When it comes to the debate over a new Chargers stadium these days, you can’t tell the players without a program. So we’ve put one together for you so you can keep score at home.
VOSD’s Lisa Halverstadt breaks down the big shots into several groups: The Decision-Makers (the family behind the team), the Play Caller (the team spokesman), the Referees (NFL types), the Coach of the Home Team (the mayor) the Home Team: (the mayor’s Stadium Task Force), and the Home Team Strategists (a p.r. guy and a political consultant).
And there’s more: the Power Players (the county supervisors), the Opposing Team (the city of Carson) and the Potential Game-Changer (a banking company).
You can catch up on all our coverage of the stadium saga here.
Doing as Hilary Clinton Did
“Gov. Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and other top elected officials in California acknowledge using personal email accounts to conduct government business, and it’s not clear if their private exchanges are retained as public records or subject to disclosure,” the AP reports.
Locally, the issue of elected officials using private email has ensnared San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith and Councilman Todd Gloria in court proceedings, although the local media (the recipient of some private emails) hasn’t paid much attention.
• Oceanside Councilman Jerry Kern, a Republican, is running for state Assembly. He wants to replace Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, himself a onetime Oceanside councilman, who’s making an extremely long-shot bid for U.S. Senate. Like Chavez, he’s portraying himself as a social moderate. (KPBS)
Utilities Big Moves
• SDG&E has become the second utility in the country to get permission to fly drones around to inspect its facilities. SDG&E says its drones weigh less than a pound. (Daily Transcript)
• The U-T is out with an update on the major legal fight between San Diego County’s provider of water and the LA-based agency that sells it most of water. San Diego won the fight last year but it’s on appeal. The outcome could lead to lower prices and a more solid claim to some water. Our 2012 explainer is still handy.
A Dull S.D.? Sure, But Breakfast All Day!
Sometimes San Diego can seem like a Des Moines-by-the-sea: a pretty but dull place, or as a largely clueless Pulitzer Prize-winning local poet put it, “a city without charisma.” But our Midwestern-style ordinariness does have its benefits: Companies love to test their products here because we so well represent a kind of national middle-ground.
Case in point: McDonald’s will soon test the selling of breakfast items all day long at some restaurants in the San Diego area.
Legislator: Limit Cop Access to Video
The U-T takes a look at how San Diego-area Assemblywoman Shirley Weber is pushing legislation that would forbid California cops from immediately getting a chance to look at video from the body cameras that many officers are starting to wear.
We just interviewed Weber for a VOSD Q&A feature about the law enforcement bills that she’s writing. She talked about her focus on the body camera legislation: “The purpose is to make sure that these body cameras, that we use them really do begin to address some of the issues and don’t begin to become a problem by themselves.”
Quick News Hits: Mapping Waits
• The LA Times profiles a local Navy program that trains 90 dolphins and 50 California sea to detect mines in the ocean. “The sea lions are also trained to detect any swimmer who is in a restricted area. The animal clamps a ‘bite plate’ on the swimmer’s leg and takes the attached tether back to his handler.”
Fun fact alert! “During the 1996 Republican convention in San Diego, dolphins were assigned to guard GOP yachts.”
• The state’s death row is getting overcrowded as executions fail to take place. The governor wants to add 100 new cells at the San Quentin prison to hold men who are condemned to death.
Several high-profile killers from the San Diego area remain on death row, including a notorious serial killer and a mother who murdered her four boys. A few years ago, we discovered that several of these local killers were using an online site to seek romantic partners in the outside world.
• The other day, somebody put together a map of every place that Willie Nelson has sung about, including Reno (of course), Phoenix (Phoenix?), Boulder Dam (!), Denver, Dallas and L.A., among others. But there’s no San Diego on the list.
Must we always be a day late and a dollar short when it comes to everything except bizarre behavior? Not necessarily! There’s also a map of every place our hometown hero Tom Waits has sung about. Zoom in and you’ll find a bunch of local locales, including the place he grew up (“Then I had me a girl in Chula Vista/I was in love with her sister”) plus San Diego, El Cajon, Oceanside, National City (“The Ghosts Of Saturday Night (After Hours At Napoleone’s Pizza House)”, Tijuana (he got lost “and I guess that’s how I wound up in this bar”).
Never mind all that. I just want to hear from the Chula Vista girl who lost Waits’ heart to her sister. Wonder where she’d like to see Waits end up on a map. There sure are lots of oceans…
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.