Council President Todd Gloria says 172,000 San Diegans won’t get raises because it’ll be a couple years before voters get to decide whether to boost the minimum wage. But if you’re persnickety about it, this claim is a big stretch.
Lisa Halverstadt notes that number includes people who already make more than the minimum wage and at least some of those workers will get raises because the state says they will: It raised the minimum wage too. Halverstadt also notes that city leaders don’t know yet what level the wage will rise to? The increase was supposed to be gradual beginning in January. But if it’s delayed until 2016 or 2017, does it jump to where it was supposed to be by then or begin rising at that point?
Crime Time: Stranger and Stranger
• The U-T digs deeper into the police search warrants that were revealed last week after the media demanded access to cop documents regarding the break-in at congressional candidate Carl DeMaio’s headquarters. As usual, there’s plenty of weirdness — about a crucial and supposedly fabricated email, among other things — and not much to help anyone figure out what really happened.
• About 1,800 inmates convicted of crimes in San Diego County want out early because of the passage of Prop. 47, “which calls for treating shoplifting, forgery, fraud, petty theft and possession of small amounts of drugs, including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, as misdemeanors instead of felonies.” (KPBS)
The U-T editorial board, by the way, has swung into oh-my-gawd-we’re-doomed mode over Prop. 47. The headline on an editorial says it all: “Prediction: California crime wave coming.” For a contrasting view, try the much more hopeful L.A. Times editorial.
Anti-Global-Warming Standard on Tap
We may not hear about them much, but there are gold standards floating around about how cities can best do things like set up a building code. Now, “A new global standard is coming that will give cities a common framework for measuring and reporting their emissions,” CityLab reports. Click here to read our extensive coverage about San Diego’s plans to fight climate change.
Why No L.A. Team May Be Good for NFL
The NY Times drops by football-deprived Los Angeles (poor babies), which has been without an NFL team for a remarkable two decades. “A generation of fans has grown up in Los Angeles knowing no other way to watch football” except on TV. (This has always been the way for recent generations of fans who couldn’t afford tickets or fortunate enough to get them for free, but never mind.)
The story notes a fact we know well here in San Diego, where the Chargers keep pushing for taxpayers to pitch in on the cost of a new stadium: “having Los Angeles as a stalking horse has been extremely valuable to NFL owners in recent years.” A sports economist told the paper that “It is entirely possible that the L.A. football market has been more valuable to the N.F.L. empty than if it had been occupied since 1995.”
Quick News Hits: Big Beer Merger
• The city’s new affordable housing fee is official thanks to a final vote by the City Council. It was formerly known to us as the “linkage fee” until your friendly Morning Report scribe suggested a lingo-free change.
• Something else to worry about: “The national economy could take a multi-billion dollar hit this holiday season if there’s a strike linked to contract talks between the West Coast shippers and dock workers… The nation’s retailers and manufacturers predict a strike could cost the U.S. economy $2 billion a day.” (KPBS)
• Solar Turbines decided to recycle energy it didn’t use, so it got socked with a surcharge from SDG&E. Now, the state utilities agency says it has to pay up. (U-T)
• Big news in the local beer world, which our staff tracks religiously. (Or maybe they just track the beer religiously. It’s hard to tell.) One craft brewer, Green Flash, has bought another, Alpine Brewery. It’s rare for craft breweries to buy one another, and the small Alpine Brewery is so well-respected that folks thought no one would nab it. The U-T has details.
San Diego, by the way, has seen some of the biggest boosts in booze costs in the country, according to Time magazine, with costs rising by almost 3 percent over last year. Only the Bay Area and Chicago have seen bigger jumps.
Yikes. Looks like we maniacal penny pinchers will have to say goodbye to Bloody Mary and Tom Collins and start chatting it up an Arnold Palmer or a Roy Rogers. Good thing — and this is true — that there’s now a craft soft-drink industry that’s even taken hold here. One craft Shirley Temple, please!
Randy Dotinga is a freelance contributor to Voice of San Diego and 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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