
I had a busy Friday making the media rounds to talk about our Out of Reach series, which detailed the significant gaps in San Diego County's safety net.
I hung out with Gloria Penner and Barbara Bry on San Diego Week:
Before that, I chatted with them and David Rolland on Editors Roundtable. Here's a transcript and the audio from KPBS' site.
And Scott Lewis and I also rapped about it on our weekly VOSD Radio on KOGO, which airs at noon on Sundays.
-- ANDREW DONOHUE
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Monday, February 8, 2010 4:35 pm.
Updated: 4:54 pm.
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I was up at UCSD this afternoon shooting some portraits and spent a little while afterward taking pictures around the campus. It's a beautiful place and I'm always amazed at the amount of different languages I hear spoken as I walk across the university's grounds.
This afternoon, I was at the top of a staircase shooting pictures of students traveling across the campus. When I got back to the office and looked at the images, this one stood out as having a very collegiate feel to it.
-- SAM HODGSON
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Monday, February 8, 2010 3:55 pm.
Updated: 3:59 pm.
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Fox Business Network should open a bureau in San Diego.
Days after hosting City Councilman Carl DeMaio to dismiss municipal bankruptcy, the national television network had Mayor Jerry Sanders on to chat about the city.
Sanders spent much of his time beating up on the state government. Asked if he trusted Sacramento, Sanders replied. "No, I don't. Not at all. I like a lot of the people there, but when they have problems they simply come after cities and counties instead of solving their own."
Here's the full video. I enjoyed the anchor at the end saying San Diego's "perpetual springtime" is the city's biggest selling point.
-- LIAM DILLON
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Monday, February 8, 2010 2:05 pm.
Updated: 2:18 pm.
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Speculation about the future of the Southeastern Economic Development Corp. is continuing in the wake of last month's news about its shaky financial picture.
San Diego City Council President Ben Hueso wants to see if the city would save money by folding the nonprofit development group back into the city's existing Redevelopment Agency, which handles redevelopment activities in neighborhoods such as City Heights and North Park. Hueso and Councilman Tony Young represent the four neighborhoods managed by SEDC.
"I'm opening up the possibility to see if the Redevelopment Agency coming in to save money is an option," Hueso said.
The fate of the corporation has been a hot button debate since 2008 when SEDC's former director was ousted following a voiceofsandiego.org investigation into the corporation's bonus and development practices. In the scandal's aftermath, Mayor Jerry Sanders kept the corporation intact, but has asked for more oversight in its operations. But last month, new financial reports showing major budget deficits led city officials, including a staunch supporter in Young, to question the corporation's ability to survive.
Hueso said the corporation's financial reports pushed him to request a study on changing SEDC's duties, but that doesn't mean he wants to get rid of it.
"I'm raising the idea of folding it into the Redevelopment Agency, but not necessarily eliminating it," Hueso said.
Hueso said that meant potentially keeping SEDC's board and advisory structure, but possibly doing away with its administration. Personnel costs make up 10 percent of the corporation's $15 million budget.
"There might be a savings in that area," he said. "Right now we have one director and one controller for the entire (Redevelopment) Agency. I'm seeing if they can handle the additional work of four more project areas."
Hueso's request came in an interesting form. Two weeks ago, he sent a memo to Young, chairman of the city's budget and finance committee, with his ideas for solving the city's day-to-day operating budget deficit. He used folding SEDC into the Redevelopment Agency as an example of a cost-savings measure. But the Redevelopment Agency's budget and the city's operating budget are separate. Hueso said his memo was intended to address citywide cost savings measures. He said he'd follow up on his request for a study on SEDC within two months.
In an interview, Young said he didn't believe Hueso's memo had requested a study of SEDC and he wanted to speak with Hueso before asking for one. Young said Hueso had never told him he wanted to change SEDC's duties and any conversation would need to include redevelopment activity all over the city.
Meantime, Young is offering a stronger endorsement of SEDC than he did when he first learned of the corporation's budget deficit, though he remains interested in seeing the corporation's plan to close a $3 million gap.
SEDC has sent out a survey asking if it should remain independent, and Young wholeheartedly supported the corporation in his weekly newsletter.
"What I've said over and over again is that I believe SEDC should continue to exist, but the question is how we can best provide these services with less revenue," Young said in an interview. "That's the same question I'm asking about the city of San Diego."
-- LIAM DILLON
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Monday, February 8, 2010 1:15 pm.
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Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography are surprised by the sheer amount of plastic they're uncovering in hundreds of samples they hauled back from the North Pacific Ocean last August.
