August 31, 2011 - Following up on last week's coverage of some San Francisco neighborhoods' opposition to the development of additional transitional housing units for former foster youth, the San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote an eloquent editorial encouraging the SF Board of Supes to get behind the projects.
Meanwhile, on Friday, SB 9 (Yee) fell 5 votes short in the Assembly. The bill would have allowed incarcerated Californians sentenced to Life Without the Possibility of Parole for crimes committed as juveniles to petition the court for a parole hearing after 25 years behind bars. As is often the case with crime legislation, the debate over SB9 was dominated by scare tactics and huffery. In the words of Byron Williams of the Oakland Tribune, "Once again, sanity loses in the juvenile offender debate." The bill's author, Senator Leland Yee of San Francisco, said that supporters would likely keep trying. Click through for coverage in the Chronicle, the Mercury News, and Crosscurrents.
The San Diego Union-Tribune (Gardner, 8/25/11) reports on AB 687 (Fletcher, R-San Diego), which would make adoptions "cheaper, easier, and faster." The legislation, would: "tighten deadlines set for those who challenge adoptions, streamline procedures that must be followed to adopt children in foster care, set a 120-day deadline for processing birth certificate requests, expand the ability of agencies to to administer out-of-state adoptions and permit adoption centers to act as witnesses to stepparent consent." Thus far, the bill has faced no opposition on its way to the Governor's desk.
