Here's what's happening in the Bay, as curated by KALW news:
The most important new California laws of 2016 // KQED
It was a big year, legislatively, in Sacramento: With the budget wrapped up in June, lawmakers passed hundreds of laws dealing with everything from climate change to workers rights. Here’s KQED’s annual roundup of highlights.
All of these bills take effect Jan. 1, unless we note otherwise.
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Super bowl committee raising millions, with little transparency // SF Chronicle
The Super Bowl 50 Host Committee — the organization charged with raising money to produce events around the Bay Area leading up to and including February’s big game — has already raised $50 million from leading Bay Area corporations.
It also has pledged $12 million to more than 100 Bay Area nonprofits, a major step toward its goal of being 'the most philanthropic Super Bowl ever.'
But because the NFL requires its host committees to be structured as nonprofit organizations — claiming the same tax-exempt status that the National Football League enjoyed for decades — it doesn’t have to reveal its contributors or how much each donor gave.
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Contra Costa's first truancy court goes after parents // Contra Costa Times
MARTINEZ -- One by one, they approached the bench to answer to the judge.
'He's afraid -- he doesn't want to go. I don't know what his issue with school is,' Mt. Diablo Unified parent Maria Martinez said through an interpreter when asked why her fifth-grader had missed 51 days of classes the previous academic year and was late for 23 more.
Contra Costa Superior Court Judge Rebecca Hardie's response was swift and emphatic.
'It is your obligation under state law to be sure he's at school every day and on time,' she told Martinez and her husband. 'You must get your child to school.'
For two hours every other Friday, Hardie hears cases that school districts have referred to the District Attorney's Office after exhausting attempts to convince parents that they need to get their child to class. Known as the parent truancy calendar, it's the latest effort among Contra Costa County officials to curtail chronic truancy, which they say costs area schools millions of dollars and leads to crime.
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New BART escalator show SF stations disproportionately affected by downtime // Hoodline
A broken BART escalator is a sight with which San Franciscans are all too familiar, but the agency is trying to achieve transparency through a new "Escalator Status" module on its website, which is currently in beta testing mode.
The module shows which escalators are down, the severity of the damage, and when they're expected to be restored, though it lacks data on when each escalator shutdown initially occurred.
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Google looks to expand in Alameda // Inside Bay Area
ALAMEDA -- Google aims to expand at the former Alameda Naval Air Station, where the technology giant plans to lease a third building.
Google has been at the former military base since 2013, when it acquired Makani Power, a company specializing in wind-power technology development that was then leasing about 17,000 square feet of a former aircraft hangar.
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Helping animals actually helps people // SF Examiner
Gandhi once said you can judge the greatness of a nation by the way it treats its animals. What does it say about San Francisco that its city animal shelter is housed in a building from 1931 that is too small for its needs and likely to collapse in the next big earthquake?
The human-animal bond is strong and enriches our lives. We love our cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters and birds. The unconditional love of a pet may be the only tenderness a homeless person feels. Pets calm veterans battling PTSD. Search-and-rescue dogs save lives. Many of these amazing animals originally came from city shelters, such as San Francisco’s Animal Care and Control.
No one disputes the fact that we need a new animal shelter; the issue is how to pay for it. And, surprisingly, in the City of St. Francis, there are some who argue we should spend city money exclusively on people, not animals.