The Morning Report
Get the news and information you need to take on the day.
When was a worker with the Carl DeMaio campaign fired? It should be an easy question to answer. But it’s a complicated one, and not just because Todd Bosnich accuses his former boss of sexual harassment and says he was offered $50,000 to stay mum. Bosnich himself seems to have provided different answers, and defeated congressional candidate DeMaio’s story has its own big holes.
In his third in a series of stories trying to figure out who lied in the DeMaio imbroglio, VOSD’s Scott Lewis focuses on Bosnich and the timelines presented by him and the DeMaio campaign.
For his part, DeMaio claims that he’s finished with politics but wants to clear his name. Bosnich has declined to answer some questions, although “he says a damning email is fabricated, a police affidavit is not accurate and most importantly that he was confused and upset after what he says happened to him.”
Court Nixes Transportation Plan
In a big victory for environmentalists, a state appeals court has sent a local coalition of governments back to the drawing board, declaring that a $200 billion regional plan for the future of transportation here “glossed over projections that climate pollutants would increase sharply by 2050,” the U-T reports. “That conflicts with state directives to reduce emissions by that time, and with California law that requires agencies to disclose and reduce the risks of proposed projects, the court stated.”
You can read the ruling here and check our coverage of a judge’s initial ruling against the coalition of governments. It’s that decision that’s now been upheld by an appellate court. Check out Andrew Keatts’ twitter feed for some perspective. For one thing, don’t expect the San Diego Association of Governments to just fold and approve a more transit-oriented plan that’s better for the environment. There will likely be a Supreme Court appeal first.
“Today’s ruling very much describes a local agency refusing to acknowledge state authority over these matters,” Keatts wrote.
If you want more, here’s the winning side’s take, from Marco Gonzalez.
No Easy-to-Use Downtown Shuttle
The city’s urban-renewal agency has given up on plans to create a traditional free or almost-free shuttle to carry people around downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. While other cities like Denver and Baltimore have convenient downtown shuttles, San Diego has not had one and won’t have one, possibly because of concerns over cost.
Instead, the plan now is for an on-demand shuttle service that people can call via mobile phones, like Uber or Lyft. So why not call just Uber or Lyft? We’ll look forward to an answer to that question.
Quick News Hits
• VOSD’s Lewis announced some changes in our organization. We’re still working on an overhaul of how we plan our coverage and investigations. So stay tuned.
• Last week’s VOSD Radio Show and Expanded Podcast included an interview with Alex Simpson of the locally based Innocence Project about what it’s like to free an innocent inmate. That prisoner, Michael Hanline, was freed yesterday after 36 years behind bars.
• Another power agency, this one run by the federal government, has reached a settlement over the massive September power outage in 2011, but local electricity customers won’t see a dime because it doesn’t involve money, the U-T reports. Other agencies have agreed to spend about $16 million in total on fines and improvements to the power grid; another couple of agencies haven’t reached settlements over “violation notices.”
• While the San Diego airport has plenty of frustrations — take Terminal 1, please! — and has major limitations, it’s undergone upgrades lately. And it’s still just about the most conveniently located airport around even if there’s no convenient public transportation to it.
Bloomberg Businessweek takes note, ranking it at the 10th least frustrating of 36 North American airports on a “Frustration Index.” It’s the 14th least frustrating when it comes to the average rush-hour driving time between the city center and the airport. Weirdly, it says the average time to get downtown is 38 minutes. Are travelers taking the scenic route though Balboa Park?
The most frustrating airport, by the way, is NYC’s LaGuardia, and the least frustrating is in Vancouver.
• The landmark Drew Ford car dealership in La Mesa is changing hands and losing its “Drew” name. What will happen to the “Round House”? Fans want it to stay. “It was built to resemble the Ford Rotunda from the World’s Fair in New York, 1964, and is one of San Diego’s finest examples of Modern Architecture,” writes local history buff Gregory May in a petition he’s created on change.org. Hundreds of people have signed on.
• The Reader has the Weird Story of the Day:”A team of local entrepreneurs has struck Kickstarter gold, more than doubling the amount of cash sought to fund their invention: a digital scale attached to a litter box for cats.”
The scale will send messages to mobile phones to let cat owners know that their feline deposits are piling up. No word on whether the alert tone will be the sound of a dump truck.
Randy Dotinga is a freelance contributor to Voice of San Diego and president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Please contact him directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.