The California legislature is contemplating passage of a bill similar in virtually all respects to one vetoed last year by Governor Gavin Newsom which would allow striking workers to claim unemployment benefits.
The proposed legislation, Senate Bill 1116 by Democrat State Senator Henry Portantino, would give striking workers the ability to claim unemployment after two weeks of striking. Under the bill, striking claimants would be paid, like any temporarily unemployed worker in the state, from their particular former employer’s reserve account in the unemployment insurance fund.
In describing Senate Bill 1116, Portantino, whose 25th Senate District includes Upland in San Bernardino County, said, “Senate Bill 1116Will allow striking or locked out workers to be eligible to receive UI benefits for the duration of the dispute after the dispute has lasted more than two weeks.”
Senate Bill 1116 is a slight redraft of Senate Bill 799, introduced by Portantino last year and which was passed by the legislature. Senate Bill 799 was to restore unemployment insurance eligibility for striking workers who left work because of a trade dispute after those workers were voluntarily off their job for two weeks. The bill codified specified case law that held employees who left work due to a lockout by the employer, even if it was in anticipation of a trade dispute, were eligible for benefits. The bill made clear that the bill’s provisions did not diminish eligibility for benefits of individuals deprived of work due to an employer lockout or similar action. Governor Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 799.
Senate Bill 1116 which would allow workers who have left work as part of a strike action to apply for and to receive, after two weeks without a paycheck, unemployment benefits.
The bill is being opposed by the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Bankers Association, the California Building Industry Association, the California Farm Bureau California, the California Grocers Association, the California Hospital Association, the California Hotel & Lodging Association, the California League of Food Producers, the California Manufacturers & Technology Association, the California Restaurant Association, the California Retailers Association, the California Taxpayers Association, the California Travel Association, the California Trucking Association, the Western Electrical Contractors Association and the Western Growers Association.
A letter from the California Chamber of Commerce to Senator Portantino states, “SB 1116 fundamentally alters the nature of unemployment insurance by providing unemployment to workers who still have a job and have voluntarily chosen to temporarily refuse to work as a negotiating tactic. Striking is obviously a federally protected right and has historically been a key strategy in labor disputes. But being on strike is not the same as being terminated. Striking workers generally have the right to return to their position at the conclusion of the labor dispute, under both federal law and union contracts. In contrast, an employee who has been terminated has no similar job waiting for [him or her] and is truly facing an uncertain future—which unemployment insurance helps by providing some support while [that person] looks for new work. Striking workers have a job—they are just choosing not to work in order to create economic pressure and negotiate. That is not the same as having no idea where your next paycheck comes from. SB 1116 is a profound departure from unemployment insurance’s history, and a significant tax increase on California’s employers, including those who have no involvement in any labor disputes. Moreover, with a recession potentially in our future, SB 1116 risks compounding unemployment insurance’s insolvency—which will weigh heavily on the State, California’s employers, and California’s truly unemployed.”
At present, California does not have sufficient money to pay for unemployment benefits now being doled out to the state’s unemployed workers. To maintain its unemployment insurance system and continue to provide checks to the unemployed, the state has taken out nearly $20 billion in federal loans, which need to be paid back with interest.
California’s unemployment insurance fund is provided entirely by employers. In this way, the debt the system is taking on will ultimately be borne by California employers. In essence, Senate Bill 1116 would require that employers subsidize the strikes their own workers are engaged in, an activity diametrically against their own interest. Moreover, SB 1116 will effectively put employers with businesses against which no labor action is taking place to subsidize strikes against other companies, some of which may be their competitors, because the unemployment insurance fund’s debt adds taxes for all employers uniformly.

Unemployment insurance payments are intended to assist employees who through circumsances beyond their control have become separated from employment. Federal law sets out the basic requirements for individuals to qualify, including being “ready and willing to immediately accept work” and “totally or partially unemployed,” and “actively looking for work.”
The California Unemployment Insurance Fund is already enmeshed in historic debt, which at present runs to roughly $20 billion, a circumstance that was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown mandates. Consequently, California employers already are paying increased unemployment insurance taxes based upon both state and federal pursuant requirements. Projections are those increases will continue under the current conditions and actuarials at least until 2032.
California is already plagued by a growing interest payment to simply remain in a static position with regard to its unemployment insurance fund within the State of California’s general fund. In 2023–2024, that interest payment has reached $300 and that payment will continue to escalate until the unemployment insurance fund returns to solvency. In the proposed 2024–2025 budget, the interest payment will rise to a projected $331 million. SB 1116 risks compounding the unemployment insurance fund’s insolvency.
Upon the fund becoming insolvent, employers have faced these escalating unemployment insurance taxes to the point of their current exorbitance, ones which in anything approaching a full-blown recession would force the majority of companies out of business.

