Imperial County Registrar of Voters Linsey Dale said If two candidates run for a position and there is a certified write-in candidate that receives enough votes that no one candidate receives 50% + 1 votes, the top two vote-getters will be included in the
Farms, fish on dry California-Oregon border see scant water
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A former contract manager for California’s transportation agency pleaded guilty Monday in what federal prosecutors said is an ongoing investigation into a bid rigging and bribery scam involving millions of dollars worth of contracts.
Choon Foo “Keith” Yong agreed to cooperate with the investigation into what prosecutors said was a conspiracy to rig the competitive bidding process for improvement and repair contracts at California Department of Transportation facilities.
The scheme ensured that companies controlled by his co-conspirators submitted the winning bid and won the contracts, prosecutors said.
The contracts were cumulatively worth more than $8 million, and Yong’s agreement called for him to be awarded at least 10% of the value, ac
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Pacific Gas & Electric, the nation’s largest utility, has agreed to pay more than $55 million to avoid criminal prosecution for two major wildfires sparked by its aging Northern California power lines and submit to five years of oversight in an attempt to prevent more deadly blazes.
The company didn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing in the settlement announced Monday with prosecutors in six counties ravaged by last year’s Dixie Fire and the 2019 Kincade Fire. The utility still faces criminal charges for a 2020 wildfire in Shasta County that killed four people.
The civil settlements are designed to accelerate payments to hundreds of people whose homes were destroyed so they can start rebuilding more quickly than those who suffered devastating losses in 2017 and 2018 blazes ignited by PG&E’s equipment. Those fires prompted the utility to negotiate settlements that included $13.5 billion earmarked for victims — money that still hasn’t been completely distributed.
The deal also thrusts the utility back into five years of independent oversight, similar to the supervision PG&E faced during its criminal probation after it was concording to his plea agreement.
He received cash bribes and other payments in the form of furniture, wine and remodeling services on his home, valued together at more than $800,000, prosecutors said.
He agreed to pay restitution as part of his plea deal in a scam that ran from early 2015 through late 2019, prosecutors said.
Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division described Yong’s guilty plea as “the first in the Antitrust Division’s ongoing investigation into bribery and bid rigging at Caltrans.”
Caltrans officials did not immediately comment.
The plea deal says Yong worked with “Contractor A, Contractor B and other co-conspirators,” without naming them. He would “submit the agreed upon bidders’ names — which victed of misconduct that contributed to a natural gas explosion that killed eight people in 2010.
Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch said that oversight was the biggest accomplishment to come from the settlement.
“We have limited tools and criminal law to deal with corporations and what we were able to do here was to get a five-year agreement that they will be overseen, that there will be an independent monitor, and that they will have to meet certain benchmarks,” she said Monday.
All told, PG&E has been blamed for more than 30 wildfires since 2017 that wiped out more than 23,000 homes and busialways included Contractor A” for consideration. Another company would submit a “sham bid” so that Contactor A or another co-conspirator’s company would win the contract.
Contractor A would then pay money or provide other benefits to the co-conspirator bidders.
The agreement allowed Contractor A or another conspiring company “to win the Caltrans contracts at inflated prices,” according to the plea deal.
Yong was introduced to Company A in early 2015 by “Caltrans Employee A,” who then worked with him on the bid rigging, the plea deal says. He then paid her $500 a month in cash through at least early 2017 from his share of the take.
Yong retired from Caltrans in 2019, after starting work there in 1990, and the investigation began after his retirement, said his defense attorney, Tom Johnson. nesses and killed more than 100 people.
PG&E’s federal probation ended in late January, raising worries from the federal judge who tried to force the utility to reduce fire risks by requiring more maintenance and reporting. U.S. District Judge William Alsup warned that PG&E remained a “continuing menace to California” and urged state prosecutors to try to rein in the company that provides power to 16 million people.
In a joint statement covering five of the six counties that settled, prosecutors said PG&E will be “essentially on a five-year probation” to be overseen by Filsinger Energy Partners, which already acts as a safety monitor for
“He’s looking forward to getting this behind him and moving on to the next chapter in his life. That’s why we entered the plea early,” Johnson said.
The joint investigation includes federal prosecutors and FBI investigators operating under the Justice Department’s Procurement Collusion Strike Force, created in November 2019. Kanter said its role has grown in importance since Congress last year approved the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Yong is set for sentencing in August. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison plus a $1 million fine or twice the financial loss.
As part of the plea deal, prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence at the low end of the federal sentencing guidelines, plus an additional reduction for his cooperation.
California power regulators.
