Governor unveiled a revised state budget that calls for steep cuts to Public Schools and a pay cut for state workers. California is facing a debudget cit of 84 billion due to declining tax revenues and soaring job losses. Also, california state senators returned to sacramento with two innovative relief packages that would help people stay in their homes. Meanwhile, House Democrats arin propa 3 trillion round of federal aid despite opposition from the white house and senate republicans. Joining usare the kqed Senior Editor of politics, scott shafer, and correspondent risa lagos. Thanks for being here. It has been all about the benjamins this week, whether we e are talking state or the federal level. Talk about the heroes h t, wh the democrats new to 3 trillion proposal for Coronavirus Relief what compromises would need to be made fothis fifth Coronavirus Relief package to actually come a reality . I think in fact, it may never become a reality and democrats in the house generally know that. So this is thing that republicans have opposed in terms of the details. Even within the democratic caucus, there are oudisagreemen how much of that 3 trillion should go to individuals versus to local government, state and county governments, cities as well so, there is money in there as well as 25 billion for the post office, which President Trump says he does not want. There is money to fund an all male election, or a vote by mail election. They dont want that. So, this is a couple oexampl things that republicans do not who, as i said, are unhappy about things in their own package. The progressives have said they will not vote for this particular bill. This is a starti point, right mark these are sort of the Christmas Tree wish list. I think it is a negotiation tactic by pelosi. On the left flank of the party they would like to see this rtg r. I think that they, the head of bill that she wanted pelosi to fold in that was going to give more direct aid to workers in the attempt tooid more layoffand one of the paycheck protection programs, i think among the more centrist democratse they want to provisions that would essentially wha lot of these programs that have already been passed like the 600 a week in employme money, phaseout, depending on the economy. Right now there is a cliff of where that ends on july 31. Re but, tis going to be pressure from both blue and. States on these issues especially the direct aid rnto gont. I do think that, you know, pelosi wanted to get this out and where she wanted to start these talks and i am not ready to say it is going e to go where the other yet because things seem to change so think there will be political pressure on those senators like mitch mcconnell, who do not want to play ball right now. Whatlk about the state a of califorvernment and state budget. The governor has come out with his revised budget proposal, 20 million less than the 222 billion while we were flush, the largest ever, now we ate starina 54 billion deficit. Scott, describe for us where the cuts are coming from. The good news is, unlike the last great recession, california was in good shape and page down its debt. Lot of the debt going into this budget ar, the ye began with about 5. 5 billion in surplus, there is about 16 billion in the Rainy Day Fund. All ofthose things will cushion the blow and that is really good news. In addition, he is going to have to scale back and basically eliminate the 6 billion in Program Enhancements that were in his january budget, things that re things that he wanted to do around housing, climate change, and so at the money is just not there. There will also be internal borrowing, shifting of money from the tobacco tax to pay for medicaid. There is going to be federal money, about 8 billion already allocated by the federal vernment to help th costs related to the pandemic. And then, there is also, not a that would be suspended for some time to create several billion dollars in revenue and so those are e Broad Strokes of what is in there d he wi stretch this out. He is not going to drain the Rainy Day Fund this year or na xt, he wants to stretch that out over three years and hope the economy improves more quickly than some fear it will. So, i think they are also trying to learn from t time by not just eliminating progra, but rather by scaling back the cicrease or re funding in a way that these programs can be saved once the economy recovers or once the federal governmemes through with money. I can also say that the governor is saying we can avoid a lot of these cuts right now if the federal government just he is putting it on Donald Trumps doorstep. Teresa, the governor did not say taxes would go up, but you think that may change, and if change . May igger that i thnot anytime soon. At a time when people are losing their jobs or struggling to stay in their homes,the last thing any governor wants is asking for taxes. There is a ballot measure that would raise billions of dollars for state ograms, it isnot being run by the state, it is run by labor unions. It would roll back some of those provisions of the prop 13 property tax so that commercial properties can see their taxes go up. I think the governor is hoping that has passed, he has not endorsed it yet, but it is eato y for the conversation. Theyre going to try to paper this over and see what happens at the thfederal level with the legislation we discussed in theworst, with the election november which could completely change the dynamic nationally and in the statiaof califo scott, state senators have proposed a 25 billion rental assistance package. How did they arriat the number, and what is in the package . There was a study that shows california and half of them struggle to pay their