Captioning by vie dak underwritten by firemans fund. Good evening. Welcome to this week in northern california. Joining me for insight and analysis of news from the week are jill tucker, San Francisco chronicle education reporter. David baker, Energy Reporter also with the chronicle. Josh richman, Bay Area News Group politics reporter, and karen said, San Francisco chronicle business reporter. Richmond may become the first city to use Eminent Domain to combat foreclosure programs offering to buy underwater mortgages and help refinancing with homes. If they refuse, the city is threatening to seize the workaging anyway. Filing a lawsuit to block the move while investors on wall street are watching closely. Carolyn, how would this plan work and why is there such strong opposition to it . You just said, richmond is threatening to become the first in the country to exercise its power of Eminent Domain in a radical plan. Richmond and the private partner, a forprost Investment Firm that its partnered with. Mortgage resolution partners. Suppose i owed on my mortgage, house worth just 300,000, if richmond exercises power of Eminent Domain, buy the house forcibly, not the house. The mortgage, from the mortgage holders with a discount say for like 240,000, a 20 discount. Turn around and helps me, the homeowner finance for 245,000. 45,000 left that gets split between richmond to sell and mortgage resolutions partners and investors in the plan. So its obvious why they take the idea and say that it totally aggregates Property Rights under the law and it opens a pandoras box. The bank make as loan and wouldnt get asthurns would ever get paid back. Collateral. In this case if the Government Entity could walk in and seize the mortgage at whatever price it considers fair market value, the banks say, why would they make loans . Talk about the concept of eminent dough mamain. Allows government to seize public property. Usually used for highway projects, in this case talking about individual homes, very unprecedented, as you say. Is there good reezing for this . Thats what this court case will determine. So richmond and its partner, their argument is that the public good here is to prevent flight. Foreclosures cause flight, drag down Property Values for entire neighborhoods and entire communities. Richmond is a working class lower Income Community that has not really benefited from the recent runup in real estate value. The values are felt so low many, Many Properties almost half of the homes and mortgages are still under water. Richmonds argument, this is a public good, but that is an unprecedented new argument and what the court will have to determine. Try think that this is i have to think its a perfect test case. Everybody across the country will be looking to see if this is a legal option for the city and in a city like oakland where they have so many foreclosures, its the perfect test case, but city council when they voted 60 had nothing to lose. Theyre not paying not a penny is coming of you 0 richmonds pocket. The private Investment Firm said they will handle all the legal courts and could be considerable. Banks have all the money in the world. I would think theyd take it all wait to the supreme court. A very philosophical case in thats unlikely to have impact on people struggling to keep their homes now. This is going to be tied up in court now. How could it not be almost a moot point woo hile it crawled ahead through the judicial system . That is a reasonable point. You know, the time, you establish some kind of pr precedent, nothing to say we wont have another bust at some point down the road. Yeah, maybe taking the long run on this one, even if theyre general w genuinely trying to help residents now. What happens next time . And plenty of folks watching closely. I dont know about oakland per se, valeo, berkeley, several cities in southern california, las vegas is, all cities closely considering it. You can also see the critics side of it a little bit in the sense that, you know, these people took on this envichlt. Granted it crashed and many people in a lot of places were affected by that, but it does raise the question of, you know, if its an easy way out for people who get over their heads and in the loan that they got or that theyre basically coming out from this without taking any responsibility for the decisions that they made early on, and i think it does raise questions about what are the repercussions of that for the city of richmond . Are people going to want to invest in that if they sort of get a free ride . Exactly what the banks say. They say if richmond or any other Government Entity succeeds in this, why would they they wouldnt write mortgages there or there would be a lot more expensive. In fact, the federal Housing Finance agency this week said that it might curtail government backing in reasons like this, which would kill the market in this region and make it impossible to bay home way mortgage. How many homes are we talking about . Hundreds . So far richmond has sent letters, about 644 homes, but the actual number of homes in the city that are underwater is several thousand. Many of those homes are backed by fannie and freddie. Governmentbacked loans richmond would not go after. Only those held in private labeled Mortgage Backed securities. A small subset of all loans. Carolyn, thank you. Interesting and novel and controversial concept that will be closely watched. This week two strikes by Public Transit workers were narrowly averted while a b. A. R. T. Strike next week is still possible. This sparked pointed conversations about the role of unions in todays economy. Have they lost touch with reality or still needed to protect decent wages for the middle class . Josh, there were more meetings regarding b. A. R. T. Today. What happened . Will there be a strike . The most important thing that happened is, no. There probably will not about strike on monday. Thats not because of anything that came out of the negotiations today. Its because governor jerry brown received the report that he