California lawmakers are trying two approaches to combating the fentanyl crisis. Only one is taking off
The Chronicle, SOPHIA BOLLAG: "As California faces a fentanyl overdose crisis, lawmakers are proposing tackling the crisis from two different angles: treatment and punishment.
While policy proposals focused on treatment for drug overdoses and addiction have been sailing through the Legislature, ones that would increase punishments for drug dealing have been watered down or stalled."
California’s reparations process wasn’t pretty — but could yield important lessons for the rest of the country
The Chronicle, DUSTIN GARDINER: "At first glance, the meetings of California’s reparations task force were often an exercise in turmoil. Task force members regularly traded personal barbs and squabbled over procedural motions, even as the eyes of the country were on them. When they weren’t fighting amongst themselves, they were being shouted down by the audience.
But when members of the panel reflect on their work, a different narrative emerges: They had an unprecedented job as the first statewide reparations task force in the country, and they got it done.
The task force concluded the bulk of its work earlier this ccmonth when it voted to approve a final report more than 500 pages long. Among the remedies the panel
recommended: California issue a formal apology for its role in enabling slavery and its many vestiges of white supremacy, and the state make cash payments to those whose ancestors were enslaved. An initial assessment of damages estimated that it could cost up to $1.2 million per person over a lifetime."
SB 18 could hike state funding of housing for Native Californians
Capitol Weekly, SETH SANDRONSKY: "California’s homeless crisis is apparent in the state’s urban areas. However, unhoused people living in California’s tribal communities are less visible on the public’s radar screen.
Enter Senate Bill 18, the Tribal Housing Reconstitution and Resiliency Act. The bill would amend the state Health and Safety Code, relating to California’s housing for Native people on tribal lands. Currently, the supply of affordable and habitable housing for tribal residents is in short supply, according to Senate Majority Leader Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents the North Coast.
“There is a public health crisis in these Native communities, and it begins with the lack of housing,” Sen. McGuire told Capitol Weekly. “We have to move with speed.”"
L.A. dispensaries openly sell ‘magic mushrooms’ as state weighs decriminalization
LA Times, CONNOR SHEETS: "The cannabis dispensary in a run-down shopping center in coastal Los Angeles County offers the standard fare: pre-rolled joints, vape pens, a wide range of edibles and a selection of smoking accessories.
But there’s one extra class of items that distinguishes this storefront on the county’s suburban fringe. A glass case displays “magic mushrooms” and a variety of items containing psilocybin, the compound that provides said magic to those who consume it.
A compound that is still illegal statewide."
San Jose budget: 3 ways to visualize policing and homelessness spending
BANG*Mercury News, GABRIEL GRESCHLER: "With the Bay Area’s largest city set to vote next month on a multi-billion dollar budget, homelessness, crime and soaring housing costs remain at the forefront of San Jose’s top challenges.
But wrangling at City Hall over how to manage San Joe’s $5.2 billion budget is pitting first-term Mayor Matt Mahan and his “back to basics” agenda against economic uncertainty and
political opposition on how the city should tackle its thorniest issues.
Mahan already has debuted his priorities: a shift from permanent housing to interim housing for the city’s homeless residents and an increase in police staffing."
Chevron scrambles to batten down oil fields amid threat of Kern River flooding
LA Times, LOUIS SAHAGUN: "Preparing for the threat of massive flooding during California’s “Big Melt,” federal engineers have been releasing more Kern River water from Lake Isabella than is flowing into the reservoir from the snowbound peaks of the southern Sierra Nevada.
The action is needed, officials say, to prevent water from spilling over the reservoir dam and sending floodwaters rolling into low-lying areas that include the city of Bakersfield, farm towns, Highway 99, and portions of Kern County’s famed oil patch — an intrusion that would risk significant ecological harm.
Now, with temperatures rising and river flows approaching an all-time record of 7,000 cubic feet per second, Chevron Corporation is taking steps to avoid an oil spill at its Kern River Oil Field in the event of catastrophic flooding."
Marin County water rates could see huge jump under proposal being considered tonight
The Chronicle, JULIE JOHNSON: "Some Marin County residents could see 20% increases to their water bills this summer if officials vote Tuesday evening to boost rates.
Marin Municipal Water District said the increase is needed because of rising costs and decreasing revenues — partly driven by people responding to calls for conservation and using less water."
U.S. EPA slaps Daiso with $600K fine over wipes sold in El Cerrito
The Chronicle, JORDAN PARKER: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a settlement Tuesday with a California-based company that sold antimicrobial wipes that were illegally marketed as a sterilizing product.
Daiso California LLC will pay a $602,386 fine after the company sold the wipes, Daisy Plus Wet Wipes, at its El Cerrito store and online. The labels created for the wipes claimed that the wipes were for sterilizing kitchenware and other items, the EPA said."
Why it could be harder to avoid getting COVID in the future
The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI: "The end of the national COVID-19 public health emergency has substantially shifted how coronavirus data is gathered and reported. The familiar, colorful community-level reports, graphs illustrating fluctuating case counts and jarring smartphone notifications that helped guide people through the first three years of the pandemic have largely disappeared.