rent. So, when this pandemic it obviously th e was concerned that, and alrea problem would be made worse by people not being able to pay their rents and landlords kicking them out. Sothe governor issued a moratorium on evictions, but a lot of people thought that did not go far enough because reers would still beon the hook for back pay. So, what theyre now saying is why dont we if landlords will not cooperate, say that we will give them a ngterm tax break in exchange for forgiving that rent, and then renters ee will ato pay the state the rental over the course of about a decade without interest. So, you uld have to have landlords willing to play ball not all of them will and of course, they dont have to but people in their homes as possible. Lets turn to unemployment. Im hearing estimates from nt20 25 unemployprojected in california. In the past, high in employment has tended to create political change. Do you expect the same to happen here . You know, isthink is such an unprecedented moment. We went from the budget surplus, the lowest unemployment in history to what might be the highest unemployme in history overnight. I think this is going to depend on a lot factors including what happens th the coronavirus testing, with contact tracing, with therapies and vaccines, some of which are out of the hands of state and local leaders, right . And i think that it is ally going todepend on how voters view this. Like, right now you have seen new cement be very popular. He is taking charge and having daily press conferences. There is a lot of anger on the leftnald trump. This has become a partisan issue but in californiale democrats oring democrats when you add in the nonpartisan voters, are really the vast majority. Republicans do not have a lot of power here. I do not anticipate that upending clinical life here, but i do think that it could have a huge impacton what happens nationally in november, and that of course would have an impact on the state budget, and thefore the governors political fortunes. Lets talk about the gop which had a couple of sccongressional wins in sin in california, the first time that the House Republican seat has flipped in california since 1998. C scot you tell me, is this a harbinger of growing republican strength of that we can witness in the ecgeneral on . Probably not. Off year elections, this was a special election at an odd time, they tend to favor republicans. In november, when they will face off rcagain, mike will be the incumbent and kristi smith lost this week. They will go at it again in november, and the electorate in a president ial election will be very different. There will bemuch more democratic but, that said, mike garcia is a good candidate for this district. This is a district where wards air force base is. Al he is latino, the son of mexican immigrants. He is a good candidate for this district. N which, hillary cline, but you know, at donald trumby seven points, but gavin newsom who won easily statewide only one this district by two points. Itis a very purple district. Il so, it is not necessarily mean the republicans are going to hold to it in november, theyre going to have to work to get it back, because it does have a history of electing republicans. Scott shafer and tes,sa lago thank you so much. This week, more than a dozen transit agbacies joined to ask congress for 43 billion in additional aid for Public Transportation. Art alone is facing a 600 million deficit. As ridership on trains is down mo than 90 . Bay area transit agg cies are gettmore than 1 million from the first round of federal relief, approved in march. The next big suchallenge, ng commuters that it is safe to use the buses, trains, and ferries when the region eventually reopens. Ining om berkeley is transportation editor dan brekke. Thanks for having me. One of the thperks of pandemic is that traffic has been much lighter, but a recent study out of vanderbilt suggests once the shelter in place lifts traffic will com heavy congestion situation. What you see occurring . That is the big question, the study does suggest that pei le stay off of transit the way they are now that we are going to see terrible traffic on the road. And anecdotally, you hear a lot of people saying, im not going to go back on heart, im not going to go back on muni becaele i do not comfortable doing it. The impact of that could be utywhere from a cothat is 1040 minutes longer each way depending on how many people abandoned transit. That is significant, 1040 minutes. Imagine how cobad your ute is now. The metropolitan Transportation Commission already says that we have got 1718 hours per day of solid congestion, leading to the bay bridge on the san franciscside and thatwill become worse. D twitter announthat many employees could continue to work from home permanently. Telecommuting is the wildcard he. Pullout your crystal ball, how much do you see a need and desire for people together in person in the coming months . Listen, every enterprise including hours at kqed, there is a huge benefit to inoffice collaboration, and those ofwhus are fortunate enough to be able to work from home have been pushed ovall the bay area and beyond. We have people at kqed for instance who are working from humbol county, so you know, it is hard to say that is a bi benefit tothe companys, but the thing is, it does make people safer, it keeps them apart at a timewhen we are dealing with a very infectious disease. It is just very hard to know how much that is going continue, or how broadly, but planning for transit, the situalion makes it st impossible for the agencies to guess what is going to happen over the next year or two. Es agencies have seen significant decreases in their ridership. Golden gate ansit, caltrain, bart