California SB 902

/ California, Housing, Politics

This bill, which passed the state Senate by a 33-3 vote June 22, would allow cities to grant by-right zoning approval for up to ten units in transit- and job-rich areas.

The bill is now headed to the Assembly for review.

In short, SB 902 would permit, but not require, local governments to implement zoning ordinances to permit housing projects of up to 10 units without CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) review, if the housing is located in a transit- or jobs-rich area or in an urban infill site.

San Francisco-based State Senator Scott Wiener says that this bill “provides cities with a powerful new tool to quickly re-zone for increased density.”

The bill was introduced following the Senate defeat of Wiener’s SB 50, a controversial housing production bill that would have preempted local control of zoning.

“If SB 902 becomes law, it would be among the most powerful tools cities have to increase the number of affordable homes in our cities,” read a June 23 statement from advocacy group California YIMBY celebrating the bill’s victory in the Senate.

-- Larchmont Chronicle, July 1, 2020

Sen. Wiener Takes another Shot at Upzoning State's Single-Family Landscape (San Francisco Business Times, June 23, 2020)

YIMBY California's priority policy and legislation for 2020

Bay Area Budgeting 3

/ California, Community Development, Economics, Nonprofit, Oakland, San Francisco

California Legislature OKs Placeholder Budget as Talks with Newsom Continue (San Francisco Chronicle, June 15, 2020)

Oakland Schools Face $35 Million or More in Budget Cuts (East Bay Times, June 13, 2020)

SF, Other Bay Area Counties Facing Huge Bill from California at Worst Possible Time (San Francisco Chronicle, June 12, 2020)

California Legislature Pressing Forward on Budget Vote without Deal with Newsom (San Francisco Chronicle, June 10, 2020)

California Has One Week to Pass a Budget. Congress Doesn’t Plan to Help in Time — If at All (Sacramento Bee, June 8, 2020)

“Mutually Repugnant:” Gov. Newsom and Lawmakers Pursue Budget Compromise (CalMatters, June 7, 2020)

Editorial: California Lawmakers Need Federal Bailout to Plug Budget Holes (San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 2020)

Editorial: California Legislature Needs to Get Real on Budget and Stop Counting on Federal Bailout (San Diego Union-Tribune, June 5, 2020)

Social Studies Chapter

/ Civil Rights, Minnesota, Oakland

Reviving the US Centers for Disease Control

/ Covid-19 Pandemic, Medicine

Editorial in The Lancet, May 16, 2020:

In the decades following its founding in 1946, the CDC became a national pillar of public health and globally respected. It trained cadres of applied epidemiologists to be deployed in the USA and abroad. CDC scientists have helped to discover new viruses and develop accurate tests for them. CDC support was instrumental in helping WHO to eradicate smallpox. However, funding to the CDC for a long time has been subject to conservative politics that have increasingly eroded the agency's ability to mount effective, evidence-based public health responses. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration resisted providing the sufficient budget that the CDC needed to fight the HIV/AIDS crisis. The George W Bush administration put restrictions on global and domestic HIV prevention and reproductive health programming.

The Trump administration further chipped away at the CDC's capacity to combat infectious diseases. CDC staff in China were cut back with the last remaining CDC officer recalled home from the China CDC in July, 2019, leaving an intelligence vacuum when COVID-19 began to emerge. In a press conference on Feb 25, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned US citizens to prepare for major disruptions to movement and everyday life. Messonnier subsequently no longer appeared at White House briefings on COVID-19. More recently, the Trump administration has questioned guidelines that the CDC has provided. These actions have undermined the CDC's leadership and its work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is no doubt that the CDC has made mistakes, especially on testing in the early stages of the pandemic. The agency was so convinced that it had contained the virus that it retained control of all diagnostic testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, but this was followed by the admission on Feb 12 that the CDC had developed faulty test kits. The USA is still nowhere near able to provide the basic surveillance or laboratory testing infrastructure needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

But punishing the agency by marginalising and hobbling it is not the solution. The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear. But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency. The CDC needs a director who can provide leadership without the threat of being silenced and who has the technical capacity to lead today's complicated effort.

The Trump administration's further erosion of the CDC will harm global cooperation in science and public health, as it is trying to do by defunding WHO. A strong CDC is needed to respond to public health threats, both domestic and international, and to help prevent the next inevitable pandemic. Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.