A group of Democrats from the Assembly, State Senate and Governor Gavin Newsom’s office are negotiating and engaging in horsetrading with regard to our next budget in private. There are no Republicans nor media allowed in the room where all of this is taking place.
In years where a budget has been formulated well before the start of the government’s July 1 to June 30 fiscal year, representatives from the state legislature, including lawmakers from both major parties, hash out the state’s annual spending plan during committee meetings and in private conferences in what logically fits the definition of a bipartisan give and take, though the party in the minority has historically given more and the party in the majority has taken more.
In those years when the July 1 deadline is approaching or has elapsed and a budget agreement has not been closed, the legislature passes what is referred to as a placeholder state budget, which is usually a clone of the previous year’s budget that allows the government continue to run. A placeholder budget is also a means of getting around the requirement in California that lawmakers not be paid if they fail to pass a budget by the annual deadline.
Given the Democrats’ supermajority in both houses of the state legislature, now that Sacramento has entered into the province of final budget negotiations, all political nicities have been dispensed with. Using bare-knuckle tactics, senior Democrats have employed the State Capitol’s police to bar the door to the negotiating room and only Democrats have been allowed in.
Inside are Governor Newsom’s representatives and foremost, representatives for Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, as well as, on occasion Newsom, Rivas and McGuire themselves, along with Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel, the chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee and California Senate Budget Committee Chairman Scott Wiener and their staff members.
Efforts by a group of reporters, including Sentinel correspondent Steven Frank, to wheedle from the participants where those negotiations are leading produced no meaningful response.
The best information was a terse statement from Gabriel.
“There’s a shared set of priorities here,” Gabriel said. “It’s more about what are the most effective solutions, what are the programs and services that we think are the best way to go forward versus others.”
Newsom’s office and his Department of Finance declined to answer questions about the remaining differences with the legislature that still need to be worked out.
How close those parties are to a final deal is anybody’s guess. The discussions are taking place entirely out of public view and when the participants emerge, they rarely respond to questions from the public or the press and will only convey what they know privately to other members of the legislature.

Yesterday, Thursday June 20, the First Amendment Coalition and the Student Press Law Center, along with 24 other free speech and press freedom organizations, called on the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office to decline charges against a student journalist who was arrested while covering a demonstration at Stanford University.
Police arrested Dilan Gohill, 19, a first-year Stanford student and reporter for The Stanford Daily, along with 12 protesters after the university sought a law enforcement response to demonstrations that were taking place on June 5. Those protests included occupation of the Stanford president’s office. Gohill was held in jail for 15 hours and faces charges of felony burglary, vandalism and conspiracy, according to his lawyers and the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
According to the First Amendment Coalition, Gohill’s journalistic assignments extend to covering student activism and campus developments, such that he was caught up in events he was there to observe which were beyond his control. As someone who was not actively involved in the activities for which others have been criminally cited, his prosecution is not warranted according to the letter, which was authored jointly by the First Amendment Coalition and the Student Press Law Center and signed onto by the ACLU of Northern California, the Los Angeles Chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association, the Associated Collegiate Press, the Los Angeles Chaptger of the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, the California News Publishers Association, CCNMA Latino Journalists of California, the Coalition For Women In Journalism, the College Media Association, the First Amendment Foundation, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Los Angeles Press Club, the Media Alliance, Media Guild of the West/News Guild-Communications Workers of America Local 39213, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Press Photographers Association, the Orange County Press Club, the Radio Television Digital News Association, the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the San Diego Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, The NewsGuild-CWA Local 39521 and Women Press Freedom.
According to the letter, “It is clear to us that Gohill was present to cover the news. As the editorial board of The Stanford Daily explained, Gohill was on assignment and did not plan or participate in the protest in any way. It is our understanding he did not break into any buildings, vandalize any property or engage in the creation of barricades. In the course of his reporting, Gohill became barricaded inside the building. He identified himself as a reporter, displaying his newspaper-issued press badge and wearing a red Stanford Daily sweatshirt, which visibly distinguished him from protesters who dressed in black. When officers arrived, Gohill told them he was a member of the press, and protesters even told police he was not one of them, an interaction his editors could hear via speakerphone. Further demonstrating that Gohill was present in his capacity as a journalist, he published breaking news detailing activity inside the building.”
A dispatch on The Stanford Daily’s website reads. “Once inside, protestors barricaded doors with bike locks, chains, ladders and chairs and covered security cameras with tin foil.”
According to the letter Gohill’s journalistic efforts relating to the events of June 5 helped inform the outside world, including the campus police officers who ultimately arrested him, of what was taking place in side the Stanford president’s office.
“Gohill’s coverage of the events helped inform the campus and broader community of protester demands and conduct, and of the university and law enforcement response,” the letter states. “Given these circumstances, it is difficult to see how charging Gohill with multiple felonies serves the interests of justice, especially because as a journalist reporting on breaking news he lacked the requisite intent for the crimes he is accused of committing.”
The letter, while advocating on Gohill’s behalf, does acknowledge that he willingly placed himself within a context of activity authorities deemed illegal.
“The Israel-Hamas war and related protest movement is one of the biggest news stories of our time, especially on college campuses,” the letter states. “Gohill’s specific beat at The Daily is student activism. Given this dedicated area of coverage, you can understand how this would lead to an emerging journalist’s desire to closely follow protester activities, especially activities likely to prompt a law enforcement response. Based on the circumstances and absence of any criminal motivation, we urge your office to avoid expending significant resources prosecuting a young journalist who was acting in good faith to serve the public’s interest in timely coverage of newsworthy events.”
Rosen and his office have not made any public reaction to the letter.

