While the total number of Paycheck Protection Program loans received is high in California, when broken down to SBA loan dollars per capita, California ranks near the bottom at $845 per capita, while a small state such as North Dakota is at $2,037 per capita. That's part of the findings of...
Fresno in Orange Tier. Restaurants, Movie Theaters Rise to 50% Indoor Capacity
State officials announced that Fresno County can move into the Orange tier on Wednesday — great news for businesses such as restaurants and entertainment venues under COVID-19 restrictions. Under the orange tier, restaurants can open indoors at 50% capacity. Movie theaters can also open at 50% capacity, and gyms can...
Costa, Feinstein Introduce Bill to Restore Valley Canals. No Money for Dams.
Rep. Jim Costa and U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein introduced the bipartisan Canal Conveyance Capacity Restoration Act on Thursday, a bill to authorize more than $653 million to restore the capacity of three San Joaquin Valley canals. Restoring these canals would improve California’s drought resilience and help farmers comply with limits on...
‘Data Dump’ Held Merced Back in Most Restrictive Tier Until Wednesday Fix
Merced County moved out of the state's most restrictive COVID tier on Wednesday after California health officials corrected for delayed reporting of coronavirus test results. A sudden surge of case reports from a testing laboratory kept Merced County from moving into a less restrictive reopening tier last week, county officials...
April Has Never Been This Dry, Say Researchers, as Cal Fire Begins to Staff Up
Moisture content in vegetation is typically not something Cal Fire has to pay attention to until May or June. This is not a typical year. The U.S. Forest Service checked fuels in the Sierra Nevada foothills of eastern Fresno County on April 1 because of abnormally dry conditions. Also atypical:...
Hurtado’s Bill Knocks Down Barriers for Valley Medical Students
California's community colleges don't offer a pipeline facilitating a student's ability to attend medical school. But Senate Bill 40 by state Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, seeks to fix that, and it has unanimously passed the Senate Health Committee. "We're in a provider shortage in the Valley that's already bad," says Hurtado. "We...
‘Decent’ Chance of Getting to Orange COVID Tier Soon, County Officials Say
The words tier, quartile, metric, positivity and case rate have reverberated across tongues since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, in layman's terms, Fresno County is inching ever so close to loosening more life restrictions in the coming weeks. First, the numbers that matter most right now. The county...
Local Street Racing Victim Remembered as Bill to Increase ‘Sideshow’ Penalties Progresses
Nearly three months after she died in an incident tied to illegal street racing, Sanger High School student Allison Tia Chang has a memorial scholarship in her name. Chang, 17, and her cousins, Linda Chang, 21, and Christopher Vang, 27, died after a speeding car ran a red light at...
California Lawmakers Push Bill To Decertify Police, End Qualified Immunity
[aggregation-styles] CapRadio California lawmakers are eyeing new police reforms after having “mild successes” following the police killing of George Floyd and nationwide calls for increased police accountability last year. Among the proposals is a bill to create a process to strip badges from police officers who commit certain crimes or...
After Bill Maher’s High-Speed Rail Rant, Valley Mayor Says ‘This Is the Future’
HBO's Bill Maher is described as irrepressible, opinionated, and of course, politically incorrect. On his 'Real Time With Bill Maher' show last Friday, he stepped into the topic of California's High-Speed Rail project and simultaneously slammed two Central Valley cities. “We’re six billion in the hole just trying to finish...