The Lookout: As the Pandemic Drags on, Cal Lawmakers Push Bills to Keep Public Meetings Virtual - Los Angeles Sentinel
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Legislative Update: Transit Boards, High-Speed Rail, New Agencies
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A record number of California Democratic lawmakers were dinged on the 2020 legislative scorecard released by a statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization. Thirty-three Democrats in the state Legislature failed to receive perfect scores last year due to not casting yes votes for LGBTQ bills.
It is the highest number of Democratic legislators falling below a 100% score since 2006. That year, 22 Democrats in the statehouse earned less than perfect scores due to not voting in support of LGBTQ legislation.
Equality California posted its 2020 scorecard to its website Friday, January 15, prior to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. EQCA also tweeted out a link to the scorecard that day along with a number of tweets praising various lawmakers who earned perfect scores, among them Assemblyman Chad Meyes (I-Yucca Valley), who left the Republican Party a year ago this month.
Prison release expected for driver in Northern California bus crash that killed 11 [The Sacramento Bee]
Jan. 18 The driver of a casino-bound bus that crashed into a ditch north of Sacramento and killed 11 passengers in 2008 will likely be ordered released from prison next month, according to his attorney.
The secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Kathleen Allison, called for the driver, Quinton Watts, to be resentenced in a letter to the Colusa County District Attorney’s Office, Watts’ public defender, and the judge who presided over the case.
A state review, Allison wrote, found that Watts was eligible for a reduction in prison time under a legal provision that allows a judge to correct for disparities and account for good behavior while a person is in prison. “I recommend the inmate’s sentence be recalled and that he be resentenced,” Allison wrote in the letter filed in Colusa County Superior Court.