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME
CIV SB 2409207
TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS:
Petitioner SAMANTHA G. KUNZMAN and DYLAN ALEX AMOS filed with this court for a decree changing names as follows:
LOULU BEA KUNZMAN to LOULU BEA AMOS
THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. If no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing.
Notice of Hearing:
Date: AUGUST 7, 2024
Time: 8:30 a.m.
Department: S17
The address of the court is Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino, 247 West Third Street, San Bernardino, CA 92415
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that a copy of this order be published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel in San Bernardino County California, once a week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing of the petition.
Gilbert Ochoa
Judge of the Superior Court.
Filed: April 15, 2024 by
Sen Yeung Shu, Deputy Court Clerk
Samantha G. Kunzman
Dylan Alex Amos
1306 Shadow Circle
Upland, CA 91784
(909) 368-9396
samandmadd@gmail.com
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel May 31 and June 7, 14 & 21, 2024.

ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME CASE
NUMBER 2416419,
TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS: Petitioner: Alexander T. Hutchins, filed with this court for a decree changing names as follows: Alexander Thomas Hutchins to Alexander Thomas Watson, THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. If no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing.
Notice of Hearing:
Date: 07/08/2024, Time: 08:30 AM, Department: S17The address of the court is Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino, San Bernardino District-Civil Division, 247 West Third Street, San Bernardino, CA 92415, IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that a copy of this order be published in the SBCS Ontario in San Bernardino County California, once a week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing of the petition.
Dated: 05/22/2024
Judge of the Superior Court: Gilbert Ochoa
Published in the SBCS Ontario on 05/31/2024, 06/07/2024, 06/14/2024, 06/21/2024

Continue reading →

By Mark Gutglueck
The sharp division on the San Bernardino City Council has not abated despite the temporary consensus that manifested on May 22 with the unanimous eight vote decision to terminate City Manager Charles Montoya. Up in the air is whether the council will proceed with its ruling majority’s earlier-stated intention of censuring Councilwoman Kimberly Calvin before she leaves office later this year.
The poisonous political atmosphere which has been brewing for more than 18 months has created tensions which now extend to questions over the continuing tenure of the city attorney and whether the elected leadership will be able to resolve its differences in a way that will allow the city to find an administrator to plan, organize, direct and control municipal operations in the county seat for a duration which will allow for the return of stability in the 170-year-old city.
Shortly after Helen Tran’s electoral victory in the 2022 mayoral election which saw then-Mayor John Valdivia – a highly polarizing figure – defeated and due to leave office, then-City Manager Robert Field resigned over concerns that his ties to Valdivia would leave him at odds with the incoming Tran regime. The city council then turned to former City Manager Charles McNeely to serve as interim city manager while a recruitment for Field’s replacement was carried out by the Berkeley-based Koff & Associates/Arthur J. Gallagher & Company headhunting firm.
In bringing in McNeely, the council made a fateful commitment that at least some would come to regret. They declared that whoever was to serve in the interim management capacity would not be eligible for consideration in the recruitment of a long-term city manager. Within a few months, McNeely, who had provisionally come out of retirement to take on the temporary assignment, began to warm toward the idea of reassuming the post of city manager on a full-fledged basis. This sparked a division within the city council, with some members wanting to rescind the prohibition against the interim city manager being considered as a candidate for the top city administrative post and others insisting that the city stand by the rules it had set up. Meanwhile, some 67 individuals with varying levels of municipal management experience applied for the San Bernardino City Manager’s post. After Koff & Associates/Arthur J. Gallagher & Company eliminated 44 of those and winnowed the field to 23, the city council carried out remote interviews with those candidates using the Zoom real time video/audio platform. Continue reading →

