VOTE: Southern California Girls Athlete of the Week, April 28

• April 26, 2023

Each week, publications from the Southern California News Group’s 11 properties (Orange County Register, L.A. Daily News, Press-Enterprise, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Long Beach Press-Telegram, The Daily Breeze, San Bernardino Sun, Daily Bulletin, Redlands Daily Facts, Whittier Daily News and Pasadena-Star News) select the Athletes of the Week for their respective region.

Each athlete is then entered into the overall Southern California Athlete of the Week vote.

Click on the newspaper links below the athlete’s name to read about their performance from last week, and then vote for who you think deserves the top honor.

Readers are allowed to vote multiple times. Voting ends at Thursday at midnight, but final totals aren’t always immediately reflected due to processing.

GIRLS ATHLETE OF THE WEEK VOTING

The overall winner will be announced on Friday, April 28.

Voting poll at bottom of the page.

Cat Calzada, Lakewood: Calzada’s two-RBI triple in the fourth inning powered Lakewood to a 4-3 win against Long Beach Poly last week. The victory put Lakewood in position for a Moore League championship game against Millikan at Mayfair Park on Thursday at 6:30 p.m.

Samantha Bland, Chino Hills: Bland, a shortstop headed to Nebraska, had a perfect week at the plate, going 7 for 7 with two hit by pitches in Baseline League wins over Los Osos and Rancho Cucamonga. Bland went 3 for 3 with a home run and five runs batted in during a 15-1 win over Los Osos. She hit for the cycle in a 14-4 victory over Rancho Cucamonga. She led off the game with a home run and completed the cycle with a single in the sixth inning. Bland is batting .461 with 32 runs and 27 RBIs this season.

Montserrat Reyes-Cardenas, La Mirada: She led the Matadores to a 2-1 victory Saturday over Norco, which is ranked No. 2 in CIF-SS Division 1. Reyes-Cardenas gave up one run on eight eights with eight strikeouts. She showed poise by getting out of a jam in the seventh inning to preserve the victory. The Mats have won the Gateway League title and will be in the Division 1 playoffs.

Brianne Weiss, Orange Lutheran: The Notre Dame commit fired a no-hitter with 12 strikeouts in a 1-0 victory against Santa Margarita and a four-hit shutout with seven strikeouts in a 4-0 triumph against Rosary to help keep the Lancers undefeated in the Trinity League. Weiss is 11-2 with a 0.69 ERA.

Nanea Kyle, West Torrance: Kyle had four hits, four stolen bases and drove in two runs in a 10-6 win over El Segundo. She contributed three hits, including a double and a triple, and drove in three runs in a 12-0 win over Wiseburn Da Vinci.

Madelaine Debs, Sierra Canyon: Debs was stellar in Sierra Canyon’s two Mission League wins last week, going a combined 5 for 6 with two homers. She went 3 for 3 with a home run and an RBI in a 6-1 win over Alemany before going 2 for 3 with home run, a double and two RBIs in a 7-5 win over Chaminade.

​ Orange County Register 

Kings’ Viktor Arvidsson on Kevin Fiala: ‘He’s a world-class player. He can boost any lineup’

• April 26, 2023

EDMONTON, Alberta — It was 22 days between games but the way Kings forward Kevin Fiala played in his return to the lineup in Game 4, it looked more like two days.

If that.

Fiala, who had two primary assists in the Kings’ 5-4 overtime loss to the Edmonton Oilers in Game 4, provided the spark they needed in this first-round playoff series, facing Oilers stars Connor McDavid and Leon Draistail. His impact was evident to the Kings’ players and coaching staff months ago.

“Right from Day 1, not playoffs but regular season,” Kings coach Todd McLellan said.

McLellan was talking after Tuesday’s morning skate at Rogers Place, hours before Game 5. After March 9, when Fiala was injured on a knee-on-knee hit from Colorado forward Andrew Cogliano, Fiala played in just three more regular-season games, the last coming on April 1.

“We’re a team that plays pretty good defensively and lacked that star power maybe that could break a game open,” McLellan said. “He’s proven that to us, game in and game out during the regular season. It’s great to have him back. Dynamic player. He can play anywhere up and down the lineup. And we missed him the last two months, or month, anyhow.

“Having that combination – of (Gabe) Vilardi and Fiala together on our third line – maybe gained an advantage. Him coming back was really good for our team.”

Not many teams have the luxury of putting their second-leading scorer, in Fiala, and his 72 regular-season points on the third line with Vilardi and Alex Iafallo.

“He plays with a lot of confidence,” Kings forward Viktor Arvidsson said. “He needs to do that to be good. And he does it every night. It doesn’t matter if he is out four weeks or out for a day or two. He comes back and plays the way he can.

“He’s a world-class player. He can boost any lineup.”

