With wildfires threatening new rounds of public safety power shutoffs across the state, the Legislature on Monday approved a bill from Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, that would help local governments fund emergency operations centers during the planned power outages.

Dodd said the vote is an important step toward ensuring our communities have adequate resources to respond during power shutoffs.

“Clearly, the wildfire threat is not going away. And as we’ve seen recently, utility companies continue to employ this preventative measure. I thank fellow legislators for seeing the value in this commonsense proposal,” Dodd said.

Senate Bill 52 follows a series of de-energizations from PG&E over the past two years that were intended to prevent fallen power lines and damaged equipment from sparking fires. It makes clear that such public safety power shutoffs are eligible for official emergency declarations, freeing financial assistance for local government under the Emergency Services Act.

SB 52 is supported by Napa County, California Fire Chiefs Association, Fire Districts Association of California, Regional Council of Rural Counties, Disability Rights California and the California Association of Public Authorities.

The bill passed the full Assembly today with overwhelming bipartisan support after previously being approved by the Senate. It heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office following Senate concurrence.

“While a power shutoff may be a necessary tool to prevent wildfires, the disruption to people's lives and costs to local government cannot be ignored,” said Supervisor Diane Dillon, who represents the majority of rural Napa County. “Napa County is honored to sponsor this bill, which will clarify a power shutoff constitutes a local emergency, and thanks Sen. Dodd for his leadership getting it to the governor's desk.”

Dodd represents the Third 3rd Senate District, which includes all or portions of Napa, Yolo, Sonoma, Solano, Sacramento and Contra Costa counties.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Savings Bank and Integrity Shred have teamed up to help prevent identity theft by offering the public an opportunity to shred outdated confidential documents.

Bring up to three 35-pound boxes of documents for safe, secure on-site shredding.

Additionally, to help shred hunger, nonperishable food will be accepted at the events for local food banks.

The shred event will take place in Lakeport from 9 to 11 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 23, at the Savings Bank branch, 290 S. Main St.

Hours and number of customers accommodated may be limited to truck capacity.

Identity theft is a serious crime that can wreak havoc with your finances, credit history, reputation, and can take time, money and patience to resolve.

Shredding confidential financial documents and paperwork is one way to deter criminals from stealing personal information.

Savings Bank also encourages customers to protect their identity by switching from paper account statements to eStatements.

With eStatements, customers reduce the risk of confidential account information getting into the wrong hands through tampering of mail or paper records that are stored at home.

Savings Bank representatives will be available at the shred events to supply information about preventing identity theft and what to do if your identity is stolen.

LAKEPORT, Calif. — The Lake County Registrar of Voters Office will test its ballot tabulation computer and software ahead of the Sept. 14 gubernatorial recall election.

Pursuant to regulations of the California State Commission on Voting Machines and Vote Tabulating Devices, the logic and accuracy test will take place at 11 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 2.

It will take place in the Registrar of Voters Office, located in Room 209 on the second floor of the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport.

All interested persons are invited to observe this test.

For more information call 707-263-2372 or toll-free at 888-235-6730.

LAKEPORT, Calif. — The Westside Community Park Committee is seeking funding through California Prop 68 to develop the Horse Park on land allocated for it, just off Highway 175.

This endeavor requires a series of interactions with the public to formulate the features and design we will develop.

The committee is in the first stage of the application process, which is to gather community input through surveys and then public meetings.

Community input is critical to this process and greatly increases the committee’s chance of success in this competitive application process.

The group asks community members to take a few minutes to complete the survey.

The survey can be found here in English and here in Spanish.

On Friday, the 2020 California Citizens Redistricting Commission launched a CRC database on the WeDrawTheLinesCA.org website that includes all public input related to communities of interest with maps that has been received through online COI tool submissions, via email and snail mail.

The database is easily accessible on the CRC website and can be found under the ‘data’ tab.

“The commission is proud to announce the launch of the CRC database, which will house all redistricting input as it comes in from the public. At the moment it contains mostly communities of interest input with corresponding maps. As we begin line drawing, it will also contain district map recommendations from the public. In our quest for increased transparency, Californians will be able to look at the same public input commissioners have at their disposal,” said Commission Chair Neal Fornaciari.

The CRC database includes columns labeled with an original ID, submission date, submission source, a summary of the submission, PDF attachments and shape files for those who submitted through the online COI tool.

To the right of the table, you will find a heat map of California that allows you to search for input based on the geographic area of focus in the input.

You can also explore the data directly in the data table using the search, filter, sort, or grouping functionalities offered by the tool. Data will be uploaded to the database on a regular basis.

Every 10 years, after the federal government publishes updated census information, California must redraw the boundaries of its electoral districts so that the state’s population is evenly allocated among the new districts.

In 2008, California voters passed the Voters First Act, authorizing the creation of the independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission to draw new State Senate, State Assembly and State Board of Equalization district lines.

In 2010, the Voters First Act for Congress gave the Commission the responsibility of drawing new Congressional districts following every census.

For more information, please visit WeDrawTheLinesCA.org.

LAKEPORT, Calif. — The Lakeport Police Department said it is changing its approach to posting booking photos on social media in response to new state legislation.

In July of this year the California legislature introduced and passed and the governor signed into law Assembly Bill 1475, which shall now prohibit a police department or sheriff’s office from sharing, on social media, booking photos of any individual arrested on suspicion of committing a nonviolent crime unless specified circumstances exist.

With regard to the 23 violent crimes under California law — specifically, Penal Code 667.5 — booking photos can be shared but are subject to later removal under specified circumstances.

The Lakeport Police Department said it will now carefully review all circumstances before deciding to post a booking photo to social media, even if allowed under this law, due to the complexities of removal if it is later so required.

To cite one major complexity, removal of photos from social media may cause other content to be inadvertently removed and that content may be protected first amendment free speech of others who have commented on posts of photos.

Regardless of this law, booking photos can still be placed on a law enforcement agency internet website.

Booking photos for arrests in Lakeport, if available, are posted on the Lakeport Police Department’s website at this link for a period of 30 days after arrest.

This law does not prohibit the posting of surveillance or other photos if public assistance is needed to help identify those unknown suspects and we shall continue those postings.

“As with the many other law changes and criminal justice reforms in California over the past few years, our goal remains to work as hard as we can to hold criminal suspects accountable and protect our community,” the department said in a Friday statement.

Text of the full law and legislative findings regarding its passage can be found here.