A team of graduate students sailed a thousand miles west of California to a rarely-traveled but much-hyped area called the North Pacific Gyre -- a continent-sized, slowly swirling stretch of water where oceanic currents have deposited tons of plastic trash. The Scripps team set out to find how much debris is really there and whether it's having a major impact on marine life.
Scripps is the first major scientific institution to study the large accumulation of plastic, dubbed the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," in the becalmed waters of the North Pacific. The Long Beach-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation introduced it to the public a decade ago, with photos of an albatross carcass littered with bottle caps and tangles of fishing tackle, bath toys, bags and jugs.
Now, with the Scripps study, the emphasis is on tiny bits of plastics, about the size of a grain of rice -- but potentially toxic to smaller organisms. While the researchers found plenty of large pieces, they're more concerned with the confetti-like shards broken down by sun and waves over many years.
Chief scientist Miriam Goldstein put it this way from her UCSD lab, while holding two jars filled with jagged bits of blue, green, yellow and pink: "Scientists are floored when I show them these samples. Regular people are usually not very impressed because they're like ‘Where are our islands of trash?' This is a huge amount of plastic to get in a manta tow [net]."
In 100 years of sampling the world's oceans, previous Scripps researchers never found so much plastic. Goldstein can't quantify it yet, since they're still sorting through jars of zooplankton, crustaceans and fish.
Not only did Scripps find a lot of plastic, they've found that fish are eating it. "We did indeed find some indisputable pieces of plastic in their guts," said Pete Davison, a Scripps graduate student dissecting the fish.
Scripps researchers found tiny plastic bits in about 5 to 10 percent of the fish they opened up, mainly small swimmers common in the deep ocean, like lanternfish and hatchetfish. Davison added that some fish could have eaten plastic in their nets, although others definitely consumed it in the wild.
While people don't directly dine on these species, larger commercial fish do. "If tuna is eating a lot of lanternfish, it is indirectly ingesting the plastic that might be in the lanternfishes stomach," Davison said. Plastic also absorbs toxins like PCB and DDT that could be leaching into sea life.
Scripps researcher Rebecca Asch, studying the fish with Davison, added that plastic could be getting caught in fish intestines. "If that's the case, it would be a similar thing to what happens in sea birds where they get this stomach full of plastic and they stop eating regular food," she said. "They feel full because their stomach is full of plastic and they end up starving."
The Scripps team also found juvenile yellowtail -- the kind you find at sushi bars -- and blue muscles -- again, a variety that people eat -- in the far-away gyre. Both are typically found in coastal regions, which means sea life could be hitching rides on plastic rafts to places they don't normally live.
The gyre is considered a biological desert. There are rare and old species there, many smaller in size because of the lack of food. But these remote waters are becoming a graveyard for plastic discards -- which never fully break down -- from industrialized Asia and North America.
Goldstein said plastic may be supporting life forms that wouldn't normally thrive in the gyre, harming others and possibly transporting invasive species. She plans to publish her research in a science journal later this year.
For now, Goldstein confirmed Scripps found plastic in 1,700 miles of open ocean. "We definitely think there's a lot of plastic out there."
-- REBECCA TOLIN
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Monday, February 8, 2010 11:10 am.
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Good morning from Point Loma.
-- LIAM DILLON
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Monday, February 8, 2010 10:55 am.
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Fact Check TV runs every Friday during the 6 p.m. news on NBC 7/39.
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Monday, February 8, 2010 7:40 am.
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In San Diego, a criminal defense attorney has not tried to win an election to become judge since 2002 and one hasn't actually succeeded since 1990.
But this year may be different. For once, a local judicial race is actually becoming quite interesting.
In June, voters will decide between the well-known criminal defense attorney Tom Warwick and Deputy District Attorney Richard Monroy for a spot on the Superior Court. Warwick has successfully secured the endorsements of many judges and former Sheriff Bill Kolender, who bizarrely has actually endorsed both candidates.
This is a fascinating challenge to the person we recently described as the most powerful politician in the land: District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis. The DA's power has come from her ability to influence these types of races and she endorsed her deputy Monroy for the post. In the past, that would have been enough. Will it be now?
In other news:
A note to readers: We didn't have room in Saturday's Weekend Report for some weekly features. Here they are:
The Coffee Collection (stories to enjoy over a cup of joe):
One Counselor, 277 Students: As middle-school counselors in the San Diego school district go, Rafael Ocampo has it easier than some: He only has 277 students to look after, while others have as many as 500. Still, as our story shows, he has plenty to do -- and plenty to worry about. His job, among many others, may be cut.
