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Honoring Lautenberg’s commitment to chemical safety

The American public lost a strong champion for chemical disclosure and health and safety oversight when Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) died on June 3. The nation mourns his passing. Elected to the Senate in 1982, Sen. Lautenberg introduced the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, which established the Toxics Release Inventory. This law requires a number of industries to publicly report the toxic emissions their facilities produce; this exposure has significantly reduced pollution. Taking the lead on this legislation was [...]
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Columns Opinion Your Column Here
Letter: Renters first

Editor: Here they go again! Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights every year has to think up more and more devious tricks on apartment owners to get re-elected. They have ruled over us for 35 years by kicking apartment owners and scaring renters into voting them back in, even after they have sold us out long ago to developers and tourism and their union cronies. This year they did a double whammy by increasing rents by only 1 percent and forcing [...]
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Letters Opinion
Letter: George saw this coming

Editor: Since it is obvious to me that approximately 99 percent of Santa Monicans are against overbuilding, I’ve been trying to figure out who the powerful few are that always go against the will of the people and get their way in spite of it. What are they thinking? Why do they win? In the last city election, I tried to vote for candidates who would slow growth, but it was very hard to sort out the facts about candidates [...]
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Letters Opinion
Letter: Ray of hope

Editor: Since Santa Monica’s transformation into Dubai by the bay, its warmth and charms are gone. It has turned into a money pit for developers, plain and simple. The Coastal Commission has it right as far as a height cap of 45 feet. That isn’t going to happen, instead we are going to see 84-feet buildings being built in Downtown. That’s six-story buildings where one- and two-story buildings once stood. I would love to see a freeze on all development [...]
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Letters Opinion
Man pleads guilty to assault with bicycle

THIRD STREET PROMENADE — For the first time in Santa Monica someone plead guilty to assault with a deadly weapon after seriously wounding a pedestrian last year while recklessly cycling near the bustling Third Street Promenade, police said. Rocky Martin, a 38-year-old Los Angeles resident, was sentenced to three years formal felony probation and 30 days of community service on May 31 for striking a female pedestrian with his bike on June 24, 2012 after failing to stop at a [...]
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Crime Featured News Transportation
L.A. tentatively bans plastic bags

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles is one council vote away from becoming the nation’s largest city to pass a ban on plastic grocery bags, which officials say will stop the flow of 2 billion single-use bags that are distributed each year and often end up in gutters and on beaches. The City Council voted 11-1 Tuesday in favor of the ban. Since it failed to earn unanimous approval, the ordinance will face a second vote next week. The Santa Monica [...]
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Environment Featured News
New fund to address community violence

VIRGINIA AVENUE PARK — City, school district and Santa Monica College officials announced the creation of the Youth & Family Violence Prevention Fund Tuesday that they hope will propel forward efforts to address violence in the wake of three shootings in early June. The fund, which received $50,000 in seed money from a private donor, will be used to put in place a “whatever it takes” program that chooses at-risk youth between the ages of 14 and 24 and provides [...]
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Education Featured News Public Santa Monica College
Basketball: Samohi’s Jackson picks Sac State

SAMOHI — Former Santa Monica star point guard Trevis Jackson has picked Sacramento State to continue his basketball career. After leading Samohi to its first CIF-Southern Section championship in the sport since 1987 and an appearance in the state Division 1 title game, Jackson liked what Sac State had to offer. “I picked Sac because it was one of the schools that would allow me to pursue my dream of playing basketball at the Division 1 level,” Jackson said. “Also, [...]
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Featured High School Sports
Brief: Webcams launched at Pacific Park

Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier launched three new live streaming high-definition webcams recording events in the park, on the Pacific Wheel and at the pier. The videos are viewable on the park’s website. The cameras will provide 360 degree views of the amusement park, a stationary shot of the world’s only solar-powered Ferris wheel along with the West Coaster roller coaster in the foreground and a bird’s eye view of the west end of the pier. “We encourage [...]
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Briefs Featured News
Brief: Vacancy on Personnel Board

There’s a vacancy to serve on City Hall’s Personnel Board. Applications are due by July 16 and the selected person will be appointed at a City Council meeting on July 23. The Personnel Board is an advisory body to the council and personnel director on matters pertaining to personnel administration and a quasi-judicial review body for hearing employee appeals of certain disciplinary actions. In conducting its business the board considers the rights and interests of city employees, the city administration [...]
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Briefs Government News
State’s older adult education programs must be saved

California has a long and glorious history of providing educational opportunities to all segments of its population. Lately, however, this commitment to life-long learning has faltered, and we should all be concerned. If a measure, known as Senate Bill 173, already approved by the Senate and pending in the Assembly, is signed into law by Gov. Brown, classes for older adults and health and safety education would no longer be funded. By comparison, the governor’s revised budget calls for continuation [...]
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Columns Opinion Your Column Here
Prop. 13 under assault by Assembly

For millions of California homeowners, Saturday was a day that will live in infamy. Without a single public hearing, the California Assembly passed Assembly Constitutional Amendment No. 8 (ACA 8), the most egregious attack on Prop. 13 ever to come out of the Legislature. ACA 8 would repeal Prop. 13’s requirement that local “special taxes” (taxes intended for a specific purpose or purposes) be approved by a two-thirds vote. Instead, special taxes imposed for the repayment of local bonded indebtedness [...]
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Columns Opinion The Tax Man
Letter: Talking apples, oranges

Editor: I find the writers of [the column] Room for a View to be somewhat disingenuous. They write only of square footage in proposed and approved new projects (“Creating a different Downtown,” Room for a View, June 12). They neglected to mention what worries most of us: it’s the height and density of buildings, not the total square footage. Moreover, Colorado Center, the Arboretum, and the Water Garden are at the more eastern end of Santa Monica, and don’t impinge [...]
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Letters Opinion
Letter: Respect my privacy

Editor: As per our new law, I received from my landlord a document to fill in and sign stating that I do or do not smoke in my Santa Monica apartment. I returned it blank with an enclosed signed affidavit explaining that, “the government, including our Santa Monica City Council, has no right to demand that I declare what I do or intend to do in the privacy of my own home.” If our city leaders really care about reducing [...]
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Letters Opinion
Giffords calls shootings ‘eerily reminiscent’

DOWNTOWN — On the six-month anniversary of the deadly Newtown, Conn. school shooting that shocked the nation and renewed efforts for stricter gun control laws, former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords — who was the victim of a shooting in her hometown of Tucson, Ariz. in 2011 — called the recent Santa Monica shooting rampage “eerily reminiscent.” In an opinion piece for the Newtown Bee, Giffords and Roxanna Green, whose 9-year-old daughter was killed in the Tucson, Ariz. shooting, called for “common-sense solutions [...]
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Crime Featured News
Ex-hitman was ‘heartbroken’ Bulger was informant

BOSTON — An ex-gangster who admitted killing 20 people was unemotional Monday when describing his line of work at the trial of his former partner, James “Whitey” Bulger, but called himself heartbroken when he learned that Bulger had become an FBI informant. John Martorano gave short answers and spoke nonchalantly when questioned by a prosecutor about a string of murders he committed while he, Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi were members of the Winter Hill Gang. The only flash [...]
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Crime News