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Police Arrest 2 Accused of California Unemployment Fraud

SACRAMENTO — When police in California's capital city searched an apartment in mid-January, the most telling item they found wasn't the illegal assault weapons — it was a small red notebook filled with 55 names and their birthdays, Social Security numbers, usernames and passwords associated with accounts at the state's...

Walters: How Do We Close the Economic Divide?

The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) is one of the state’s treasures, supplying invaluable, in-depth research into our thorniest issues such as water, housing, transportation and, most importantly, the state’s socioeconomic fragmentation. California’s politicians rarely make any progress in addressing those issues, but PPIC’s research — and its high-quality...

Audit: California Jobless Agency’s Inaction Led to Fraud

SACRAMENTO — California’s unemployment agency was warned early in the pandemic about an increase in fraudulent jobless claims yet waited four months before it made any substantive changes to its systems, according to a new audit released Thursday that blames Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration for “significant missteps and inaction” that...

Blue Shield of California Tapped to Speed Up State Vaccines

SAN FRANCISCO — Health insurance giant Blue Shield of California will be the outside administrator tasked with ramping up coronavirus vaccinations, which to date has been slow, stilted and plagued by confusion, the state health agency said in a statement Wednesday. Another major health care provider, Kaiser Permanente, will also...

After Criticism, California Discloses Math Behind Easing Stay-at-Home Order

California’s health director on Tuesday revealed the math behind the state's calculation that it was safe to lift all remaining stay-at-home orders, a response to criticism that Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration was hiding key data affecting people's lives and livelihoods. A half-dozen formulas were used to project that all regions...

Audit: Millions May Have to Repay California Jobless Aid

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California's unemployment agency might have overpaid millions of people since March after it stopped enforcing some eligibility rules so they could process claims faster, according to a new audit released Tuesday. As millions of claims poured in during the height of state restrictions on businesses, state officials...

California Public Schools Suffer Record Enrollment Drop

California’s K-12 public-school enrollment has precipitously declined during the pandemic, dropping by a record 155,000 students, according to new state projections. That drop-off is about five times greater than California’s annual rate of enrollment decline in recent years. The state, which boasts the largest student enrollment in the country, has...

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