muni have seen their ridership dropped by 90 or re. What does recovery look like as we come out of shelter in plac it is going to be a long, slow recovery. Bart had a meeting yesterday where the best Case Scenario ise just to 10 of the previous ridersp in the coming year. So, the other agencies are dealing with similar pictures, where it is reduced ridership and also greatly redud revenues because fewer fares been collected and much lower taxes that support these services. Because of thlowered revenue, bart and other transit agencies are aski for 33 billion in additional funding on top of the 25 billion they already got. What ppens if thdont get this funding in the next few months . Reporter if they dont get the funding, i think there is no doubt we are going to see massive layoffs in some of these agencies. One of the plans put forward with bart, and it where trains are on running every 60 minutes or Something Like that, more than 1000 workers out of the 3500 they have could be laid off. I think at is whthey are facing if there is no further federal aid. And, really at this int the federal government is, which is us, we are paying the taxes, de the l government is really the only recourse for most of these agencies. Many of beus have on a crowd train platform or bus. It is hard to see that happening in an age social distancing. What sorts of measures are agencies thinking about to put into place to continue some foci of social dist as we come out of shelter in place . It probably will not be as strict as right now because they will not be able to fit that many people on the trains and buses. Is that one thing to have to figure, what loads they can carry to tama the is a call distancing. So, that is the first challenge, but i think they also really have to reassure the public inevery way possible but it is safe to get on the trains and buses and what does thatmean . That means really raising their games in terms of cleaning, and terms of really policing what is going on on the vehicles. And, and that is going to be a big challenge. sfor instance, in bacase, there is an extra 75 million linem for the coming year to pay for all the cleaning that is gog to benecessary to make people feel safe. Lets turn to equity. You know, Public Transportation is one of the few places in society where all segments interact, ha least it been. As this crisis has gone on, we have seen that people with more money itre able to to telecommuting more easily. Will this lead Public Transit agencies to move their planning to have more transit dependent ridership in their focus . I esthink agenlike muni especially have been really thinking about this hard, about how tomaintain this core of service for people who really do not have any option. Essential workers, and essential workers are not just l the people we have been hearing about, frontline workers at the grocery stores, custodians, seanrity guards, all the rest. And so yes, i think that you can expect to see a renewed cus on how to maintain service for those folks, but i think it is also going to lead to a period where we really try to look at solutions to make transportation, Public Transit, more accessible to people who are having a tough time making ends meet. Thank you so much for joining us. You are welce. As the pandemic closures scrambling to stay solvent. Art museums have closed their doors, covered paintings, and turned out the lights. In otheitutions have a core team caring for animals and other living exhibits. All are facing significant d budget shortfalls by some industry estimates, one third of all museums nationwide will not be able to afford to reopen. Joining me to discusrethe fuof bay area museums is the director and scott samson, the director of acamy department of science is. Thank you for joining me. Thank you. Scott, lets start with u, tell me about your plans for reopening. What will visitors experience when they come to the cal academy in the coming months . If you reopen then . Well, course ofthe post covid world is going to be different than the precovid world. And our first prrity of experience for visitors and for our staff. We are going to be looking at time entry to prevent overcrowding, with the Team Gathering sizes and closing up our theater for example, our planetarium, at least to start, building on the cleanid sanitation practices and actually, we seeaa three three phase opening with limited capacity and we will lose the high touch areas and then go to phase 2 where we will keep cial distancig and finally phase 3 where we hope too back to effective normal that exists anymore. When are you hoping to launch phase 1 . We are hopeful of opening july 1, but that is going to depend on state and local mandates from Public Health officials and gowe are g to be monitoring all of that very closely. What are your plans for reopening the Asian Art Museum . What changes will visitors see . At the asian museum, our visitors are stuck at home, so i encourage everyone to check out the offerings on the website and the wonderful programs. Right now we are turning our museum into a sevirtual and launching Virtual Program so when we can open the physical museum to icthe pu we want to encourage the businesses to do the same, and once they are outside, we will ensure social distancing and full sanitation stations, and also we encourage everyone to wear mks. R store will carry beautiful products and we encourage people to load the app so n you avoid getting close to the labels when you are reading the iobackground inform we want to find a balance between experience and safety. Right now, we are planning to open the museum on july 3, but we will be nimble. We want tomake sure that safety is first. Scott, how are you