The Morning Report
Get the news and information you need to take on the day.
People who get convicted of misdemeanors like shoplifting in San Diego may be ordered to take classes designed to help them not commit crimes again. An investigation finds that one of the organizations that offers these classes, La Mesa’s Corrective Behavior Institute, appears to have its own problems following the law.
“A Voice of San Diego review found shoddy recordkeeping, red flags in financial records and poor internal oversight at the organization,” contributor Rob Davis reports. “Even those who have led the nonprofit haven’t always known who was in charge.”
Based on our findings, the city attorney’s office, which prosecutes misdemeanors for the cities of San Diego and Poway, has halted referrals to Corrective Behavior Institute pending a review.
New Allegation Takes Filner Scandal to New Level
In yet another stunning press conference, a Marine veteran, her nurse and attorney Gloria Allred alleged that the mayor, in June, pressured the nurse to go out with him in exchange for his help getting the Marine assistance at the VA.
VOSD reporter Liam Dillon explains: “It’s bad when a tearful disabled Iraq war veteran claims that you used her injuries to make an unwanted sexual advance toward the veteran’s nurse. It’s worse when the allegation happens in a military town like San Diego. It’s worst when the accusation strikes at the heart of the best thing you’re known for during decades in elected office.”
For more details, try KPBS, NBC San Diego and U-T San Diego.
• KPBS breaks more ground with another Filner story, this one profiling his alleged behavior toward women during a junket to Mexico City.
• Last weekend, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez said this: “I was proud to be the first elected official on the Democratic side to stand up and ask (Filner) to resign.” Is she right? Yup, San Diego Fact Check finds: Her claim is true.
• VOSD Radio examines misconceptions in the Filner scandal and Scott Lewis explains why he thinks we should be proud.
• Well-known literary agent Sandy Dijkstra, a long-time friend of Filner, sent him a note asking for him to resign but has now changed her mind and is decrying a “witch hunt” against him.
In Images, How SD Transit Lags Other Cities
The transit system in our county gets a lot of flak. It’s ripped as expensive, unreliable, and inconvenient, among other things. That may be debatable, but public transit clearly isn’t as popular here as in places like New York and the Bay Area, where it’s tremendously easier to get around without a car.
How do we stack up to other big metro areas? VOSD land-use reporter Andrew Keatts took a look and created four graphs that show how San Diego lags far behind several other big cities in the United States.
ZooNews: NRA (Yes, NRA) Takes Aim at Ours
The National Rifle Association has a bone to pick with the San Diego Zoo. No, that’s not a misprint.
The NRA is taking aim at the zoo — along with a variety of environmental groups, scientists and even the California Condor Recovery Team — over their support of a ban on lead bullets, the Huffington Post reports. Scientists have linked lead in bullets to the deaths of millions of birds: “Lead free bullets are widely available from top manufacturers, and have not been shown to function any differently than bullets containing the highly toxic element.”
The NRA, however, says the science is bogus.
Quick News Hits
• The Culture Report, our weekly compilation of links to stories about art and culture, examines $6 million of new public art in the revamped airport, the upcoming CicloSDias biking event (roads will be closed in Mid-City, so watch out), and a local brewer who’s trying to make Wi-Fi-enabled temperature controllers for homebrewers.
• Did your Monday afternoon or evening get interrupted by your cell phone making a weird sound and showing an unusual text message? The LA Times explains why so many of us — at least those with newer phones — received the first statewide Amber Alert. It let users know about two missing children from the San Diego backcountry.
• An audit finds that a flawed wastewater billing system prevented the city from collecting some $10 million in fees, the U-T reports.
• “San Diego police and the FBI are investigating what appears to be the suspicious burning of public records in a maintenance yard operated by the San Ysidro School District that may involve former Superintendent Manuel Paul,” the U-T reports.
• CNN and the Center for Investigative Reporting are out with a new investigation of rampant fraud in the taxpayer-funded rehab clinic business in California.
• Back in my day, we walked two miles to school every morning. In the not-quite-scorching San Diego sun. And we liked it. Unless, of course, it was raining and our moms gave us rides in their cars. (We were delicate as children. So sue us.)
My generation’s moms might have driven cars with something you just about never see anymore: Yellow-on-black California license plates. The state stopped issuing them in 1968, but some stuck around for decades. Now, the state hopes to reissue license plates with three historic designs: yellow-on-black, yellow-on-blue and black-on-yellow.
They’ll be $50 a pop, but it might be worth it to help your car (and you) enter a golden state.
Randy Dotinga is a freelance contributor to Voice of San Diego and vice president of the American Society of Journalists & Authors. Please contact him directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.
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