California has frozen 1.4 million unemployment claims as it battles fraud in its massive coronavirus unemployment relief program, it was reported Wednesday. The state Employment Development Department said it had examined existing claims from people who said they lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic and found about 3.5 million...
Walters: Employment Development Department Another Name for Titanic Disaster
“Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic” is an overworked cliché, but it certainly applies to California’s Employment Development Department. The name itself is a farce. There’s no evidence that EDD ever developed any jobs, other than employing thousands of bureaucrats to pay out unemployment insurance benefits — and that’s been...
Valley Patients Could be Diverted to Out of Area Hospitals Under New Health Order
California is so swamped by the coronavirus pandemic that the state has ordered hospitals with room to accept patients from others that have maxed out on intensive care beds. The public health order issued late Tuesday is the latest attempt by authorities to confront a surge in coronavirus infections and...
Out-of-State Inmates May Have Claimed $42M in California Job Benefits, Analysis Shows
More than $40 million in California funding intended to help people left jobless by the coronavirus pandemic probably went to inmates in out-of-state jails and prisons, it was reported Tuesday. The state has acknowledged that its Employment Development Department was bilked out of hundreds of millions of dollars in COVID-19...
Walters: California’s Population May Be Declining
For decades, a cliché about California was that the weather was always sunny and mild during Pasadena’s Rose Bowl Parade on New Year’s Day, and snowbound television viewers in other states were thus enticed to migrate westward. The cliché had a kernel of fact. California did experience very strong population...
How Newport Beach Ended up With 2 Affordable Housing Units in 8 Years
They say you get what you pay for, but when it comes to affordable housing, wealthy Southern California cities are paying to get almost nothing. And that’s exactly the way they want it. Between 2013 and 2021, the state of California allocated the city of Newport Beach a total of two...
California Is Third State to Pass 25,000 Coronavirus Deaths
LOS ANGELES — California on Thursday surpassed 25,000 coronavirus deaths since the start of the pandemic, the third state to do so after New York and Texas, health officials said. The grim milestone comes as the nation's most populated state faces a surge of COVID-19 infections that has hospitals stretched...
COVID Lockdown Extended in Valley, Southern Cal Amid Surge
California extended its strict stay-at-home orders Tuesday in areas where intensive care units are running out of beds, coming after Gov. Gavin Newsom warned residents to brace for the effect of a “surge on top of a surge” of coronavirus cases from holiday travel. The state's top health official, Dr....
Southern California Mountains Coated in Snow After Storm
MOUNT BALDY VILLAGE — Southern California’s mountains sported a substantial coat of snow Tuesday after the region’s first significant storm of the winter. Ski and snowboarding areas in the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains reported as much as 24 inches of new snow from the vigorous storm that rolled...
‘Surge on Top of a Surge’ to Challenge California Hospitals
LOS ANGELES — Coronavirus hospitalizations are stabilizing in parts of California, but patients are still overwhelming hospitals in a large swath of the state, leading Gov. Gavin Newsom to warn Californians to brace for the effect of a “surge on top of a surge" from recent holiday travel. Intensive care...