by Suzanne Potter

California lawmakers are considering a range of options to combat a rise over the last two years of felony retail theft – large-scale shoplifting – and held the latest in a series of hearings in West Hollywood on Friday. The State Assembly Select Committee on Retail Theft heard from residents, business owners and social-justice groups.

Tinisch Hollins, executive director of the nonprofit Californians for Safety and Justice, said everyone agreed on one thing.

“The retailers and folks who patronize stores deserve safety. People should be able to do business. That’s not up for debate,” Hollins said, “But relying on incarceration, jail and prison and arrests are not going to get us out of this problem, because it’s far more complex.”

Some in law enforcement have suggested in recent years that Proposition 47, passed a decade ago, has contributed to the uptick. Prop 47 raised the threshold for felony theft to $950 – so if the amount stolen is more than that, it would be a felony with jail time.

The law addressed overcrowding in the jails and has saved $750 million since 2015 in incarceration costs, diverting it to programs that address drivers of crime, including poverty, addiction and mental illness.

Hollins says fear-mongering should not be allowed to undermine criminal justice reform and notes that just 8 percent of people who participate in Prop 47-funded programs end up back behind bars.

“There are many who are really capitalizing off the fact that people are scared that businesses are being impacted, and that there’s this perception that there’s lawlessness, but the truth is, there are ways for us to intervene in this crisis, and we should be using them,” Hollins said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed cracking down on resellers of stolen goods and clarifying that law enforcement can combine the value of multiple thefts to reach the threshold for felony grand theft.

Community health leaders press Congress for more stable funding

Community Health Center leaders are pleading with Congress to pass a budget deal by March 8 to avoid a partial government shutdown – arguing that the uncertainty around funding makes it difficult to function.

Funding issues are expected to dominate discussion at the annual National Association of Community Health Centers Policy and Issues Forum in Washington D.C. – which starts today.

Kimberly Chang is a family physician at Asian Health Services in Oakland, who also serves as the Speaker of the House for the NACHC’s executive board.

“Well, when you don’t have a stable funding path and you’re relying on Continuing Resolutions,” said Chang, “it’s so challenging to make plans for hiring additional staff and employ those initiatives to support the increased demand for our services. And we would never turn a patient away.”

Community Health Centers are clinics that see patients no matter their insurance status or ability to pay.

They also face a shortage of primary care doctors, plus inflation and a fluctuating patient population as people are dropped from the Medicaid rolls after the pandemic.

The U.S. House and Senate both have bills that would increase funding for the centers, but they’re tied up in budget negotiations that have dragged on since last fall.

Paloma Hernández is president and CEO at Urban Health Plan, and is the chair of the NACHC’s board. She pointed out that Community Health Centers are the country’s largest primary care network.

“Many of us provide oral health, behavioral health, pharmacy services, specialty services,” said Hernandez, “and then, we provide lots of related services that address some of the social drivers of health.”

Community Health Centers helped more than 31 million people in 2022 – at 15,000 clinics that employ close to 300,000 people.

California alone has more than 2,300 clinics, serving 5.6 million patients.

by Suzanne Potter

February 6, 2024 – Today is Safer Internet Day, a day to focus on ways to help your family thrive in the digital age.

The National Parent Teacher Association and a Silicon Valley company called ConnectSafely are offering an online presentation available starting today called Smart Digital Parenting: Navigating Screens with Children and Teens.

Yvonne Johnson, president of the National Parent Teacher Association, said parents and children need to have open, friendly, nonjudgmental discussions.

“The most important thing is we can’t panic when things go wrong,” Johnson explained. “You might hear something that freaks you out, right? But you have to listen calmly and ask questions, and then focus on solutions. I think that also creates the trust between the parent and the child.”

The PTA advised parents to focus on what they call the three T’s: talk, try and teach. This means parents should talk to their kids about the apps and games they like, try them together, and teach kids about security and privacy settings.

Mitchell Prinstein, chief science officer for the American Psychological Association, said when children are exposed to violence online, especially real-life incidents on the news, parents need to give context.

“It’s very important that we talk with kids about their own level of safety, primarily, when they see scary images, to help them understand why what they’re seeing online is highly likely or less likely to happen to them,” Prinstein urged. “Because kids’ fundamental issue is going to be their own personal protection, whether they can still rely on adults.”

California lawmakers passed a landmark bill in 2022, forcing companies to ensure their digital products do not harm children and teens before they hit the market, and require privacy measures to be included from the start. However, last September, a judge put the law on hold to determine whether it violates the tech companies’ First Amendment rights.

CA scores 37th in country for K-12 education funding

California ranks 37th out of 48 states for spending on K-12 education – according to a new report from Rutgers University, the University of Miami, and the nonprofit Albert Shanker Institute.

The annual School Finance Indicators Database found that California is spending more than 14 percent less than it did before the great recession of 2008.

Report co-author Professor Bruce Baker of the University of Miami said California is considered a “low-effort” state because its spending on education is not commensurate with its economic might.

“They’ve improved in the last few years, but they were in such a hole for so long because of tax and expenditure limits imposed in the late 70s – Prop 13,” said Baker. “So, California’s effort is still below the national average.”

The report finds that 69 percent of students in California live in underfunded school districts, and 32% in chronically underfunded districts.

However, California fares better – ranking 14th in the country – on shrinking the so-called “opportunity gap,” which measures the difference between the highest- and lowest-funded school districts.

Congress allocated billions to help schools weather the pandemic.

Mary Cathryn Ricker, president of the Albert Shanker Institute, said although the federal government did allow states to budget that money into successive school years, the investment is running out and there is no consistent long-term funding plan to replace it.

“Right now, everyone is concerned about the so-called fiscal cliff coming when federal pandemic aid runs out,” said Ricker. “But school funding in most states actually fell off a fiscal cliff 15 years ago and never got back up.”

For the coming fiscal year, California faces a $38 billion deficit. Nonetheless, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $291 billion budget proposal avoids cuts to K-12 schools, which serve almost 6 million students.