Fiala’s two assists in Game 4 came during the Kings’ three-goal first period and he logged nearly 22 minutes of ice time. “It felt good, just the wind (conditioning) was missing,” he said.

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There was no way he was going to be eased back into the lineup.

“In Kevin’s case, it’s open up the gate … and let’s face it, we don’t have time,” McLellan said.

ICE CHIPS

There was one lineup change for the Kings for Game 5, coming on the back end. Sean Walker made his series debut, drawing in for veteran Alex Edler and played on the third D pair with Sean Durzi. Not only was it Walker’s series debut but his first playoff game in the NHL.

Walker’s last game came in the regular-season finale against the Ducks on April 13.

He missed most of the 2021-22 season after suffering torn knee ligaments in an Oct. 25, 2021 game at St. Louis, which required surgery and a lengthy rehabilitation.

​ Orange County Register 

LAFC, Philadelphia expect another heavyweight clash in CONCACAF Champions League semifinal

• April 26, 2023

For Aaron Long, it only made sense that the Los Angeles Football Club faced the Philadelphia Union in the MLS Cup final.

“Me being in the East last year, Philly was definitely the heavyweight,” Long said. “In the East, they were a very good team. And then they came to L.A., and L.A. was the top dog in the West. So it looked like a heavyweight fight.”

The defender’s familiarity with what makes the Union tough to beat has repeatedly collided with LAFC’s unabashed success since 2018.

Very little has separated Major League Soccer’s top point-earning and goal-scoring organizations other than their style of play, giving Long the unmistakable impression last November that “the right two teams that should be in the final” made it.

Twelve days prior to entering free agency following seven seasons with the New York Red Bulls, Long watched as LAFC absorbed heavy blows from Philadelphia before landing a haymaker that would have dropped Rocky Balboa.

After 131 intense minutes plus penalty kicks – and three straight saves by hero goalkeeper John McCarthy, a Philly boy – LAFC denied the Union its first MLS Cup title and made Black & Gold history instead.

Five months on from that epic result the two sides remain competitively tethered, playing their way into the CONCACAF Champions League semifinal – Wednesday night at Subaru Park on the banks of the Delaware River, with the second leg set for next Tuesday (May 2) at BMO Stadium.

According to metrics valued by the Union, LAFC ranks No. 1 in scoring transition goals and transition defense. That strong combination illustrates how well LAFC has held up during a congested schedule to start 2023, as does its status as the lone unbeaten team in MLS (5-0-3).

With 177 points off a 54-13-15 home record since the 2018 regular season, the Union are second best on their turf in league play. LAFC, five points better at 54-9-20, shows the tight margins between the two across assorted statistics and records, which slightly favor the current league and Supporters’ Shield titlists over an opponent driven to surpass them.

Long’s vantage point might have shifted after signing with LAFC in January, but the defender’s impression of the league’s most compelling East-West confrontation is unchanged ahead of their two-leg Champions League clash.

Philadelphia plays direct and builds up the bulk of its successful moments through the midfield. LAFC has proven dangerous in a variety of ways and appears especially adept at isolating defenders while creating dangerous chances for its skilled attackers.

“When you have two styles like this and two teams that are good on the counter it makes for an exciting game,” Long said. “The final was extremely exciting.

“I think we’re going to expect a lot of that in the Champions League game. There’s just a lot of really good attacking players on both teams. There’s no way there’s not going to be a lot of chances created, and hopefully goals for us and not for them.”

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Through two rounds of the international competition, that has been the scenario returning home.

Coach Steve Cherundolo’s group traveled to Costa Rica and Vancouver, established seemingly insurmountable 3-0 advantages, and locked up each 180-minute result without much stress at BMO Stadium.

“We didn’t predict those scores but we were able to put in a performance both times that put ourselves in a great position to seal the deal at home,” Cherundolo said, “and that’s exactly what we’re going to try to do in Philly as well.”

LAFC AT PHILADELPHIA

What: CONCACAF Champions League semifinal (first leg)

When: Wednesday, 6 p.m. PT

Where: Subaru Park, Chester, Pa.

TV: FS1, TUDN

​ Orange County Register 

Chris Taylor’s 3-run home run caps Dodgers’ comeback

• April 26, 2023

PITTSBURGH — The pain in his side from a minor oblique injury couldn’t have hurt any worse than what Chris Taylor must have felt when he saw his batting average displayed on large scoreboards across the country.

Taylor went into Tuesday batting .111 (5 for 45), including just two hits and 14 strikeouts over his previous 24 at-bats. But he was on base four times and hit a go-ahead three-run home run in the eighth inning that brought the Dodgers all the way back from a five-run deficit to beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 8-7.

The comeback gave the Dodgers their second three-game winning streak of the season (their longest) and moved them two games over .500 (13-11) for the first time in 2½ weeks.