planning for social distancing, and ho maople will be able to come to the museum daily compared to what it was pre covid . It is amazing. We are an institution of science, so is not surprising that we approach that problem scientifically, so we started by assuming that everyone needed six foot social distancing and if a person is a foot wide, that means you need a circle seven feet in diameter. We took the total sq footage of 185,000 square feet, ooth indoor and oupublic space, and we calculated how f manythese seven foot diameter circles we could fit in. That gives us sort of the maximum number that we can fit in with social distancing and then wcalculate how many waves of those folks we hacan over the course of the day to give us some sense about how many people we n expect. I have been to the Museum Forest is a favo indoor rain you also have some handson interactive exhibits in your tural history space, how are there is going to change . Yeah, we are going to take some of the handson natural exhibit theaexhibits offline to start anen, we will ensure, we are looking at things like, is it pesible to create y traffic so people are not passing each other . So, throughout, we e going to limit the number of touch points people have, physical touch in, andth e opportunities for getting within the six feet of somebody else. J, i would like to talk to a little bit about how you are transitioning, au are doing this actually before covid started, to have more outdoor exhibits. Thank you. Last week was very poignant because we plan to open our expanded and transform th museum to the public. Of course, this planwill need to be postponed and possibly t next spring, y i say that we were planning, we were almost ahead of the curve in the sense that we are turning the Museum Inside atout it do i mean by that . What i mean is that we are turning the museums walls into galleries but the street level, there will be an art mural by an Asian American artist and there will be a wonderfl mural by another Asian American artist to designed and built from outside. And on top of that, we have actually, maybe the largest outdoor art installation in the bay area from the street. Scott, lets ta about your virtual offerings, which you expandedduring this time. How have those been received . It has been remarkable interval for us. Have 40,000 live animals on sites that are being taken care of every day. We have given people access to h those animalugh a live animal webcams. We have virtual exhibits and scientific collections. We have live stream to chats with scientists and created this entity called academy at home, where, whether you are a pant or a teacher,u can download activities, learning relate to nature. Th we are really promoting citizen science, getting people out into nature. Of course, safely d socially distanced. But, interacting with them and connecting with a natural world. So, in the post covid world, we anticipate keeping ese line offerings expanding on a regular basis. J, how has your online offering changed, and how is it being received . Our online offering has been dramatically increased. Not only are we engaging the visual artist but also perfming artists and not only ti the about the works in our collection, but also live demonstrations ofcooking and as well as meditation. I think that art is always the sutance by which humankind ge comes er. We will ntinue our Online Engagement is essential for everything going forward. J and scott, would like to asveyou both quickly, just before we go, you know, there is funding that is going to be difficult. Covid has punched a hole in your budgets and operations. You rely not only for the ticket sales, but also outside funding and donations. What a argumentative do you have for why ldur museum sh continue receiving funding and donations . The asian museum we engage people for generations. But, particularly from age 12. May i also say in the live of asian richesathey are taking a leadership role in combating th. So, the investment in the asia museum is on the way in helping us come together duringcovid 19 and ancombating asian racism and what we e all up against. I need to move on to scott, scott, your argument for keeping the museum fued . Covid19 and species extinctions, and the Climate Crisis have one thing in common, a broken relationship between humans and the natural worl you could make an argument that the most pressing question facing humanity right now is how we transform the way that we interact with nature. So, the academy, which sits at th interface between peopin nature, is ideally situated to be a profound influence on this conversation. We have been deveping new strategies that are all about natural world, and helping people to see the intimate and inextricable connections that so, we are excited about carrying that strategy berward anming ever more relevant in the post covid world. Cott simpson withthe academy of science and jason hsu with the asian americf museumsan francisco. Thank you both. As always, you can find more atcoverage kqed and kqed. Org. You can reach me through my social media handle. We xtare off week, we will see you in 2 weeks. Stay safe. Robert optimim the president and caution from experts. Dr. Fauci the reentry of sunts into students into the fall term would be a bridge too far. Toluse to me its not an acceptable answer. Robert a divide between Health Officials and President Trump as straineds to reopen a nation. And a warning from a whistleblower. We need a national testi the virus is here. Its everywhere. Robert as states teeter on the brink ofeconomic collapse, Congress Debates another relief bill. Thee must think big f people now because if we dont it will cost more in lives and livelihood later