requested from a special panel he had appointed to gauge the impact on the public, and they concluded most of us would have suspected that a strike would have a profound impact on the bay area a severe economic impact. And so the governor today said that if they have not reached a resolution over the weekend, which i think practically nobody thinks they will, he will go to court on sunday morning, yes, thats right. The governor gets to go to court on sunday morning. If he wants to. He will go to court on sunday morning and obtain an injunction for 60day cooling off period in which negotiations can continue. So its almost impossible that theyll be a strike on monday by most accounts. Even so, though, this whole b. A. R. T. Situation, and ac transit earlier this week threatened to strike. A verdict, they reach add lastminute deal. All of these various strike threats, have really brought up the question of, labor unions and Public Perception of labor unions. Is that changing . It is well, its hard to say if its changing. There are polls that indicate that the unions representing b. A. R. T. Workers have not made a terrific connection with bay area residents, and this is probably one what about the Union Members . Or sometimes other Union Members. I was going to say the bay area is probably one of the most unionfriendly and unionheavy area in the country that youll find. Nonetheless, theyve had a lot of troubles communicating the their their complaints to a lot of these people, and i think that is a leftover of the resthaegs weve just been through and also, quite frankly, the incoming quality that grew over the decades that preceded this recession. Two ways of seeing think, really. You can say, look, these Public Workers work for me. I do not have a fixed benefit pension plan anymore. I pay a lot in to my health care. Vie not gotten a raise in four, five, six or more years. If i cant have this, why should i pay for it for them . Thats something that the unions are trying to overcome. The flip side of that is that, a lot of people see these striking Public Workers and particularly the b. A. R. T. Workers now as a last offender of whats left of a middleclass american dream, that unions helped build for a lot of people over the last half search rinchts instituted the 40hour workweek, for example. Things we all get to enjoy now. The old union slogan, the weekend, brought to you by labor unions. You know, but, really, wages that pay the bills around lew for modest savings, Affordable Health care, secure retirement and people are out there looking at this situation saying if they can still win it, maybe theres hope for us too. So the bay area public is split on that sort of. Union and management are grappling with that. With amid an Overall National tableau where Union Membership has fallen to its lowest level since 1916. There are fewer Union Members out there than ever and since 2009, Public Workers have accounted for a majority if u. S. Unions. If youre not having the fight in the Public Sector youre not likely to have this fight any more. Does that make it harder for you a member of the general public, not in the Public Sector to identify with these folks, when theyre saying were going ton strike because were not getting benefits we want . I think a lot of people they think things are so bad nobodys getting in addition. I think theres a Younger Generation of workers, techie workers, pension . Whats a pension . Literally, they dont know. When youre asking for these things from a b. A. R. T. Perspective, its hard to sympathize when you have workers who didnt grow up in a heavily union workplace, or workforce. Not only that. There is a component of that and also the component that b. A. R. T. Is the only means of transportation available for a lot of lower income workers. In the bay area. People who dont have cars. They cant choose to sit in traffic if theres a strike. They have no way of getting to work if b. A. R. T. Goes down, and, its not just a sizable inconvenience. Its threat to their subsistence. Theyre livelihood. Hard to get those feel see the Bigger Picture of wee are fighting for working people everywhere and the rising tide will lift in the long run if people cant get to work now and are going to lose their jobs. I have to wonder about a 60day cooling off period because theyve made no progress so far. 60 days. Just twiddle their thumbs . Whats going to happen . This actually puts more onus on the unions. If they dont make some sort of movement during the cooling off period the governor is setting up, there will be a feeling of intransigence and thats not going play well. Sorry. Theres no guarantee after the 60day cooling off period there wont be a strike, because in the 1907 strike, a cooling off period imposed and they still went on strike. Watch in aunchts thank you. One year ago this week a fire at the chevron refinery in richmond sent thousands of local residents to hospitals with respiratory problems. Last saturday demonstrators called for Better Safety measures at chevron and for alternatives to fossil fuels. The oil giant agreed ehler this week to pay 2 million if fines and restitution for last summers fire. David, will this fine help reinvent relations between chevron and the surrounding community . Almost certainly not pap couple days before they agreed to pay this fine and these damages here, just a couple days before that, the city of richmond finally went ahead and made good on their threat and sued the company, and the comments that came up around that suit were revealing. The mayor and other Public Officials in richmond very critical of the company the way it handled the refinery over the years and the way they handled the aftermath and chevrons lawsuit was to say this is another sign of the dysfunction government in richmond. They didnt really, neither side really tried to play nice. Even though the company on monday decided to settle up with the county, which it filed misdemeanor charge against them, in relationship with the city, itster ville antagonistic. All right. Aside from