vosdpodcastnetwork201707

Milo Lorenzana and Teresa Montero are just two of the dozens of

people who've been driving an arts renaissance in Barrio Logan.

Their most recent project is the redevelopment of an old building

on Logan Avenue where they've opened a coffee shop and...

Milo Lorenzana and Teresa Montero are just two of the dozens of people who've been driving an arts renaissance in Barrio Logan. Their most recent project is the redevelopment of an old building on Logan Avenue where they've opened a coffee shop and leased out the rest of the space in the building to a record store, an art school, a vintage shop and other small locally owned businesses. Milo and Bucky are wary of all the outside developers setting up shop in Barrio Logan right now. But they, too, have stepped into the role of developers themselves now, so they're being extra careful with how they go about things. They want to be the change they want to see happen throughout the rest of their neighborhood.

We did something different this week. Wednesday was April 20, a day that's grown into an annual holiday for cannabis counterculture. So for the show this week we set up a live podcast – or potcast – delving into all the policy details of marijuana legalization. Yes, you could say we got into the weeds of the issue. Our panel of pot experts included Kimberly Simms, a lawyer on the front lines of medical marijuana, Alex Kreit from Thomas Jefferson School of Law and Amanda Chicago Lewis, the national marijuana reporter for BuzzFeed News. If you missed the event, though, sadly you will not get the chance to hear the whole thing because, well, something went wrong with the recording and it isn't suitable for full release. (If you want a copy of the file despite its poor quality, email us and we'll send it to you). Hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts made the best of things by rounding up some of the highlights from the live event. They helped fill in the blanks and tried to clear up some of the haziness surrounding new laws regarding both medical and recreational marijuana in California. Last fall, state lawmakers passed the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, or MMRSA, which will change the way medical marijuana is regulated in the state once it's implemented over the next few years. One of the major differences under MMRSA will be the shift from the nonprofit, collective model that now exists, making medical marijuana more of a straightforward for-profit industry. There's also a measure that will likely be on the November ballot that looks to legalize recreational marijuana in California. Even it it's passed, local municipalities will still be able to ban both medical and recreational marijuana and, of course, the federal government still classifies marijuana as an illegal drug. As both medical and recreational, or "adult-use"– the preferred nomenclature these days – marijuana is slowly but steadily mainstreamed and commercialized, there are social justice concerns to consider. Amanda Chicago Lewis, following up on an article she wrote, discussed how communities of color have been disproportionately punished for marijuana, and now they're not the ones benefiting from its legalization. "The law enforcement lobby has a very big influence over how cannabis is being legalized in every single state," she said. "They're very nervous. ... about turning this drug into something legal and what could potentially happen and especially about people who were willing to commit crimes suddenly becoming zillionaires, but these laws really don't make sense." She said not allowing people who have drug felonies on their records to participate in the legalized marijuana industry is essentially discriminatory against mostly black people who've been punished more than white people under current drug laws. Lewis and Keatts also talked about the possibly of de-scheduling pot, the issues that come with the federal government's lack of leadership and the country's accelerating acceptance of the drug. At the live event, Simms summed up that shift nicely. She said its time for government officials to reflect the current zeitgeist when it comes to pot. "We're all responsible for making sure that our elected officials know how we feel about this issue and that cannabis users are your neighbors or your attorneys or your CPAs or your kid's soccer coach," she said. "We are everywhere and we should not be marginalized anymore and it's time to regulate it and figure it out and come out of a cannabis closet." Also on the podcast, Lewis and Keatts are outraged by 98 botched cases at the city attorney's office uncovered by the U-T and they dish on the new convadium renderings released by the Chargers.

Education technology is exploding. This week in San Diego some of the major players in technology companies, their investors and education leaders gathered in San Diego for the  to talk about disrupting classrooms. We grabbed one of the...