With the arrival of summer nearing, lower downs in the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department are complying with orders from higher ups to get aggressive with the county’s homeless population in an effort to induce them to leave for places elsewhere.
Around the county, the destitute tend to congregate and set up living quarters on sidewalks, in parks, alleyways, in the Mojave River, Santa Ana River or Lytle Creek riverbeds or around them, under railroad trestles or freeway overpasses, hidden in the spreads of chaparral that are a feature of much of the undeveloped land locally or within the landscaping along freeways or state highways.
Since late May, the sheriff’s department, which serves as the contract police department in Rancho Cucamonga, has vectored its deputies, working in conjunction with the California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans, to remove homeless individuals subsisting in encampments. Over the past several weeks, the department received information regarding two such makeshift living arrangements located near the Interstate 15 Freeway’s intersection with Foothill Boulevard and Arrow Route. Continue reading →

On June 12, the Yucaipa City Council signed off on its 57,766-population city’s 2024-25 spending plan, which is to entail $7.3 million less in revenue than expenditures in its two operating budgets.
This is the second year in a row that the city is engaging in deficit spending. The revenue shortfall is to be made up by drawing funds out of the city’s reserves.
According to Phil White, Yucaipa’s director of finance, it is anticipated that approximately $35.7 million will flow into the city’s general fund from all external sources in the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2024 and ending June 30, 2025. Over the same 12 months, there will be $40.1 million in expenditures from the general fund. “The net of these budgetary flows is a general fund deficit of $4.4 million,” White stated.
The other category contained in Yucaipa’s operations budget is its public safety fund. This coming year, the public safety fund is projected to make total outlays of $23.5 million. Of that, $13.6 million is to be consumed by making good on the city’s contract with San Bernardino County for the law enforcement services of the sheriff’s department, which serves as the city police department in Yucaipa, as is the case with 13 other county municipalities, those being Adelanto, Apple Valley, Big Bear Lake, Chino Hills, Grand Terrace, Hesperia, Highland, Loma Linda, Needles, Rancho Cucamonga, Twentynine Palms, Victorville and Yucca Valley. The city contracts with the California Division of Forestry and Fire Protection, known by its acronym, CalFire, for both fire protection and paramedic services. Yucaipa is due to pay CalFire $5.3 million for fire protection services and $2.1 million for paramedic services. Included in the inflows to the public safety fund is a transfer from the city’s fire fund. While by set arrangment, the public safety fund is balance by the same amount of money being put into it on a yearly basis as it taken out, to do that this year requires a transfer of $2.9 million from the city’s fire fund. That $2.9 transfer is logged as an unfunded payment. Continue reading →

Corie Smith, the former sheriff’s deputy who was presented with two lifesaving awards in 2020 but whose law enforcement career ended in ignominy the following year when he was caught on video kicking a prone and surrendering suspect in the head, this week successfully concluded his and his legal team’s three-year battle to keep him from being labeled a felon.
Smith’s trial on the charge begun on April 29 before Judge Ingrid Uhler with Deputy District Attorney Melissa Emperatriz-Rivera prosecuting the matter and Smith represented by attorneys Michael Selyem and Kasey Castillo. Evidence was presented and testimony heard on April 30, May 1, 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 23, 29, 30, with deliberations beginning on May 30 and continuing on June 3 and 4.
At three junctures the panel took a vote as to where it stood. The first time, jurors were evenly split, 6-to-6 for acquittal and conviction; the second time 7-to-5 for acquittal and, on June 4, 7-to-5 for conviction.
At that point, Judge Uhler declared a mistrial and scheduled a hearing on June 7 in order to begin preparations for a retrial.
During the trial, on May 14, Selyem and Castillo brought a PC1118.1 motion, based on the presentation of testimony and evidence to that point which they said clearly demonstrated there was insufficient evidence before the court to sustain a conviction, such that the case should not be submitted to the jury for a decision and an acquittal should be entered. Judge Uhler denied the motion. On June 7, Emperatriz-Rivera came to court, prepared to request the court’s permission to retry the case. At that point, however, Judge Uhler, apparently on the basis of the jury’s failure to reach a verdict and the May 14 PC1118.1 motion, over Emperatriz Rivera’s objection dismissed the case against Smith. Continue reading →

Less than a month after the California Political Fair Practices Commission put in place what it represented as final preparations to impose on Adelanto City Councilman Daniel Ramos one of the largest penalty assessments ever made against a local officeholder, the councilman has apparently begun negotiations with the state’s official political watchdog agency over how to cure the reporting violations he has amassed over the last six years.
According to the May 16, 2024 agenda for the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), Ramos, who is currently Adelanto’s mayor pro tem, despite numerous notifications and posted requests that he do so, had not submitted campaign fund accounting paperwork for his unsuccessful 2018 campaign for the Victorville City Council and he had further repeatedly failed to provide an accounting of his victorious 2020 campaign for the Adelanto City Council.
All told, it is estimated that Ramos collected and then spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $57,000 on both of those electoral efforts. An exact figure is not available because he has not filed the State Form 460 documents used to itemized donations to, expenditures from, loans to and from and nonmonetary contribution or in-kind payments relating to, his electioneering efforts. Continue reading →