this fine, under the settlement, is chevron required to improve its inspection or Training Programs or just a fine . There are a lot of components of improving things and youve got to realize also that this fine is not the only action going on around the refinery and trying to improve the way it operates. There have been investigations and recommendations from Different Levels of government, federal, state, local. All of these things are sort of in play at the moment, and the company has its own program for trying to clean things up there. So theres theres theres still a lot of stuff going on that has not even gown settle down. So a suggestion made, sbrut there been actual safety improvements or changes made . There have been some. The refine lay gone around and replaced a lot of equipment, although not nearly as much as many people would like. They have installed some air pollution monitors, the perimeter of the place. Although they havent done everything there that they agreed to do several years ago. In terms of set offing up monitors and in the surrounding neighborhoods. So they are making some progress on various thing, but at the same time, you have a number of different government actions just still hangs over their heads, and all of the steps theyll need to take in the end, in response to the fire, we still dont even know what all those are going to be yet, and go ahead. I have heard they want to expand in the richmond area . And it seems very bad timing for them, number one, to even talk at all about any expansion and the idea they would then buy off a credit in a community is already sent thousands of people to the hospital and this last one, i remember covering another one, where there were many more people inhaling fumes or the number of times that theyve been told to it seems to me that it has reached a crisis point, really, in the community there . They have an upgrade project that they wanted to do, and they were pushing for years, before this fire. The fire burst out. They it was going to expand the a gasoline theyd be able to produce even though theyd be still taking in the same amount of crude oil. They ran into a problem with the local Environment Community which managed to get a judge to stop the project. The judge ruled that in the Environmental Review for this project, the company hadnt answered some basic questions. That critics had been raising about it. That slammed to a halt before the fire even happened. What theyre going to do going forward, the last time i asked about that they were going back and revisiting that plan, but gasoline use in california has actually fallen now. They dont have much incense toiv do that anymore. I wonder all muttly, isnt the presence of a bigger refinely in such a densely populated area something that is incompatible . Could there be a scenario where chevron would pull out . In which case richmond would be very unhappy because they are the largest taxpayer in the city . The refinery was built there before the city was established. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you were actually to go and redo the bay area from scratch you would not put a refinery immediately up fwrind a large, densely populated area, no matter how good your pollution controls prp thats asking for trouble, but thats not the situation we have. We have an organic community where the refinery came and the city grew up alongside it. Chevron has in the past made noises about, okay, well if we cant resolve our problems with the City Government we may sell off, move out. But those have never really come to pass and a lot of people in the city sort of assume thats thats a negotiating tactic. And quickly, Governor Brown is getting involved in this, too . Called for a Single Person to be involved the safety or a single panel . A single panel. He put together a task force in the spring that was supposed to look at state governments role in all this, because the federal government they investigated this fire was very critical of the state. And the state has all of these different agencies that actually have a piece of regulating refineries. Those agencies didnt communicate with each other very well and are pretty under staffed. The task force the governor put together came out with recommendations. The main one, by this fall set up a permanent thoorgs would coordinate their efforts and one person who the public could go to for any kind of information on the refinery. So thats supposed to happen pretty soon. Well see if it makes a difference. David, thank you. Eight California School districts are being allowed to opt out of no child left behind. The controversial education reform law was launched by the Bush Administration in 2002, but has come under fire for its strict requirements and tough sanctions. Now, San Francisco, oakland and fresno among other School Districts, want to try out a different system for holding themselves accountable. Jill tucker, how is it how unusual is it for individual school sdroicts get this kind of waiver from no child left behind and how will they never their performance . The answer to the first question, they are the only districts in the entire country that have the waiver, an individual district waiver. Kniss is a first under the no child left behind. Prior to this, states were the only ones that could ask for a waiver of the no child left behind law. Frankly, no state got one. 40 states in sdi have a waiver to get them out from under some of these really bad and expensive sanctions, but they had something that california didnt. They had teacher buyin and union buyin to allow the School Districts and the states to evaluate teachers and principals using students test scores, and in california, that has ban significant, huge, monumental barrier to getting any kind of waiver from the federal government, from the obama administration. So these districts basically got together and said, look. We represent 20 of the california population. We are going to create our own system. We are going to now, police ourselves so it isnt the state