Our Sacramento contributor Brian Joseph took a look at the bills Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins has introduced so far and came away with a question: Where’s the beef?
“In recent years, speakers have carried major, controversial legislation to deregulate the cable television industry, decertify a so-called corrupt city and establish college scholarships for middle class students,” Joseph writes. “It’s still early of course, but we haven’t yet seen that kind of ambition yet from San Diego’s Toni Atkins.”
Atkins’ spokesman says it’s because the speaker is laser-focused on efficiency over flash, and is happy letting her colleagues take the credit for certain bills.
The Rare Times They Make it Easy on Us
Sometimes the statements we’re Fact Checking require lots of poring through reports and getting experts to walk us through complex materials so we can render a verdict.
This – in which we determine politician Scott Sherman is indeed a politician – is not one of those.
A Literal Head Count
The annual “point in time” count of the county’s homeless population Friday drew some prominent counters, like Scott Peters, state Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, San Diego County Supervisor Greg Cox, City Council President Sherri Lightner and City Councilmen Todd Gloria, Scott Sherman and Chris Cate, according to KPBS.
The goal is to provide numbers revealing the scope of San Diego’s problem to the federal government, which doles out grants to combat homelessness. But as we revealed in 2013, the formula for who gets what is outdated and handicaps San Diego in favor of other cities with fewer homeless people.
What We Learned This Week
• Businesses’ beefs with the business climate in San Diego boil down to four main issues, including: workers’ comp insurance, the region’s high cost of living and taxes on manufacturers. Check back with us on Monday for the final installment of The Four Horsemen. (If you need a fix before then, here’s Lisa Halverstadt talking about The Four Horsemen on KPBS’s “Roundtable” Friday.)
• The fierce objections to One Paseo mostly boil down to one thing: traffic. Caty Green made this handy, comprehensive guide to the major points of contention over the development.
• Soitec will lay off 100 local workers.
• District 8 feels snubbed by Mayor Kevin Faulconer.
• But Faulconer was right when he said emergency response in certain neighborhoods has gotten better.
Quick News Hits
• Drug smugglers have a new weapon: magnets. They’re attaching drugs to the cars of unsuspecting travelers who cross the border, reports the Associated Press.
• San Diego Unified is taking steps to respond to a security audit that found potential vulnerabilities at each school in the district. One of the steps includes adding a police officer to La Jolla High. (U-T)
• Quartz says it’s totally fine to throw away most batteries. San Diego’s Environmental Services says no, it’s not.
• La Jolla merchants suing the city in the hopes it will force the government to deal with a nasty odor coming from sea lion and bird guano do not have an ally in City Attorney Jan Goldsmith. It’s the price of having wildlife protections, he said. It’s not the city’s job to clean it up, he argued to a judge. (U-T)
• Clarification: Yesterday we linked to a KPBS profile of Sherman. In it, Sherman explains how he found career success without the aid of minimum wage laws. In our description and in the story, readers might have gotten the impression Sherman was able to secure a raise at a job working for his father. He was talking about a raise he got on his own at a job as a landscaper before he took a job with his father’s insurance firm, which he ended up running himself.
Quote of the Week
A tie for dad tweets between City Councilman Mark Kersey and Scott Lewis:
“Nice to leave City Hall in time to pick up my son from school. Next we make a powdered wig for Colonial Days performance #bringbackthewigs” – Kersey, taking a bold pro-wig stance.
“My 4-year-old apparently got a prize in preschool today for being the best ‘rester.’ THAT’S MY BOY” – Lewis, taking a bold pro-nap stance.