harder to fill in the Bay Area right now, software engineer or deli worker? According to data from jobs site indeed.com, both take about the same amount of time, pointing to how massive numbers of workers quitting to seek out new jobs and better pay could be reshaping the local labor market.
The figures looked at job titles that have the highest percentage of still being open after 60 days, both nationally and in the Bay Area, on Jan. 12. The snapshot found many jobs requiring technical know-how remained open for more than two months, while jobs in the restaurant and hospitality industry were being filled more quickly.
Some jobs like meat carver and coder also appeared to take longer to fill in the Bay Area than nationally, in what could be a symptom of California’s slow pace of economic recovery during the pandemic."
Proposed Oakland business tax changes would hit larger companies harder
The Chronicle, SARAH RAVANI: "Oakland officials are considering a November ballot measure that could add an extra $32.7 million to the city’s coffers by increasing taxes for larger companies — a move that the city’s finance director cautioned could result in the loss of more than 2,000 jobs. At the same time, the measure would cut taxes for small businesses, many of which have struggled during the pandemic.
The proposal would restructure the city’s gross-receipts tax system — which currently differs by industry, but is the same regardless of the size of the company — and replace the existing payroll tax for large companies with a new administrative headquarters gross receipts tax. A gross receipts tax applies to a company’s gross sales, without deductions for business expenses, while a payroll tax is paid on the wages and salaries of employees.
The additional $32.7 million would go into the city’s general fund, which pays for fire, police, human services, parks and recreation and other departments."
