Today we'll start with the news that L.A. Sheriff Lee Baca is planning to retire. What will that mean for the future of the department? Then, flu season is in full force in the U.S., "Saturday Night Live," hires the first black, female cast member in five years and a Glendale Airbnb house is shut down for noise. Plus, we'll check in on the CES conference in Las Vegas and much more.
LA County Sheriff Lee Baca to retire at end of January
After 16 years on the job, L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca announced his retirement at a 10 a.m. press conference Tuesday. His retirement is effective at the end of January.
"I have great gratitude to the people who elected me. At the same time that I was elected to four terms, I will go our on my terms. I am not going to seek reelection for a fifth term as Sheriff, and I will retire at the end of this month," said Baca. "The reasons for doing so are so many. Some are most personal and private, but the prevailing one is the negative perception this upcoming campaign has brought to the exemplary service provided to the men and women of the Sheriff's Dept."
His resignation comes after many accusations and scandals that plagued the department, which include 18 of his deputies facing federal charges for inmate abuse.
Besides the Board of Supervisors, the sheriff also informed his top command staff late Monday, according to media reports.
"I think he did a good thing for the county," ACLU of Southern California legal director Peter Eliasberg tells KPCC. "I think that the scandals and the problems that have beset the Sheriff's Department for the past four or five years, it’s really important that Los Angeles get the sheriffs department back on the right track and I think that would be very, very difficult for that to happen with Sheriff Baca running the department."
RELATED: Reports: LA County Sheriff Lee Baca expected to resign
County supervisor Don Knabe received the news from Baca last night. He says he was surprised by his decision, because there was no hint that he might not run for reelection.
"I was shocked. I talked to him over the weekend about the Oversight Commission and we had a lengthy conversation on that issue. No conversation about not running for reelection," said Knabe on Take Two. "If he decides to retire immediately, then the board will be put in a position where we would appoint an interim sheriff that would serve until December until this year."
Knabe also says his decision to announce his resignation now, and not later in his term, leaves the door open for people who might not have run against him.
"From that standpoint, I appreciate what he's done," said Knabe.
Former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka released a statement about Baca's retirement:
“Sheriff Baca and I have had our differences regarding the leadership and management of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He's voiced his opinions publicly as have I. I’ll talk about that during my campaign, but I want to put politics aside for today and applaud him for his dedication to public service. This is a tough job and I want to thank Sheriff Baca for his decades of public service to Los Angeles County."
Flu virus spreads through US with H1N1 as dominant strain
While much of the country faces bitter cold, it's also deep into flu season.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the number of states reporting widespread seasonal flu activity jumped from 10 to 25 last week. While California hasn't had too many cases yet, our next door neighbor Nevada is one of the hardest hit states.
For more, we're joined by Dr. Ihsan Azzam, Nevada's state epidemiologist.
Family planning clinics brace for funding changes
The Affordable Care Act offers new benefits, including better access to contraception. California long had been a national model in expanding services and reducing unplanned pregnancies for low-income women. But changes to funding under Obamacare could have those clinics scrambling to balance their budgets.
The California Report's April Dembosky explains how they're trying to adapt.
Clinic directors like Priscilla Castillo are figuring out how to adapt. She runs the Planned Parenthood clinic in Concord, Calif., about 30 miles east of San Francisco. A vestige of the old way of doing business is the rainbow of paperwork she oversees. There’s a different colored form for each insurance company.
“There’s a blue one, there’s a pink one, there’s a yellow one,” Castillo rattles off in her quick-paced speech. “Then, depending on the service, there's a whole other set.”
Soon, all that paper will be gone. Starting next month, patients at Concord and several other Planned Parenthood clinics will enter all their health and coverage information into iPads. The electronic system is expected to reduce mistakes and prevent claims from being denied because of bad handwriting. Castillo says that will save the clinic time and hopefully, money.
“I think in the end it either balances itself out or y’know, make some money on it,” she says.
Streamlining paperwork is just one way the clinic is looking to cut costs in the age of Obamacare.