In the political arena, underdogs are candidates who don't get many endorsements, they raise little money compared to competitors and they don't have much name recognition. People think underdogs are long-shots who won't likely win, but sometimes they pull out a surprise. Lori Saldaña is a self-admitted political underdog who joins podcast co-hosts Ry Rivard and Sara Libby this week to talk about her underdog status in the mayoral race, and her surprise win in a past race for state Assembly. Saldaña was a major underdog when she ran for Assembly. She said she won, in part, because the Democrats she was up against were too busy slinging mud at each other. "People said it was a circular firing squad of Democrats in that primary and I ducked," she said. Also on the podcast this week, Kevin Melton, a Republican candidate for the 78th District Assembly seat. Melton is running against City Councilman Todd Gloria — someone who's well known, has racked up endorsements and raised far more money — but Melton said he doesn't consider himself an underdog at all. "I'm able to relate with all sides and all people," he said. "So those people who need to come over who are fiscally conservative, socially moderate – they will vote my way." Melton said on the podcast that he has a slate of high-profile endorsements but that they'll stay secret for the time being. He also said that though he hasn't reported much money on campaign fundraising disclosures, that will soon change. After the podcast taping, Melton emailed a new list of endorsements: "Supervisor Bill Horn, Assemblyman Brian Jones, Councilman Scott Sherman, Coronado Councilman Richard Baily, the entire Republican Party Central Committee 78th Assembly District, Republican Federation of Women Coronado, Point Loma, La Jolla, Del Mar, Solano Beach." But he also said he has the endorsements of four "major people in the city" that he still can't share. VOSD's Lisa Halverstadt also makes an appearance on the podcast this week to shed some light on the race to fill Gloria's District 3 City Council seat. Candidates Chris Ward and Anthony Bernal are similar in a lot of ways. They've both said no to public funding for a new stadium for the Chargers and yes to a dedicated funding stream to fix the estimated $300 million of infrastructure needs in Balboa Park. The two have also invoked Gloria's image in their campaigns, even though neither candidate has gotten his official endorsement yet. Crazy Ballot Initiatives The Secret Ballot Voting in State Legislature Initiative is also a bit of an underdog to make the November ballot. The proposed measure wants legislators to be required to vote by secret ballot, thereby eliminating voting records and any method of understanding how our elected officials are doing their job. Favorite Things • Rivard's favorite thing is the California Public Records Act. During the Saldaña interview, the candidate brought up her complaint that someone with political motivations has requested her personnel records. Rivard said he likes the fact that anyone can file a public records request, and it shouldn't matter what the motivations are behind each filing, because the public deserves access to public files. The public, after all, is paying for them. • Libby's a USC alum, so her fave thing this week is the school's recent hire of Lynn Swann, a former professional football player, as athletic director.

For the last eight years, City Attorney Jan Goldsmith has been adamant that he does not make his decisions politically. He even chastised Voice of San Diego for seeing things through “a prism, and it’s political.” He has rarely talked about his own personal political outlook. “I didn’t like George W. Bush. I really like Mitt Romney. I used to like [New Jersey Gov. Chris] Christie,” he told CityBeat in 2014. Last week, though, he unleashed his inner political fire. He was warming up the crowd for presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who would be following him on stage at the Town and Country Resort. “We believe in jobs, freedom and security. You know something? The Democrats don’t believe in these values,” Goldsmith said. The onetime libertarian endorsed tough border security and said the country was headed toward a cliff if it didn’t elect Cruz. That they don’t believe in freedom or security might be a surprise to the Democrats Goldsmith works with on the City Council. And he should probably fire the Democrats who work for him if they, you know, don’t believe in security. After all, a big part of the city attorney’s job is law enforcement. We sampled some of the best hits of Goldsmith’s fiery speech for this week’s podcast. We also interviewed Mary Walshok, the associate vice chancellor for public programs and dean of extension at UC San Diego. The topic? Leadership. This week seems to have a lot of people in San Diego asking where the leadership is as San Diego wrestles with giant decisions and punts many of them to the ballot. Walshok, who wrote the book “Invention and Reinvention: The Evolution of San Diego’s Innovation Economy,” said we have always been like this but the region has been fortunate to make big, forward-thinking land-use decisions at the right time. She broke the news that her team at UC San Diego and the Downtown Partnership will be releasing a major report on downtown’s place as the future of innovation in San Diego. She said San Diego has saved itself often by making strategic decisions about how to develop big parcels of public land and creating “propinquity” — areas of the city where people with similar ambitions and visions can work together and build new industries. “When we talk about downtown right now, it has that promise. I’m not one to judge does expanding a ballpark or convention center intrude on that promise but I would hope that any plans to expand those larger lower-wage facilities would not prevent us from growing an innovation economy in the various neighborhoods contiguous to downtown,” she said.

Andrew Gazdecki made a big splash when he announced he was moving his tech startup from Silicon Valley to San Diego. His company, Bizness Apps, creates smart-phone apps for small businesses like gyms, lawyers and restaurants. “We’re pretty sure we’ve created more apps than any other company in the world,” he said. Gazdecki joined podcast hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts this week to talk about some of the reasons he chose San Diego. San Francisco is super expensive, of course, so that’s one of the motivations for the move. But Gazdecki said he looked at other not-so-pricey places like Seattle, Austin and Las Vegas, yet opted for San Diego because of a promising pool of talent, a high quality of life and proximity to places like San Francisco and Los Angeles. “But the biggest one was really talent here,” he said. Keatts and Lewis ask the tech entrepreneur whey he chose an office in La Jolla over downtown San Diego or any other neighborhood. He said they simply found a good deal on an office they really like. Plus, La Jolla is super purty. Also on the podcast, Lewis and Keatts talk about the Padres getting skunked, the fact that the Chargers’ convadium plan can’t seem to find even an inkling of support from San Diego politicos, the San Diego Police Department’s retention problem and a proposed solution that brings up questions of double-dipping and the East Village People’s idea to move the huge MTS bus yard and replace it with an anchor institution that will attract other businesses and people to the area. Hero of the Week San Diego Association of Governments, or SANDAG, the regional planning agency gets the week’s honors for thinking ahead and building infrastructure that can accommodate the future of self-driving cars. Goat of the Week Rep. Duncan Hunter gets dissed this week. The San Diego representative spent campaign money on video games and private school tuition.   Full Show Notes