A Big Challenge for Cops: Crime rates are down, but San Diego cops are dealing with more suicidal people, and the police predict they'll be coping with more of the mentally ill as services for them decline.
Quote of the Week: "Middle school is the Bermuda Triangle of education. Either we get a hold of them -- or we lose them." -- Ocampo, the middle-school counselor.
-- SCOTT LEWIS
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Monday, February 8, 2010 7:10 am.
Updated: 7:16 am.
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Back during the Watergate era, a source famously gave some wise advice to two young reporters: Follow the money. More recently, our reporter Kelly Bennett blazed another path: She followed the heartache.
Last summer, an attorney told Bennett about a young woman who went blind from untreated diabetes after the county wrongly refused to provide her with medical assistance.
Not surprisingly, no one seemed to know who the woman was. "We're talking about a safety net with gaps that people fall through," Bennett says. "But when you fall through a gap, you aren't traceable."
Bennett persisted, peppering her sources with questions and digging through piles of documents. Finally, Bennett reached Michele Quemuel and convinced her to tell her story, which leads off the first part of this week's Out of Reach investigative series about the gaps in the county's safety net for the poor.
The blend of personal human stories and hard statistics is what makes Out of Reach so compelling. Bennett and colleague Dagny Salas have created a broad picture of the gulf between the poor and the services designed to help them.
Visit the Out of Reach homepage for all the stories. The latest posts in the series appeared on our site yesterday: one looks at a new report that examines why the county's food-stamp participation rate is the lowest in the entire country. The other post profiles a man who never made more than $30,000 a year, ended up with a $86,000 appendectomy bill and -- wrongly, a court later said -- was denied assistance by the county.
"We're not blowing anyone's mind by saying it's tough to be poor here," Bennett says. "But it's surprising to people to say that there are so many instances where we're stacking up so much lower than other places in the state and the country."
In other news:
Elsewhere:
You could call this a case of putting your manure where your mouth is. Maybe the hospital picked up this technique from a politician.
A note: The Weekend Report is out of space due to our expanded look at the "Out of Reach" special report. Look for the Coffee Collection and Quote of the Week in Monday's Morning Report.
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Saturday, February 6, 2010 12:15 pm.
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In our special report Out of Reach this week, we described the gaps in San Diego County's social welfare safety net. We told you the county had the lowest food stamps participation rate in the country annually and detailed the struggles of two parents trying to apply for the program here.
San Diego County's low participation in the food stamps program stems from problems with the way the county operates, a study released today by the Supportive Parents Information Network concludes from more than 170 interviews with low-income residents.
Volunteers associated with SPIN, a non-profit support group for low-income people, interviewed those residents in early 2009 about their experiences living in poverty here. They specifically asked questions about hunger, access to food and food stamps.
Among the study's findings:
Completing the application requires up to five visits (the average number of visits was 4.35), with each visit taking several hours (the average wait time was 3.9 hours, with 36% waiting four or more hours).
These feelings of shame and fear were so strong that 58% of the respondents reported that they had denied needing food even though they were hungry when asked by teachers, case workers, etc., whether they had enough. Of those respondents, almost half (48.6%) reported shame as the reason for denying their need for food.
People are searched and/or scanned as they enter the Family Resource Centers (FRCs). They face long lines and are not given clear directions about the process. The first person they speak to is behind bulletproof glass.
The study recommends, among other things, that the county:
The interviews were conducted before the county approved a new plan for its Health and Human Services Agency to increase food stamps enrollment and outreach last April. The plan's focus on outreach has some advocates cheering the change.
But the study's authors say the thrust of the plan doesn't address the issues they found.
In addition to outreach, the new plan also seeks to bar the purchase of non-nutritious foods from the food stamp program and requires participants to undergo nutrition education.
These elements directly conflict with findings from the SPIN study which shows that [the food stamp program] is widely known among low-income families, but the problems of access lie within HHSA. ... Finally, the study indicates that starting in the third week of each month, the least nutritious and cheapest foods are consumed as a last resort. If these foods were barred from purchase, low-income families would go hungry.
-- KELLY BENNETT and DAGNY SALAS
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Friday, February 5, 2010 5:55 pm.
Updated: 12:58 pm.
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The follow-ups, insights and shorter stories to emerge from a day of gathering the news.
E-mail tips and feedback to andrew.donohue@voiceofsandiego.org
Talking about our special report on television and the radio.
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