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San Diego's vacation rentals have long been stuck in a gray zone: The city attorney has said they're illegal, but the city's not doing anything to crack down on them either. That could soon change. On the podcast, hosts Scott Lewis and Jesse Marx talk about the mayor's big vacation rental move this week. The City Council has struggled to reach consensus when it comes to regulating the home-sharing industry. But on Thursday Mayor Kevin Faulconer finally . The City Council is scheduled to weigh in on the plan July 16. In the second half of the show, UC San Diego professor  talks with Marx about his cannabis research, including . Also on the podcast: Sergey Kagermázov, an investigative journalist from Saint Petersburg, Russia, who's hanging out with the VOSD crew for a few weeks, makes a cameo to talk about the stark differences between reporting in Russia and the United States. Plus: the case of a Chula Vista High School teacher whose behavior toward female students was found to be “severe and pervasive" and the departure deal that ; and a at one of San Diego's most prestigious charter schools. Hero of the Week Mayor Kevin Faulconer is the hero this week. He took charge of the vacation rental debacle and has also been  at the SANDAG board meetings. Goat of the Week The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is the goat. In the lead-up to the primary, the group ran attack ads against Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, who was running for Congress, like the state budget and last year’s cap-and-trade bill. Basically, Democrats attacked Chavez, a Republican, for helping Democrats, potentially discouraging future bipartisanship efforts.

Tuesday's election mostly went as predicted, with a couple surprises. This week's show features a special post-election roundtable discussion with hosts Scott Lewis, Andrew Keatts and Sara Libby, plus political consultant Ryan Clumpner and Carol Kim, political director of the San Diego County Building and Construction Trades Council. The crew works through the more interesting election outcomes in a fast-paced game of true or false, offering their insights along the way. Example: City Council President Myrtle Cole is in trouble, true or false? "True," Clumpner said. "She should not have somebody else nipping at her heels, given the position she's in." Cole's the most powerful person on the City Council. But her incumbency only managed to get her slightly more votes than her opponent Monica Montgomery. The two will face each other again in November. Among the other topics tackled: Did George Soros' money end up hurting Geneviéve Jones-Wright's run for district attorney? Was there a significant Democratic showing in the hotly contested 49th Congressional District? Is the top-two primary election system good?

A lot of races turned out to have much cleaner outcomes after early results than in the past. In a special election podcast, Scott Lewis, Sara Libby and Andrew Keatts digest the election results.

The primary election is Tuesday. In this special election podcast, hosts Scott Lewis, Sara Libby and Andrew Keatts discuss some of the biggest races and issues facing San Diego voters on June 5.

For the first time in public, the San Diego Association of Governments board flexed its new authority. The move caused a kerfuffle. Last year’s AB 805 shifted the power on the regional transportation agency's board, which is composed of local leaders from around the county. It allows the board to call for weighted votes that give more power to bigger cities. Some of the leaders from small cities aren't big fans. In this week's podcast, Sara Libby, Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts explain the significance of the new SANDAG power structure, and the housing vote that caused leaders to put it into play. Also on the first half of the show: Oral arguments happened this week at the California Supreme Court over Proposition B, the 2012 initiative that ended guaranteed pensions for new city employees. Libby, Lewis and Keatts discuss the huge ramifications and confusion it would cause if the court decides Prop. B should be thrown because then-Mayor Jerry Sanders didn't follow the proper procedure. Voice of San Diego reporter Maya Srikrishnan makes an appearance in the second half of the podcast to talk about how the surge in border crossing prosecutions is causing chaos and confusion in federal courts. She also discusses some of her other recent reporting on immigration. Hero of the Week Michael McConnell is our hero. The local business owner and advocate for the homeless was the first to raise alarms about the numbers in this year's annual homeless census. Lisa Halverstadt dug in and found the count left out hundreds of people who live in RVs and people enrolled in programs at the San Diego Rescue Mission. Goat of the Week The San Diego Unified School District is the goat. In May, the district announced it was moving forward with a controversial policy to delete staff emails more than a year old. Voice of San Diego has filed for a temporary restraining order to halt the district's new email destruction policy, which was scheduled to go into effect Friday. Emails are subject to public records requests and can play an important role in keeping public institutions accountable.

The San Diego County Office of Education has its hands in lots of things. But one of its biggest tasks is making sure the regions's most vulnerable students don't slip through the cracks. On the latest podcast, hosts Scott Lewis and Laura Kohn talk to...

San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliot is flexing her power again — though you wouldn't know it from her office's announcement about her latest move. On this week's podcast, hosts Scott Lewis, Sara Libby and Andrew Keatts discuss the potential far-reaching implications of Elliott's new lawsuit seeking to boot both of the proposals to redevelop the Mission Valley stadium site off the ballot. Later in the show, Keatts interviews Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who was in San Diego this week to support Genevieve Jones-Wright's DA run. Krasner has gotten national attention for being on the forefront of the criminal justice reform movement. Keatts and Libby also talk to Susan Munsey, director of GenerateHope, an organization that provides services to women who've been sexually trafficked. Munsey came on the show to continue the ongoing sex work debate about the possible distinctions and definitions of sex-trafficked women and sex workers. She said very few people come into the sex trade without being coerced. Also on the pod: The flame-throwing happening in political mailers this year is intense, differing opinions on San Diego's cloudy May Gray weather and Mayor Kevin Faulconer's missed opportunity in the governor's race. Hero of the Week San Diego County's Grand Jury is our hero. The group has lately been tackling some weighty topics. Their latest reports include looking at ways to improve the citizens' initiative process, missed opportunities to make money from the stadium in Mission Valley, the county's handling of the Hepatitis A epidemic and more. Goat of the Week The city of San Diego gets goated this week for the $32 million-plus deal it made with a partnership that holds the lease on the crucial piece of land needed for a contiguous Convention Center expansion. The city had the opportunity to secure the lease years ago for a much lower price.