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You might've heard that California's presidential primary, for once, could actually matter this time around. But that doesn't necessarily mean you can just stroll into a poll this June and weigh in. The latest San Diego Decides is all about voting — what needs to happen before you can vote in the primary, how voting is changing and some of the controversies surrounding how votes are counted. Hosts Sara Libby and Ry Rivard speak with Rep. Susan Davis, who has for years been pushing a bill that would allow any eligible voter to vote by mail. Californians can vote by mail easily, but folks in many other states have to jump through onerous hurdles like producing a doctor's note or proving they'll be on vacation on Election Day. “If you actually get sick on Election Day, you probably didn’t know you were going to get sick, which means you probably didn’t go to the doctor in order to get a permission slip so that you can vote by mail,” Davis said. Also on the show: Vince Hall, executive director of the Future of California Elections, a group charged with modernizing the voting process in California. Hall talks about some of the latest reforms to the voting process and why you still won't be able to vote online anytime soon. "With paper ballots, you always have accountability, you have an audit system that allows you to essentially recreate the election, precinct by precinct, based on demonstrable physical evidence of what happened," Hall said. "But when you’re talking about digits in a computer, you don’t have that permanent record, that permanent accountability, with the way the internet currently functions.” Hall closes with some sobering statistics about California voter participation: “In 2014, the voter participation rate in California was so bad, that the average voter was older than the average Californian’s parents. So it was really a grandparent electorate. And in our state, in that year, an 18 or 19 year-old was more likely to get arrested than to vote in a state-wide election.” Crazy Ballot Initiatives The latest proposal to go under the microscope is a measure that would eliminate charter schools — all of them. Sara talks with a supporter of the measure about why she believes the plan is viable. Favorite Things • Ry shares some lore from his home state of West Virgina, which has a history of alleged voter fraud. • Sara's vibing The Return of the '90s: TLC, O.J., the Clintons and "Full House" are all back.   Show Notes

On last week’s podcast, Francine Busby, chair of the San Diego County Democratic Party gave a candid description of what happened in a very important recent meeting where they party decided on endorsements. Mickey Kasparian, president of the local United Food and Commercial Workers and the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, said it was too candid and she was wrong. Kasparian came on the podcast this week to clear up what he thought were misrepresentations of what he said at the meeting. Busby had said it appeared as though Kasparian was pushing the Dems to be cautious because of regrets he had for supporting Bob Filner and later David Alvarez for mayor. Filner, he tells us this week, was indeed unfortunate but not labor’s fault. “Labor didn’t make a mistake,” he said. “He made the mistake – Filner – it wasn’t labor.” Kasparian said his groups don’t want to endorse anyone until clear leaders emerge from the June primary. He also made sure to put in a bold word on labor’s persisting political influence. “Certainly we reached out to several people to try to get people to run but we came up with a doughnut and that’s unfortunate,” Kasparian said. “But that doesn’t take away form labor’s power and influence in this city.” Also on the podcast, Andrew Keatts and I evaluate an interesting admission from the Chargers camp: That they tried to figure out a way to pay for a stadium without public funds but couldn’t in good conscience make that argument. And we think local politicos who panned the Chargers’ new plan might be laying a trap they’ll trigger when they want to support other projects. Keatts also admits that he’s pretty much constantly battling existential angst and Lewis gets scolded for ending a sentence with a preposition, but is ultimately redeemed by a big fan. Hero of the Week: District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis is launching the “George ‘Woody’ Clarke Conviction Review Unit,” an initiative that’ll search out and investigate potential wrongful convictions. Goat of the Week: Lori Saldaña called a public records request for her emails and other information relating to her role as a public employee “sleazegate.” But requesting public documents isn’t actually that sleazy since public documents should be made public no matter the motive of those who request them. Subscribe to the VOSD Podcast on iTunes or get the RSS feed here. Stream it here. This Week in the VOSD Podcast Network Good Schools For All: Trish Boyd Williams from the California State Board of Education joins the podcast to talk about Common Core and how it shifts things from less memorization of isolated facts to more focus on bigger ideas. Subscribe to Good Schools for All on iTunes or get the RSS feed here.