California saw a 7.4% increase in job gains from January 2021 to January 2022, compared to 4.6% nationally. The state has regained approximately 82% of the nearly 2.8 million jobs lost in the first two months of the pandemic — more than previously projected.
Newsom :“Our approach has been to follow the science while supporting those hardest hit by the pandemic, and it not only saved tens of thousands of lives — it got our state back to work faster and better than the rest of the country.”
Bernick: “Inflation has already cut into wage gains in California, particularly the wage gains of lower income workers, and threatens to significantly slow growth.” Soaring inflation, plus Russia’s war on Ukraine, have contributed to eye-popping gas prices: The average price in California for a regular gallon was $5.74 on Sunday, compared to $5.29 a week ago, according to the American Automobile Association .
But tinkering with the gas tax appears to be increasingly politically unappealing for California’s supermajority-Democratic Legislature. “We need to just leave the gas tax alone and focus on other forms of tax rebates or other supports for working families,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, told the Los Angeles Times .Still, some question whether rebates — potentially similar to the Golden State stimulus checks sent last year to millions of Californians — could worsen runaway inflation. “We have an overheated economy,” Republican political consultant Rob Stutzman told the Sacramento Bee . “Does it really make sense to dump money back in?”
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Give California’s public colleges and universities 18 months to complete court-ordered environmental reviews before being forced to limit their campus population. UC Berkeley had been ordered to cap its in-person enrollment by a judge who agreed with a Berkeley neighborhood group’s argument that the university had violated CEQA, California’s landmark environmental law , by failing to adequately account for the impact of its growing student body on housing, homelessness and noise. Block student enrollment from being considered as a separate project under CEQA. Instead, universities would be required to consider the environmental impact of the overall campus population. “It was never the intent of the Legislature for students to be viewed as environmental pollutants,” said state Sen. Nancy Skinner , a Berkeley Democrat who leads the Senate budget committee. Give $50,000 to the Regents of the University of California — allowing the bills to be classified as part of the budget and take effect immediately.
School boards: San Francisco Mayor London Breed on Friday unveiled her replacements for the three school board members recalled last month : Entrepreneur and recall organizer Ann Hsu, government policy analyst Lainie Motamedi and Stanford University law professor Lisa Weissman-Ward. Meanwhile, a conservative political action committee called Reform California is recruiting school board candidates in San Diego County. “The school boards don’t respect parents,” said Reform California founder and former San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio . “The only way to get those changes is to completely shake up leadership in each of the school districts.” COVID-19 vaccine mandates: Under California’s student vaccine mandate , kids in grades 7-12 must be inoculated by July 1. But state lawmakers are considering a bill that would require all children attending schools or child care in person to be vaccinated by Jan. 1, 2023 — and eliminate personal belief exemptions . In a preview of how the proposal could divide Democrats, state Sen. Connie Levya of Chino told advocates over the weekend that she plans to vote against it. “I think this bill is just too divisive,” she said. Advocates are also concerned vaccine mandates could force kids of color into distance learning: Among San Francisco kids ages 5 to 11, for example , 81% of Asian and 64% of white children are vaccinated, compared to 48% of Latino, 34% of Pacific Islander, 29% of Black and African American, and 22% of American Indian and Alaska Native children. Grades: San Diego Unified expects to have a 95% graduation rate this year — its highest under a state calculation system that debuted in 2017 — partly due to the district’s relaxed grading system for summer classes and partly due to a state law that temporarily loosened graduation requirements amid the pandemic. But such policies have concerned some Californians: “The goal needs to be to bring the kids up to the level of competence, not to lower the bar,” said Kwesi Edwards, the father of two San Francisco Unified students .
A dwindling number of officers. The Los Angeles Police Department is hundreds of officers short of its authorized force of 9,700, and due to administrative backlogs at the city’s Personnel Department, police officials say new recruitment this year will “at best” match attrition from retirements and other departures, the Los Angeles Times reports . In San Diego County, meanwhile, the sheriff’s office is losing officers faster than it can hire them. “The impacts on public safety can be very problematic,” David Leonhardi, president of the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association of San Diego County, told the San Diego Union-Tribune .Inadequate training — and discipline. A state audit found that thousands of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, supervisors and dispatchers haven’t completed required training courses on firearms competency, use of force, arrest tactics, de-escalation and other topics. Meanwhile, a new report from the Los Angeles Police Department’s inspector general found that most of the officers determined to have wrongly used deadly force in recent years weren’t disciplined — sometimes against the recommendations of top police officials. Lack of trust with the community. Less than a year after San Jose Unified School District voted to phase out campus police officers, the school board moved Thursday to add more cops to the budget — angering community members who called the board’s actions “shameful,” the Mercury News reports .
