Leads:
- Citing a decades-long under investment infrastructure, Newsom and Buttigieg say they've pulled together $5 billion in loans, though it's unclear where the money would be spent. This is separate from the infrastructure bill still in congress.
- Last weekend's atmospheric river event is making a difference for some of the North Bay's drought situation. The U.S. Drought Monitor says Marin, Sonoma and Mendocino counties have mostly crawled out of the Exceptional Drought category. That is the worst of the five-category scale. The counties moved down one step in severity to the Extreme Drought category, which covers most of coastal California.
- Another historic fire season has Cal Fire taking steps to improve forest management. Small landowners - 20 to 5000-acres, who have struggled to thin their forests, will be given a share of $18 million dollars over 3-years to improve forest management.
- It's not the State Unemployment office, but the pandemic dysfunction between California and the federal government costing families in need food and money. When the pandemic closed schools - some children had to go without the free meals that fed them daily, but the Federal Govt s came-in with a lot of government red tape - there were changes, reviews, and delays. Now 500,000 Pandemic EBT Cards, totaling $182 million are siting unused. It's not known when they were mailed out, but they haven't been used.