Interim District Attorney Summer Stephan doesn’t see a big difference between sex work and sex trafficking. She's said that women involved in prostitution rarely choose that work voluntarily and are often being coerced. Genevieve Jones-Wright, who’s running against Stephan for district attorney, disagrees. Jones-Wright has said Stephan is conflating sex trafficking with sex work, the latter of which can be voluntary. On this week's podcast, I. India Thusi, an assistant professor at California Western School of Law, joins hosts Scott Lewis, Sara Libby and Andrew Keatts to make the case for why lumping voluntary sex work with involuntary sex trafficking can be a dangerous and costly practice. Thusi said conflating the two leads to imprecise data and overly broad initiatives that divert resources from human trafficking victims while keeping voluntary sex workers from seeking safe working conditions and accessing other programs and resources. She also said law enforcement officials should take individuals' personal stories into account. "It's not very black and white in terms of what people's experiences are," Thusi said. "By taking away their ability to actually say what their story was and what led them to the work and respecting their voices, you're actually depriving them from resources and remedies that would actually be beneficial to them." Also on the podcast, Escondido Mayor Sam Abed's told President Donald Trump this week that local law enforcement's cooperation with federal immigration agents is crucial for public safety and that the "narrative that sanctuary city will allow more immigrants to report crime is fake news." Lewis, Libby and Keatts point to current and former local law enforcement leaders and an immigration expert who disagree with Abed's assessment. Hero of the Week The San Diego City Council is the hero this week. It's a pre-emptive award for the City Council, which has set July 16 as the date to tackle short-term vacation rentals. Surely the Council would never set a date to decide the issue and then fail to deliver. Right? Goat of the Week San Diego County released a report about how it handled San Diego’s hepatitis A crisis. The outbreak killed 20 people, and yet the report describes “areas of success as well as areas for improvement.”

Many industries have places where professionals, both young and old, can hobnob and break bread. Weed is no different. And since San Diego crafted a system for adult-use marijuana businesses, there’s been a wave of private clubs offering to connect investors and entrepreneurs who might not know one another but whose interests are the same. They want a piece of the new and limited regulatory system. "It's really in the beginning stages, but there's a lot of fight over who gets what and how can I claim my ticket," said Sumeet Harish, a marketing executive with the startup Culinary Cannaseur Club. "You need a lot of money and a lot of connections." On this episode of the Voice of San Diego Potcast, Harish gave me and Kinsee Morlan a sense of the high-end parties that the company hosts. Spoiler: There’s Michelin-quality food and “a level two som.” You know, short for sommelier. In the same way that a credit card company or an airline might celebrate its best vendors, players in the marijuana industry can gather in a physical place and trade cards and talk about their collective challenges — like flying in the face of federal opposition. But it’s more than a special event. Members can communicate offline and online. “Eventually we'll be able to communicate just like any kind of network, like LinkedIn,” Harish said. Also on the show, Morlan and I stopped to appreciate more confusion over Cannabidiol, or CBD, a non-psychoactive compound with medical benefits that’s manufactured in oil, vape and edible forms ( we went over a bit about the science, or lack thereof, in a previous episode). Turns out that while similar-looking CBD products may be regulated by different agencies, only one may require a license because it derives from marijuana and not industrial hemp. I thought that was a needlessly complex way of governing, but Morlan set me straight: Hemp and marijuana come from the same species, but they’re distinct plants. Tell us if you disagree or if I’ve missed something.

John Cox, a Rancho Santa Fe businessman who's running for governor, made quite a claim in a gubernatorial debate this week. In response to a question about sexual harassment and the #MeToo movement, he said: "I led the recall of Bob Filner and got rid of him as the San Diego mayor." A collective eyebrow raise spread across San Diego. On this week's show, hosts Sara Libby, Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts consider the claim, and go through the laundry list of people and efforts that really put the pressure on Filner to resign. The recall effort, to which Cox contributed $10,000 , was one of several things that put pressure on Filner to step down, but it wasn't the main impetus. Recalling elected officials in San Diego was nearly impossible at the time. The recall bar was so high, in fact, that the City Charter was later changed to dramatically expand the ways in which a wayward elected official could be removed. Other factors, like the women who came forward to talk about the sexual harassment they experienced and the flood of tenacious media coverage, were much more effective in forcing Filner out of office. Also on the show, the hosts break down Voice of San Diego's investigation into the systemic issues that help public school employees accused of sexual harassment duck accountability and stay in San Diego schools. And ICYMI: The Bonnie Dumanis interview is out. The former district attorney answered all the questions Lewis, Libby and Keatts have long wanted to ask, including what she knew about the Mexican man convicted of illegally funneling money to local politicians, police shootings, race relations, why she decided to run for county supervisor and more.