Under the new federal reforms, more and more of Planned Parenthood's patients became eligible for Medi-Cal this month. But reimbursement rates for the government-funded Medi-Cal program are extremely low. California rate's are the third lowest in the country, and are set to drop another 10 percent next week. That's a huge loss for family planning clinics that are used to getting the majority of their income from a more generous state program called the Family Planning Access Care and Treatment Program, or Family PACT.
“Providers are looking at 2014 with a great deal of trepidation,” says Kathy Kneer, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, which oversees policy changes that affect all clinics in the state. “You know, our landlord’s not going to take a rate cut, our utilities aren’t going to take rate cuts, our staff are already undercompensated. It’s very difficult we just have to reduce services.”
She says if clinics start losing money on every patient, they will have no choice but to limit the number of patients they can see. Clinics in rural areas and some urban areas that already have trouble breaking even would be the most likely to have to cut back appointments.
Clinics may also have to shorten the time providers can spend with each patient. That’s because the Family PACT program reimburses clinics for counseling time, but Medi-Cal does not. Kneer says this time is critical for explaining the proper use of contraceptives, especially for clinics in California that serve a lot of immigrants.
“We had an Asian couple come in, and the man wanted to be very supportive of his partner, so he said he would take the pills,” she says. “If you don't have counseling time, you hand them pills and push 'em out the door and something like that could happen.”
Studies show that taking time to counsel patients contributes to their adherence to birth control. Since education-based services have been provided for free through Family PACT, the teen pregnancy rate in California has dropped by more than half.
Audrey Hackenworth has been coming to Planned Parenthood since she was 17. The now 23-year-old says she learned the majority of what she knows about sex and contraception at the clinic, not at school.
“Being here, they gave me a lot more real-life information, things that were actually applicable versus the textbook anatomy stuff that school teaches you,” she says.
Different clinics are developing different business strategies to weather the funding changes. The Women’s Community Clinic in San Francisco used to treat only the uninsured. Now that two-thirds of its clients will become eligible for Medi-Cal, it is planning to expand beyond reproductive health to provide a full range of primary care. Executive Director Carlina Hansen says this will allow the clinic to claim reimbursement for more services.
“It becomes important for us to ask what our patients need in the future and to adjust our business model accordingly,” she says.
The clinic is also considering applying to become a federally qualified health center and tap into a pool of federal funds.
“It’s a federal endorsement that essentially pays you a higher rate of reimbursement that you negotiate with the federal government. It also comes with a level of scrutiny and systems that also are more expensive,” she says.
Meanwhile, many Planned Parenthood clinics are forging partnerships with other clinics and hospitals that allow for revenue sharing. They're also focusing on improving efficiency. That means cutting back on the counseling time, not just because they won't get paid for it, but because it leaves other patients languishing in the waiting room. They recognize that clients will have more choices of where to go once their new coverage kicks in.
“We don’t want lose clients because they can go to another location and get in and get out in 15 minutes. Ya know, we definitely want to be competitive,” says Castillo, the Concord clinic director. “Before, we would give all the information all the time. Now we’re training folks to ask certain key questions and focus on what they’re here for specifically and then bombard them with that information that they’re asking for.”
Clinics are looking for the right balance of time that's both good for the patient, but also helps Planned Parenthood stay in business.
- See more at: http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201401031630/c#sthash.kw2tBBAM.dpuf
Why 1994 was such a great year for film
There are a lot of great movies that turn 20 this year, which both made us feel old and also reminded us what a great year 1994 was for film. Here's a little trip down memory lane:
For more on why 1994 was such a good year, and arguably the peak of the indie film movement, we're joined by Anthony Breznican, senior writer at Entertainment Weekly.
Interview Highlights:
On what made 1994 such a great year for film:
"That was the year I graduated high school, so I can't tell you what was happening in the movie industry that made this happen, but it was just a tremendous year for very funny movies, moving films like 'Forrest Gump', that will just make you well up inside, and films that really pushed the boundaries of what cinematic storytelling could be like 'Pulp Fiction.'"
On the film that is quintessentially 1994:
It depends on what you mean by quintessentially 1994. The most memorable film from that year I would say is "Pulp Fiction". You can just trace the comment trail of influence that that movie had for the next 20 years. But if there is a film I would say that's like dated in a way, where you watch it and say, "There are the 90's," I would say "Reality Bites".