As of Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer tracks or publishes data on daily new infections, as states aren’t obligated to report such figures anymore. Instead, the CDC has shifted its surveillance efforts toward monitoring weekly coronavirus-positive hospital admissions and deaths."
Despite decades of calls to action, California community college students face roadblocks to transfer
EdSource, ASHLEY A. SMITH: "Many students enroll in community college planning to transfer to the University of California or California State University.
But very few actually make it, data show.
Despite decades of legislation and calls to action to improve the transfer process, the transition from the state’s community colleges to its universities continues to be a difficult and complicated task for many students."
Pause on student loan payments about to end for millions
The Hill, LEXI LONAS: "The Biden administration has given its clearest indication yet that the years-long pause of student loan repayments will come to an end in the coming months.
Optimism that the White House would keep offering borrowers relief from making their payments was crushed last week, when Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told a Senate panel that the payments would officially resume due to the pandemic emergency being over.
That means borrowers, who have been jolted around since March 2020 with last-minute extensions and uncertainty over exactly when they should expect payments to start up again, will finally have to make payments - many for the first time."
How TikTok and other social media have reshaped the way people migrate to the U.S.: ‘Their only lifeline’
LA Times, MARISA GERBER: "At the migrant camp sprawled along the border wall between Tijuana and San Diego, Diana Rodriguez kept hearing chatter about a confusing TikTok video.
It was Thursday and the 30-year-old, who grew up in a mining village in Colombia, had already been camped out along the towering steel bollards for two days when whispers began to spread about the social media post. It claimed that Title 42, a policy the U.S. government used during the COVID-19 pandemic to quickly expel many migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum, wouldn’t expire until June.
But Rodriguez had done extensive research before leaving her nation’s capital 11 days earlier and knew the policy was supposed to expire that evening. The post, she figured, must be a ploy to scam migrants into222 paying for legal advice."
Apple engineer on ‘need to know’ project stole secrets, fled to China after agents visited Mountain View home: feds
BANG*Mercury News, ETHAN BARON: "An Apple software engineer working on a secretive autonomous-driving project stole thousands of sensitive documents and fled to China five minutes before midnight the day law enforcement agents visited his Mountain View home, federal authorities claim.
Apple only gave access to information about the project on a “need to know” basis, and Weibao Wang was one of fewer than 4% of the firm’s full-time employees with knowledge of the project, and one of 2% who could get into its databases, federal prosecutors said in an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
Wang’s prosecution arose from the work of a multi-agency federal “Disruptive Technology Strike Force” charged with combating “efforts by hostile nation-states to illicitly acquire sensitive U.S. technology to advance their authoritarian regimes and facilitate human rights abuses,” the U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday."
This is the most hated statue in San Francisco, city poll reveals
The Chronicle, ANNIE VAINSHTEIN: "The results of a long-awaited survey by a new San Francisco commission are in, showing which historic monuments and memorials are most loved — and hated — by city residents.
San Francisco’s Monuments and Memorials Advisory Committee, which was created after protestors toppled three bronze sculptures in Golden Gate Park that had been seen as symbols of oppression, commissioned the survey and plans to present its findings to the city’s Arts Commission on Wednesday."
A Black woman and a white woman went viral fighting racism. Then they stopped speaking to each otherS
LA Times, JAWEED KALEEM: "Few know the names Michelle Saahene or Melissa DePino. But millions have heard the beginning of their story.
They were witnesses at a Philadelphia Starbucks five years ago when two Black businessmen asked to use the restroom and a white barista called police, who led the men away in handcuffs.
“They didn’t do anything!” Saahene shouted as another customer recorded the confrontation."
Evictions, homelessness, debt: Skid Row Housing Trust receiver has checkered history
LA Times, LIAM DILLON, DUG SMITH: "The Trails End Mobile Home Park in Fresno was a shelter of last resort for many of its residents — single parents, retirees, day laborers, people struggling with disabilities or simply to get by. Then the city declared its conditions unsanitary and asked a judge to hand control to a receiver named Mark Adams to improve the property. Two years later, a third of the spots are vacant and the remaining tenants face eviction.
In the Coachella Valley, Adams acted as receiver over a community of 4,000, primarily migrant farmworkers. He saddled the receivership with $220,000 in debt, a judge removed him and the squalor remained years after he was gone."
Families of men shot by California cops lose faith in new accountability law as reviews drag on
CALMatters, NIGEL DUARA: "Three men in dark suits knocked on Pam Holland’s door one night last June. They told her that her son was dead, shot to death in a neighboring county by a sheriff’s deputy. The shooting, they said, was being investigated under a new California law that requires the state Justice Department step in when a police officer kills an unarmed person.
Pam Holland hoped the investigation would be quick and fair. Her father had been a Kern County Sheriff’s reserve deputy. She grew up around cops. She thought she could trust them — but she also believed that police agencies protect their own.
“I was like, wow, that’s awesome, this is great, they’re going to take it out of the hands of the local cops, who would instantly feel anger toward my son without even knowing anything,” she said."
