Judgment day at UC for SAT + New gun control bill advances + Group says no new wells
It’s almost the end of the week. Can you feel it? Stay safe out there, and enjoy this coming Memorial Day Weekend!
TO TEST OR NOT TO TEST?
The Regents of the University of California is scheduled to consider this morning a four-year suspension of the ACT and SAT requirement so the system can modify the test or create and implement a new admission standard by fall 2025.
It’s a decision that UC President Janet Napolitano endorsed following a recent report that evaluated the effectiveness of standardized exams.
The proposal came amid the coronavirus pandemic, which Napolitano said would for years change how students could access the test. In response to the crisis, the regents in March approved wiping the test from a list of requirements for fall 2021 applicants.
Napolitano’s recommendation differed from the report’s conclusion, which noted scores can help predict college success.
Instead, Napolitano wants a phased-in approach that would allow students to submit test scores for four years, while the system builds its own unique exam.
“Because a UC test would provide feedback to schools about student performance in a range of academic subjects,” Napolitano’s recommendation letter read, “it can potentially lead to increased academic rigor in high school courses generally, thereby ensuring that all students – not just those identified as college-bound – have access to a rigorous academic curriculum.”
Napolitano recommended that the regents consider the suspension for another year and then in 2023 and 2024, the system would become “test blind.” The exams would only be factored into admissions for purposes “such as course placement, certain scholarships, and eligibility for the statewide admissions guarantee,” a regents’ agenda included.
PORTANTINO BILL AIMS TO CLOSE RIFLE ‘LOOPHOLE’
A bill that addresses concerns brought up in the wake of the 2019 Poway synagogue shooting has passed through the Senate Public Safety Committee.
The bill, authored by Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge, requires that the Department of Justice determine the validity of a hunting license for a person under 21 during the 10-day waiting period. Senate Bill 941 also defines what constitutes a valid and unexpired hunting license.
The 19-year-old man who perpetrated the Poway shooting was able to buy a rifle even though he did not have a valid hunting license and was too young under state law to purchase a gun.
“We have a gun violence epidemic in our country and it sadly has become all too common to see senseless violence in the news. It is even more appalling that these shootings, including the Poway tragedy, have increasingly targeted houses of worship. California leads the country in combatting gun violence but there is more we can do. I’ve made firearm reform a priority. Sadly, politics often shapes our view of gun control reforms when we should be looking at the devastating impact these weapons have on people’s lives,” Portantino said in a statement.
The bill now goes before the Senate Appropriations Committee.
JAILHOUSE INFORMANTS
A bill that would prevent the use of uncorroborated confidential informant testimony from impacting a parole hearing has passed out of the Senate Public Safety Committee.
Senate Bill 1064 is authored by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley.
“Allowing uncorroborated information from a confidential informant to influence a parole hearing is deeply unfair. California’s parole system needs to be modernized, and reforms that enhance rather than limit due process are a step in the right direction,” Skinner said in a statement.
SB 1064 would prevent California’s parole board from denying release to an inmate “based solely, or in part, on uncorroborated information from an in-custody confidential informant,” according to the senators office.
In addition, it would prohibit prison staff from finding inmates guilty of rules violations based solely, or in part, on uncorroborated information from a confidential informant.
The bill now goes before the Senate Appropriations Committee.
‘NO NEW WELLS’
The head of the group Consumer Watchdog has written a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, calling on him to issue an order that no new oil wells be approved without full bonding for their clean-up and a requirement to plug a certain number of idle wells in exchange for a new permit.
“This is particularly true now that oil companies are on the verge of bankruptcy and collapse. We cannot afford to have them leave any more costs with taxpayers,” the letter from Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court and Energy Project Director Liza Tucker reads in part.
According to the letter, out of a total of 107,000 oil wells in California, around 35,000 are idle and another 35,000 are barely producing.
“Many companies don’t want to spend the money to plug either idle or marginally productive wells. The state abets them by allowing idle wells to stay that way for decades,” the letter reads.
It costs approximately $86,000 to plug a well, according to the letter.
You can read the full letter here.
AB 5 ‘CLEAN-UP’ BILL IS HEARD
Via Hannah Wiley...
A proposal to adjust a landmark California labor law passed its first legislative hurdle Wednesday, heartening freelance journalists, musicians and other independent contractors who say they’ve been burdened by a restrictive employment status.
The bill would give new exemptions to a law, Assembly Bill 5, Gov. Newsom signed in September that limits how businesses can use independent contractors and requires companies to give employment benefits to more workers.
The “clean-up” legislation, Assembly Bill 1850, would allow some workers, like youth sports coaches and real estate appraisers, to maintain independent status, while keeping other low-income employees under the umbrella of AB 5.
“AB 1850 tries to strike a balance,” said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, the San Diego Democrat who wrote AB 5 and has said she planned to consider amending it even before Newsom signed it.
“I don’t want anyone to lose money. I don’t want anyone to lose their wages. I don’t want to mess up anybody’s small business,” Gonzalez said.
Her new bill unanimously passed the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee. It will head to the Assembly Appropriations Committee before it’s considered by the full Assembly and the Senate.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“If I’m Speaker of the House, I will never:
• Talk about a President of the United States as being ‘morbidly obese’
• Rip up the President’s State of the Union speech.
• Impeach purely for political gain.
RT if you agree it’s time for a change in the Speaker’s office.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, via Twitter, taking a shot at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco.
Best of the Bee:
Sitting on shelves in California’s crime labs, medical facilities and law enforcement agencies, nearly 14,000 sexual assault evidence exams — so-called rape kits — are collecting dust. The number is likely an undercount, via Hannah Wiley.
California Democrats have new plan to battle housing crisis — by encouraging duplexes, via Hannah Wiley
As California hurries to reopen stores, offices, restaurants and more this week, another rush is on behind-the-scenes. State health officials have launched an unprecedented effort to train thousands of front-line, county-level workers to act as a firewall to stop the coronavirus from roaring back this fall. Gov. Gavin Newsom calls them his “army of disease detectives,” via Tony Bizjak and Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks.
More emergency benefits started coming Wednesday to gig workers, self-employed people and others who lost their jobs or had their hours cut because of the coronavirus pandemic, via David Lightman.