PG&E will have to underwrite the federal monitor’s costs, up to $15 million annually, in addition to the $55 million in other payments and penalties that the utility expects to incur in the settlement.
As part of their settlement, Sonoma County prosecutors agreed to drop 33 criminal charges filed last year that accused PG&E of inadvertently injuring six firefighters and endangering public health with smoke and ash from the Kincade Fire that began in October 2019.
Fire officials said a PG&E transmission line sparked the fire, which destroyed 374 buildings in wine country and caused nearly 200,000 people to flee as it burned through 120 square miles (311 square kilometers), the largest evacuation in county history.
Prosecutors in the other five counties were exploring criminal charges in last year’s Dixie Fire before cutting the deal that they said will result in far larger payouts than had they hauled PG&E into court. Because there were no deaths in the Dixie Fire, prosecutors said the utility would have paid a maximum penalty of about $330,000 if it had been found guilty in a criminal case.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Farms that rely on irrigation from a depleted, federally managed lake on the California-Oregon border, along with a Native American tribe fighting to protect fragile salmon, will both receive extremely limited amounts of water this summer as a historic drought and record-low reservoir levels drag on in the U.S. West.
More than 1,000 farmers and ranchers who draw water from a 257-milelong (407-kilometer) river that flows from the Upper Klamath Lake to the Pacific Ocean will have access to roughly one-seventh the amount they could get in a wetter year, a federal agency announced Monday. Downstream salmon will receive about half the water they’d get if the reservoir was full.
It’s the third year in a row that severe drought has impacted farmers, fish and tribes in a region where there’s not enough water to satisfy competing demands. Last year, no water at all flowed through the Klamath Reclamation Project’s main irrigation canal, and thousands of downstream juvenile salmon died without reservoir releases to support the Klamath River’s health.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the irrigation project, announced $15 million in relief for affected farmers and $5 million for Native American tribes as a result of its decision and warned farmers not to take water beyond what was ordered or risk further irrigation reductions and legal action. The agency decides the allocations each year, taking into account court rulings that require certain lake levels to support two federally endangered fish species. Across the American West, a 22-year megadrought deepened so much last year that the region is now in the driest spell in at least 1,200 years — a worstcase climate change scenario playing out in real time, a study found last month.
Inflow to the Upper Klamath Lake is at a record lows, water managers said, and water allocations could drop further if drought conditions worsen this summer.
“We wish we had better news today. Obviously there are no winners in this critical year as all interests are suffering — fisheries, farmers tribes and waterfowl alike — but given the current hydrology that we have to work with, we did the best job we could,” said Ernest Conant, the bureau’s regional director.
Irrigators reacted with shock and anger to the news and said they weren’t sure they could survive another growing season without adequate water supplies. The amount of water available is less than 15% of what the farmers need, said Ben DuVal, president of the Klamath Water Users Association, who operates a farm in Tulelake, California.
“We have 170,000 acres ( 68,800 hectares) that could be irrigated this year, and we’re ready to get to work,” he said. “On a single acre, we can produce over 50,000 pounds (22,700 kilograms) of potatoes, or 6,000 pounds (2,700 kilograms) of wheat. This year, most of that land will not produce any food because the government is denying water for irrigation.”
Klamath River water that is dammed in the Upper Klamath Lake is the linchpin of the nearly 200,000- acre (80,940-hectare) Klamath Reclamation Project, a major agricultural powerhouse of more than 1,000 farms and ranches. Today, farmers there grow everything from mint to alfalfa to potatoes that go to In ‘N Out Burger, Frito-Lay and Kettle Foods. But the reservoir water is also source of conflict among competing demands, and amid historic drought in the carefully managed river basin there hasn’t been enough water to go around in recent years. Before 2020, the last time water allocations reached such a boiling point in the Klamath Basin was in 2001, when the U.S. government sent federal marshals to the area during a drought year and farmers threatened to breach the head gates.
Under the law, the lake’s water must be kept at a certain level to protect its sucker fish, a key species to the heritage of the Klamath Tribes in southern Oregon. This year’s water decision order irrigators to keep the lake’s water above a certain level for sucker fish spawning in April and May and then at a different level for the remainder of the summer — but even at those levels, the lake will not meet federally mandated minimums for the spring months.
Farmers can start drawing the limited water on Friday.
But federally threatened coho salmon that live in the lower Klamath River, below the reservoir, also need pulses of water from the lake to keep at bay a deadly parasite that thrives in warm and slow-moving water. The salmon are revered by the Yurok Tribe, California’s second-largest Native American tribe.