sort of over them and the federal government over that. But were going to police ourselves. Were going to judge schools and look at schools, evaluate schools, using all sorts of things. Test scores . Sure. But also what are parents, teachers and students think of their school . Theyre going to look at suspension rates. Theyre going to look at attendance rates. Theyre going to look at so many Different Things and the superintendents from the districts say it will be much, much better. But stlae road block they still have to get the union buyin as well. They didnt have to have it prior to the wave irks but they may they will at some point have to stlat in order what are unions saying about that at this point . Whats the feeling . The california teach. Association quickly put out a press release when this decision was announced saying it was divisive and disappointing decision that they made to give these districts the waiver that the teachers, unionsened in general had not been involved in applying for the waiver. They had been left out of the process and that its been a very decisive issue within these communities. But well see. Many of the it will be district by district. Some of the district yoon yirs are already bought into it, and in San Francisco and oakland, thats not the case. With the federal government, the fact that they granted that waiver does that mean that feds have signed off on this sort of alternate assessment scheme that the districts came up with or simp lay thing, okay, try it a year and then well revisit it . Its a oneyear waiver, but the approval of it is basically giving them a sampling of a flan they have, its now. And that in exchange, they no longer have 0 adhere to the incredibly difficult sanctions and tutoring from private tirt, from others, very expensive in schools that were failing. They had to have a lot of bussing for schools that were failing. Its very expensive to be under no child left behind and no child left behind considered pretty much every school receiving money for kids, as failing, because 100 of them werent proficient in english and math. Ed upper this new Evaluation System who polices these School Districts that are supposed to have the new systems and supposed to be working better than no child left behind . Basically they say we all will. Police themselves . Theyre going to police each other and themselves, have an Oversight Panel or glup will help group that will look at how the districts are doing and if a school is failing it will get a Mentor School assigned to it to work with them and help them implement new policies. So they will be looking at what the evaluations are showing. It isnt as if theyre going have an evalue, adoesnt look good. Off you go. They will be actually sort of policing how everybodys doing, because if it doesnt work and you dont see improvement and there are complaints it will fail for everyone then, and theyll be back in no tinchts whats likely to happen after the year is up . A year seems like a short amount of time. Especially considering what a gigantic system has to be developed. Are they, you know, doing already theyre hoping for renewals . And if it is successful is there a chance the entire state of california could have for a waiver like the other 40 states have done . They have to billionster their plan, get union buyin and then well xl for another waiver. I think theyre hoping noor. Congress is trying to rewrite no child left behind and districts across the United States as whole are hoping the actual law will change and they wont have to go through this waiver process and get the teachers unions to buy in. Its not working out so far but theres still hope. Weve leave it at that. I want to thank you or guests for being with me here this evening. Before we wrap up for the evening wed like to take a moment to remember bay area sculptor ruth asawa who died this week at the age of 87. An excerpt from our archives courtesy of the arts program b. A. R. T. Ruth is a community icon. She probably has stood for art and artmaking and art appreciation more than any other human being in the city. The inspiration i think, for ruths aurora sculpture was it was a first design, designed in paper in origami. Ruth asawa cast sculptures since the 1970s. In contact with some of the major art figures in the 20th century. She was part of the Black MountainCollege Experience where she worked with joseph albors and her classmates, john cage, jasper johns, and she really has been at the center of the contemporary art world for a long time. Ruth was born on a farm in southern california. During world war ii, she and her family were placed in a japanese internment camp where she learned to make art out of whatever materials she could find. Now nearly 80, and in frail health, she continues to make art every day. There are many aspects to her artwork but at the chore been handmade, its very physical. Its not an abstract process. Its very handson process of making art. Its as important to her as the fetish artwork. An incredible lady. You can see asawas art all over the bay area. We close with aim images of some are her work on display at the museum in San Francisco. Thanks so much for watching. Good night. Gwen a rare president ial News Conference covers the waterfront on foreign and domestic policy. We sort out the details tonight on washington week. Whos listening in . I want to make clear. Once again. That america is not interested in spying on ordinary people. I dont think mr. Snowden was a patriot. Gwen how dangerous is al qaeda . This is an ongoing process. We are not going to completely eliminate terrorism. Gwen how frosty are things with russia . I think theres always been some tension in the u. S. Russian relationship after the fall of the soviet union. Gwen and how frosty are things with congress . Were not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to obamacare. Gwen these issues and more will follow the president as he leaves on vacation. We take a look with Doyle Mcmanus of the los angeles times. Martha raddatz of abc news