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Vallejo police investigate crash that left man dead

Daily Republic Staff

DRNEWS@DAILYREPUBLIC.NET

VALLEJO — Police are investigating a crash in the city that left a man dead and have turned to the community for help.

The crash happened shortly before 12:50 p.m. Thursday in the area of Redwood Parkway ad Eagle Ridge Drive.

Police report one of the drivers, a 58-year-old Vallejo man, died of his injuries after being taken to a local hospital.

Anyone with information about the crash is asked to call Cpl. Lenard M. Alamon at 707-648-4001.

Omicron

From Page One

died from this surge.

If the state deserves criticism for its strategy leading up to the current crisis, it was for focusing too narrowly on vaccine promotion, said Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease physician at UC San Francisco.

“Putting all the eggs in the vaccine basket” meant there was less focus on stockpiling masks, tests and new treatments like monoclonal antibodies that have rendered Covid much less of a threat for the vast majority of vaccinated patients, he said. “I think we could have been more proactive as a state. We have the resources, we have the brainpower, we have the wherewithal.”

Another cohort of Bay Area-based medical professionals and researchers say that if there’s a lesson to be learned from the most recent Covid surge, it’s that state public health officials have been too slow to recognize the actual, much-diminished threat the virus poses to most people in 2022.

Four doctors associated with UC San Francisco wrote a controversial letter the week before last, drawing a very different lesson from the state’s experience weathering omicron: California needs to eliminate masking and testing requirements at schools as soon as the current surge has subsided.

Whether the state could have done more to limit the spread of omicron is the wrong question to ask, said emergency medicine professor Jeanne Noble, who co-authored the letter. Instead, public health policy should strive to “get that very small sliver of our population maximally protected and not in this more clunky way of restricting the lives and social norms of the population at large.”

No lockdowns in sight

Even as many Californians were still learning how to pronounce “omicron” in early December, Newsom had already ruled out the possibility of another lockdown. With so many state residents vaccinated, such drastic social distancing measures were no longer demanded by the science, he said at the time. Nor, presumably, would they have been tolerated by much of the Covidweary public.

California’s Democratic governor wasn’t the only governor to make that calculation. Even as hospitals ran out of beds, schools ran out of unexposed teachers and graphs ran out of vertical space to accommodate the stratospheric case numbers, not a single state imposed new lockdown measures.

That was a sharp contrast from two years prior.

Back then, blue state governors in particular were quick to shutter businesses and schools. This time the prevailing focus has been to keep things up and running. In Michigan, Oklahoma and North Carolina, governors handed down emergency orders deploying state workers and school district administrative staff into classrooms in order to keep schools open. New Mexico’s governor, Lujan Grisham, went a step further and became a substitute herself.

Other states have tried to address omicroninduced worker shortages with financial incentives. Lawmakers in Kentucky are considering whether to offer loan forgiveness to nurses and social workers.

Earlier this month, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said the department would be spending $103 million on programs that address health care worker “burnout,” $8.7 million of which will go to three hospitals and one nonprofit in California.

Newsom’s omicron response

Since omicron arrived in California, the Newsom administration has tried some version of all of these approaches.

Earlier this month, the governor issued an executive order making it easier for schools to hire substitute teachers. In the budget proposal the governor submitted to the Legislature earlier this month, he requested that the state continue to waive credentialing fees for new teachers and that $3 million be set aside to “research health care shortages.”

In November, prior to the arrival of omicron, the administration finalized a request to the Legislature to set aside an extra $1.4 billion in emergency Covid spending above and beyond the state budget passed last year. Of that total ask, $478 million would be used to hire more nurses and clinicians to relieve short-staffed hospitals. Last week they bumped up that total request to $2.3 billion, with another $8 million set aside for “surge” staffing.

Ben Christopher is based in the Bay Area and covers California politics and elections. Grace Gedye covers California’s economy. She previously was an editor at the Washington Monthly.

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Christina House/Los Angeles Times/TNS file (2021) Ingrid Von Archie is photographed at A New Way of Life Reentry Project in Los Angeles, California, Oct. 12, 2021.

Canabis

From Page One

In places that have, those programs have been plagued by a lack of funding, shifting requirements and severe delays in processing applications, often creating additional hardships and roadblocks instead of removing them.

A Los Angeles Times review of state data found that equity applicants represented only a small fraction – less than 8% – of all people granted cannabis licenses through the end of 2020 in several of the state’s largest jurisdictions.

In addition, local officials around the state created different regulations for licensing cannabis businesses and meeting social equity qualifications. So far, existing medical pot dispensaries and established cannabis chains with vastly more experience and resources are frequently winning out. Even city leaders and officials in charge of clearing a pathway for more inclusion acknowledge the programs have struggled.

As a result, a process intended to atone for past wrongs has, for many, made their lives distinctly harder, shattering their stability, wiping out their life savings and jeopardizing homes and property.

