Late on April 8, in the headquarters of the Republican Party of San Diego County, Carl DeMaio had three negotiators representing him. He had just failed to get the party’s Central Committee to endorse his run for State Assembly even though it had already endorsed his opponent. The whole episode had left his ally, then party chair Paula Whitsell, vulnerable to losing her position.

Alex Jackson is the executive director of American Clean Power-CA. Scott Murtishaw is the executive director of California Energy Storage Alliance. A fire extinguished last Friday at a San Diego Gas & Electric battery energy storage facility in Escondido has drawn renewed attention to this new technology — and the critical role it will play in the region’s transition to clean energy. The SDG&E fire could also have an outsized impact on a San Diego County Board of Supervisors meeting this week, where local leaders will discuss how to manage the growing number of battery storage facilities in San Diego — and whether to consider a moratorium on their development.

The future never looks or feels like I’d imagined it would when I was young. There are no flying cars (the closest we have are self-driving ones that seem to love to explode), the smart home technology we have scrapes and resells our data and holograms are generally reserved for resurrecting dead musicians at music festivals. I realize I just described technology from The Jetsons, but the fact remains that pretty much all of the structural problems society has always faced still rule the day.

At every Vista City Council meeting, Mayor John Franklin takes his seat next to Katie Melendez, a councilmember and deputy mayor with whom he has repeatedly clashed over the direction of the city. If he has his way this November, he won’t much longer. Melendez, a Democrat, is running...

The county is pushing back on university researchers’ reports of toxic or lethal gases spreading into South Bay communities from the polluted Tijuana River that triggered widespread panic. County hazardous waste experts say instruments used by San Diego State University researchers likely delivered falsely high positive results for the...

By early next year, the city will be down hundreds of homeless shelter beds. City officials have yet to publicly reveal how they will replace most of them within the next few months. For now, Mayor Todd Gloria is sharing one major piece of the plan the city could execute...

In my effort to understand why the city of San Diego doesn’t accept bags marketed as compostable or biodegradable in its food waste recycling program, I uncovered another inconsistency in advertising by the California-based plastics company, Crown Poly. Its HippoSak is advertised to breakdown in a home compost bin,...

Local officials scrambled over the last few days to assure the public that a fire at San Diego Gas and Electric’s energy storage facility in Escondido was not harmful despite the city’s evacuation orders and a torrent of panic on social media. Escondido Battalion Chief Tyler Batson told...

After a meeting of the Rancho Santa Fe School District’s board on June 12, four people squeezed into an elevator at the district’s office. Three of them were board members. It was a short descent – from the second floor to the first. But during that brief ride,...

Usually, mailers don’t start arriving at homes much until the mail ballots arrive. The concept of chasing ballots with mailers was actually a political innovation 20 years ago and now it’s just what they all do. But this week, several readers and followers who know how obsessed I...

Council President Sean Elo-Rivera will urge fellow councilmembers on Monday to grant Mayor Todd Gloria new powers to try to more rapidly respond to the city’s housing and homelessness crises. After back-and-forth with Gloria’s office this summer over whether formal declarations could help the city confront the impending loss...

Editor’s note: Minutes after this story posted, a 30-megawatt SDG&E battery storage facility on Enterprise Street in Escondido caught fire. The city of Escondido issued a mandatory evacuation order for the surrounding businesses in the area and the local fire department was sent to the scene. In a statement, SDG&E spokesman Anthony Wagner said the fire erupted in one of 24 battery containers on site. There are no reported injuries. The company will conduct a “thorough review of the event to determine the cause of the incident,” Wagner wrote.

On Tuesday, San Diego Unified School District’s new Acting Superintendent Fabiola Bagula held a Zoom meeting with district principals. She wanted to settle the tumult that has engulfed the district since Friday when the Board of Education revealed an investigation substantiated allegations of sexual harassment against former Superintendent Lamont Jackson and fired him.

The past six days have been a whirlwind for San Diego Unified. The board abruptly fired Superintendent Lamont Jackson on Friday after an investigation substantiated allegations that he’d sexually harassed two former female employees. Then, they promoted Jackson’s second-in-command, Deputy Superintendent Fabiola Bagula to acting superintendent. As I...

In the age of flannels and distortion pedals – when bands mixed bar chords with a vocal style I can only describe as a bit like someone dislocating their jaw to sing with an exaggerated underbite – Lucy’s Fur Coat emerged. The band gained traction quickly, signed to a label and released its first album, “Jaundice,” in 1994.

Officials in National City this week introduced legislation to outlaw camping on public property, near schools and along waterways and train tracks. The proposed ban is an about-face for the city, which previously pursued an outreach-oriented approach to homelessness that sought to avoid arrests or forcing people to move. If...

It happened. California’s second-largest school district on Friday fired its homegrown superintendent, Lamont Jackson, after an investigation substantiated allegations he’d engaged in sexual harassment against two former employees. The actual terminology investigators landed on – “unwelcome, sex-based behavior consistent with a romantic interest” – was much more inscrutable.

We pulled this post from the Politics Report. Voice of San Diego members can get the Politics Report straight to their inbox. Learn more here. Just three weeks after the United States Department of Education slammed San Diego Unified School District for its handling of sexual harassment complaints, its superintendent has been dismissed after a report substantiated allegations of sexual harassment against him.

San Diego Unified’s board has voted unanimously to fire Superintendent Lamont Jackson after an investigation substantiated allegations of misconduct involving female staff. According to a summary of the investigation’s findings, Jackson “more likely than not,” “engaged in unwelcome, sex-based behavior,” against two former employees.

Of the 10 California propositions on the November ballot, perhaps the most contentious is one that would boost penalties for repeated thefts and drug offenses including fentanyl sale and possession. Proposition 36 is designed to undo some parts of Proposition 47, a 2014 ballot measure that reduced some felonies to...