EAST COUNTY ROUNDUP: LOCAL AND STATEWIDE NEWS

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July 18, 2018 (San Diego's East County) -- East County Roundup highlights top stories of interest to East County and San Diego’s inland regions, published in other media. This week’s top “Roundup” headlines include:

LOCAL

• San Miguel names veteran to lead fire department (San Diego Union-Tribune)
• Sacramento Report: The State of Crime in the State (Voice of San Diego)
• City Water Department Resisted Oversight, Downplayed Smart Meter Problems  (Voice of San Diego)
• Some Residents’ Water Bills Jumped 500 Percent or More in the Last 14 Months  (Voice of San Diego)
• Build the wall sign attracts waterfront scuffle (The Reader)
• La Mesa looking at taxing marijuana businesses (San Diego Union-Tribune)
• San Onofre emails show history of private meetings between regulators, energy insiders and advisers to Gov. Jerry Brown (San Diego Union-Tribune)
• San Diego Transit Agency Makes Its Move on 2020 Tax Measure (Voice of San Diego)

STATE

• Splitting up Calif.: State Supreme Court takes initiative off the November ballot (San Francisco Chronicle)
• A political firestorm is about to hit the capitol: who will pay for wildfires? (Cal Matters)
• California already reached its 2020 goal for cutting emissions. Now what? (SD Union-Tribune)
• The Valley floor is sinking, and it’s crippling California’s ability to deliver water (Sacramento Bee)
• ‘I can’t be a felon’: Gun owners sue California over faulty weapon registration system (Sacramento Bee)

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

LOCAL

San Miguel names veteran to lead fire department (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Criss Brainard has been named the new fire chief of the San Miguel Consolidated Fire District.

Sacramento Report: The State of Crime in the State (Voice of San Diego)

Hate crimes are on the rise. Marijuana arrests have plummeted. Homicides in San Diego are relatively rare.  Those are some of the big-picture takeaways from five reports released this week by the California attorney general’s office, compiling various criminal justice statistics for 2017: crime, homicides, juvenile justice, hate crimes and police use of force.

City Water Department Resisted Oversight, Downplayed Smart Meter Problems  (Voice of San Diego)

Amid hundreds of complaints of water bill spikes and problems with new smart water meters, the city water department has resisted public records requests, dodged its oversight board and misled the public about the extent of the issues, VOSD and NBC 7 found.

Some Residents’ Water Bills Jumped 500 Percent or More in the Last 14 Months  (Voice of San Diego)

Numerous water customers saw radical jumps in water bills from one bill to the next from January 2017 through February 2018, a VOSD and NBC 7 analysis shows.

Build the wall sign attracts waterfront scuffle (The Reader)

When does hate begin?  When 75-year-old Dan Russell isn’t cleaning up trash from the side of highways he participates in civil demonstrations, mostly holding his “Build the Wall, Enforce the Law” sign. On June 30 brought his sign to the Families Belong Together demonstration at Waterfront Park …

La Mesa looking at taxing marijuana businesses (San Diego Union-Tribune)

The City Council last week voted to put a proposed cannabis business tax on the November ballot that it hopes will generate up to $2 million every year.

San Onofre emails show history of private meetings between regulators, energy insiders and advisers to Gov. Jerry Brown (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Emails that California utility regulators withheld for years — and recently released under a court order — show that political appointees of Gov. Jerry Brown met privately to discuss state energy policy….

San Diego Transit Agency Makes Its Move on 2020 Tax Measure (Voice of San Diego)

The Metropolitan Transit System is pursuing a tax increase that could potentially fund a trolley line, connection to the airport and other improvements.

STATE

Splitting up Calif.: State Supreme Court takes initiative off the November ballot (San Francisco Chronicle)

The state Supreme Court removed the “three Californias” initiative from the November ballot Wednesday but said it would decide later whether the plan to break up the state was within the voters’ power to consider at a future election.

A political firestorm is about to hit the capitol: who will pay for wildfires? (Cal Matters)

Asked this spring to identify the most important issue facing California lawmakers, the leader of the state Senate didn’t hesitate: wildfires… Expect another battle over how much utilities like Pacific Gas & Electric can pass liability costs onto their customers—and whether the state should step in to help.

California already reached its 2020 goal for cutting emissions. Now what? (SD Union-Tribune)

California’s efforts to combat climate change got a big boost on Wednesday when it was announced that new data shows that pollution in California fell below the levels recorded in 1990 in 2016, a goal state officials had initially targeted to hit by 2020.

The Valley floor is sinking, and it’s crippling California’s ability to deliver water (Sacramento Bee)

The Friant-Kern has been crippled by a phenomenon known as subsidence. The canal is sinking as the Valley floor beneath it slowly caves in, brought down by years of groundwater extraction by the region’s farmers.

‘I can’t be a felon’: Gun owners sue California over faulty weapon registration system (Sacramento Bee)

The deadline to register his bullet-button assault weapons was June 30, and California’s online reporting system kept crashing….Tens of thousands of gun owners were prevented from registering their bullet-button assault weapons before July 1 through no fault of their own, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday against Attorney General Xavier Becerra.