It's such a zeitgeist-y movie. Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Winona Ryder. That one was about college kids, but we high school kids could really relate to that because we were about to enter that world. 'Oh, this is what's waiting for us. You don't really have any more answers after you get that degree than you do before.'"
On how 1994 was the peak of the indie film movement:
"That was when the Sundance Film Festival was at full power. It had been around for a number of years, it wasn't like it has just started but it had reached its pinnacle. There was money available to film makers who had a vision that weren't necessarily part of the studio system. Guys like Quentin Tarantino who were scraping together money to make 'Reservoir Dogs', and that was like '92.
Just a couple of years back before that, that film comes out then you have guys like Kevin Smith, literally a clerk at a New Jersey convenience store who scrapes together money by auctioning off his comic book collection to make a little black and white film. It didn't make a lot of money when it was released in the box office, but it had this tremendous life on video and just had such impact on your average guy, your average girl, anyone across America who thought, 'I don't have any connections to Hollywood, but I have a video camera, and that can get me in.'"
On the famous directors who got their start in 1994:
"One of my favorite films was 'hallow Grave', Danny Boyle's first feature. He had been working in television before that. It's Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, these roommates who were torn apart after they find some stolen cash. I love that movie. Another example, Peter Jackson had made a lot of freaky, funny, pulpy movies before this, but 'Heavenly Creature's was kind of his breakthrough as a serious filmmaker, and Kate Winslet's first film.
Another filmmaker who is very hot right now is David O. Russell — 'American Hustle', 'The Fighter', 'Silver Linings Playbook' — his first movie was in 1994. Little indie film called 'Spanking the Monkey'. Very, very controversial. He was pushing the envelope and that's how you got noticed in a way. If you had a little film that didn't have any stars, didn't have any buzz around it. But then you also just saw 1994 was the year that some mainstream film makers really tried to do different things. Tim Burton had been around for many years. He had made 'Batman', the Pee-Wee Herman films, 'Beetlejuice', this is the year he made 'Ed Wood', which I think remains his most heartfelt story."
On how Jim Carrey dominated 1994:
"I didn't realize until I was coming in to talk about this year with you that 1994 was not just the year of 'Ace Ventura', but also 'The Mask' and 'Dumb and Dumber' all came out that year. Amazing. You often see actors have two or three movies come out, but sometimes they're not all that great, some of them are hell, that's why they're all clustered together that way. All three of those are classic Jim Carrey films and really made him a movie star in a very short period."
What's your favorite film from 1994?
From TLC to Green Day, how hits from 1994 shaped the music industry
1994 was a pretty important year for music. Topping the CD sale charts back then was TLC's "CrazySexyCool", Notorious BIG's "Ready to Die", and Blur's "Park Life," among others.
It was also the year that some artists' seminal albums were released, including Pavement's "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain", "Illmatic" by Nas and Green Day's "Dookie", just to name a few.
Here with a look back at the music that was is Shirley Halperin, music editor with The Hollywood Reporter, who's convinced that those albums and more helped shape the music scene in the US going forward.
San Diego has fallen behind on combating police racial profiling
Data collected by the New York Police Department show 84-percent of pedestrians patted down by its officers were black or Latino. The figure is the cornerstone of several challenges to the department's controversial stop-and-frisk tactics.
Some residents in San Diego also say they're being racially profiled. A joint investigation from our sister station KPBS and Voice of San Diego finds San Diego police haven't followed a key policy to determine whether officers discriminate.
KPBS reporter Megan Burks has the story.
Car tech, wearable electronics hit center stage at this year's CES
The Consumer Electronics Show is in full swing in Las Vegas. Attendees have already seen TVs with curved screens, drones and robots and an internet connected toothbrush.
For more on the latest gadgetry, we're joined by Devindra Hardawar, national mobile editor at Venture Beat and a regular on our show.
Sasheer Zamata joins cast of 'Saturday Night Live'
Live from New York it's finally a black female cast member! Yesterday, "Saturday Night Live" announced that Sasheer Zamata will be joining the cast on January 18th.
This after critics, including cast members Jay Pharoah and Kenan Thompson, complained about the lack of diversity on the program. For more on this announcement, we're joined by Michelle Taylor who tweets and blogs under the name Feminista Jones.