A major impediment was the requirement in Los Angeles and other areas that applicants secure property before applying for licenses. As the process became mired in bureaucratic delays, many were stuck paying thousands of dollars a month on empty buildings, prompting some applicants to refinance homes and borrow from relatives.

“People had dreams and hopes of building generational wealth,” said Bonita Money, founder of the L.A.-based National Diversity and Inclusion Cannabis Alliance. “And it’s done just the opposite. It’s ruining lives at this point.”

In 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the California Cannabis Equity Act, a measure designed to provide those most harmed by cannabis prohibition “assistance to enter the multibillion-dollar cannabis industry as entrepreneurs or as employees with high-quality, wellpaying jobs.”

The law – Senate Bill 1294 –

Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/TNS file (2021) Crystal Benavides-Ryan at her grandmother Karla Benavides’ home in Los Angeles, Oct. 6, 2021.

cited state Department of Justice data from 2006 to 2015 showing that Black Californians were five times more likely to be arrested for cannabis felonies than white Californians despite using and selling cannabis at similar rates. During the same period, Latinos were 35% more likely to be arrested for cannabis crimes than white people.

While the law didn’t mandate that cities establish equity programs – and many have not – it paved the way for doling out millions in state funds to those that did. But the ambition of the legislation quickly pushed up against the realities of a limited market already saturated with illegal sales and a few big cannabis companies. Before long, many industry experts say, it became clear that the same people who typically win in other industries – those with the most social, political and economic capital – were winning here too.

Sixteen cities and counties had issued licenses to a combined 203 equity applicants through December 2020, according to a Times review of data in a recent report to state lawmakers. At the same time, 2,355 non-equity applicants got licenses. Many of those went to preexisting medical marijuana dispensaries. Some jurisdictions had not issued a single equity license.

As of early January, officials in Palm Springs and Long Beach said their cities each had one equity cannabis business; San Francisco had 18; Sacramento, 19; and Oakland, 186. And across huge swaths of the state there are no social equity programs, although officials in San Diego are developing one.

In Mendocino County, which has received more than $3 million from the state for equity efforts, no applicant had met all the eligibility criteria, including having a very low income, according to a recent report from the California Cannabis Industry Association. In Oakland, which created the nation’s first equity program more than four years ago, 63% of equity applicants who responded to a recent surveysaid the gross receipts of their business the previous year had been less than $50,000. And the city has begun sending delinquent notices to collect on unpaid loans.

The cannabis industry report found that social equity programs were not working as intended and urged the Legislature to create an oversight commission that would include cannabis business owners and community members.

This month, the state’s Department of Cannabis Control began distributing $100 million approved by the Legislature – including $22 million earmarked for Los Angeles – to help businesses transition temporary licenses to annual ones, which will require costly and complex environmental reviews.

In Los Angeles, which has received more than $9 million from the state for its equity program, 1,270 temporary licenses – 358 of them equity – had been granted through mid-January. Some of the licenses are for retail shops, but others are for cultivation, manufacturing and distribution.

Los Angeles’ program has had several widely publicized setbacks, including long delays.

Russia

From Page One

then Russia will be able to start mitigating and that doesn’t make any sense to us.”

“We are working intensively with the Congress on this piece of legislation that we expect will be very well aligned with what we are also building with our NATO allies and partners,” she said.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on “Fox News Sunday” that “one of the things about sanctions is once you trip that, then the deterrent effect is lost.”

While the U.S. and its allies have promised “massive sanctions” if Russia sends troops into Ukraine, there has been disagreement over how to respond, particularly to a Russian action short of full-blown war.

Menendez and Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the committee, told CNN that while there are details to be ironed out, the two sides are working together to convey a message to Putin.

“We are on the one-yard line,” said Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat. “I believe that we will get there. We have been working in

Alex Wong/Getty Images/TNS file (2021) U.S. Department of Defense press secretary John Kirby said Sunday that Russia was still building troops on the Ukrainian border.

good faith, we have been accommodating different views and we are committed jointly, in a bipartisan way, to defend Ukraine and to send Putin a message.”

“There’s been a 24-hour-a-day effort,” Risch said of the stategy.

Storm

From Page One storm. So at this point, Friday is up in the air.”

Boston, meanwhile, tied a daily snow record, and blizzard conditions were confirmed across New England and Long Island from a storm that also dumped more than 8 inches in Central Park and even more to the east.

Boston received 23.6 inches at Logan International Airport in 24 hours, tying a 2003 record for the snowiest day, said Kristie Smith, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Norton, Massachusetts. Central Park received 8.3 inches, while 9.1 inches were reported at the Throgs Neck Bridge and 13.1 inches in Bayside, Queens.

A wide swath across Long Island got more than 20 inches of snow, with Islip taking the top spot with 24.7 inches.

Several places in eastern Massachusetts got more than 30 inches. Many areas on the New Jersey coastline had at least 19 inches as the region got pummeled over the weekend..