“Yeah, that was a big one for us,” Taylor said. “Getting down early, (we) felt a little dead. Felt like we scratched and clawed our way back into this one. That’s what we used to do so well. So to be able to do that, kind of work one inning at a time, get some baserunners then come up in some big spots felt good.”

The five-run deficit was nothing compared to the hole Taylor was digging himself this season. Following on the heels of an injury-marred, sub-par season in 2022 and poor Cactus League results this spring, getting off to a bad start was far from ideal.

“It’s not the first time I’ve had a slow start to the season,” he said. “It’s always hard. Everybody wants to start the year off well. You’ve just got to kind of take it one day at a time and try to focus on helping the team win any way you can, try to take the pressure off yourself. That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

A bloop single in the fifth inning might have been the best thing to ease some of that tension, Taylor said.

“Once you start getting hits you sort of relax a little bit. The tension frees up and everything slows down,” he said.

“If anything I think it reminds you that you’re not as far away as you think you are. … Sometimes you put so much pressure and there’s just that added tension because you want to get a hit so bad, you want to come through so bad. It’s hard to perform that way.”

Noah Syndergaard put the Dodgers in the 7-2 hole they found themselves in Tuesday. He was roughed up for those seven runs on nine hits in just four innings, his ERA rising to 6.58 in the process.

“Just one of those days where I was my biggest enemy and I just get out of sync with my delivery and rhythm and become my own worst enemy,” Syndergaard said. “Hard to get out of my way at that point.”

The velocity Syndergaard hoped to recover this year with Tommy John surgery farther in his past appears to be gone for good. He averaged 92 mph on his fastball against the Pirates and is averaging 92.5 mph for the season.

The real speed is being shown by runners once they reach base against Syndergaard. Always one of the worst in the league at controlling the running game, MLB’s new rules have not worked in Syndergaard’s favor. He has allowed nine steals in nine attempts during his 26 innings this year.

That figured prominently in the Pirates’ pillaging of Syndergaard.

Tucupita Marcano singled and stole second in the first inning then scored the Pirates’ first run on Carlos Santana’s two-out RBI single.

Ji Hwan Bae beat out infield singles in each of his first two at-bats against Syndergaard, stole second each time and scored runs. One of those was on a two-run double by Ke’Bryan Hayes, lined through the spot vacated when Taylor moved to cover third base as Bae and Austin Hedges took off on a double steal.

Bae’s second run came on a three-run home run by Andrew McCutchen, the fifth homer Syndergaard has given up this season.

The Dodgers chipped away at the Pirates’ early lead and nearly erased it in the sixth inning.

A leadoff double by James Outman and a Miguel Vargas walk put two on for the third rookie in the Dodgers’ lineup, Michael Busch. He lined an RBI single through the middle for his first major-league hit.

When Taylor followed with a single, the Dodgers had the bases loaded with one out. Austin Barnes made it a two-run game, 7-5, with a sacrifice fly and Mookie Betts drove a fly ball to deep left field.

Pirates outfielder Jack Suwinski jumped at the wall and robbed Betts of a three-run home run that would have given the Dodgers the lead.

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“It was deflating,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But knowing we still had three at-bats left, we still felt pretty good about it. It was a bummer but I don’t think anyone was too deflated.”

Taylor got to play the hero instead. Two innings later, he drove a 2-and-0 fastball from Pirates reliever Colin Holderman well beyond Suwinski’s reach, 422 feet into the seats in left-center field.

“He’s exhausting every ounce of ideas, thoughts, things, routines and trying to figure things out,” Roberts said of Taylor, who was at PNC Park on the off day on Monday taking extra swings. “I can only say, ‘Way to swing the bat’ (so many times) and not get results. Tonight was a good night and I’m happy for him.”

Caleb Ferguson immediately put that lead in danger before working out of a bases-loaded situation in the bottom of the eighth that was largely of his own making (a walk and a hit batter).

Shelby Miller retired the side in order in the ninth for his first career save.

GO-AHEAD CT3-RUN HOMER! pic.twitter.com/2amNRpABOk

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) April 26, 2023

First of many for Michael Busch! pic.twitter.com/zxc22t2rAc

— SportsNet LA (@SportsNetLA) April 26, 2023

Give me the loot.

What a catch by Jack Suwinski! pic.twitter.com/JojX8cKApI

— MLB (@MLB) April 26, 2023

​ Orange County Register 

Chatbots and the new AI: What will Silicon Valley unleash upon the world this time?

• April 25, 2023

Jobs. News. Art. Democracy. Equality. Education. Privacy. Truth. Your bank account. All will be impacted by Silicon Valley’s latest creation: “generative” artificial intelligence.

With new chatbots and AI software that generates text, images and sound, technology companies have smashed open Pandora’s Box, experts say, unleashing a powerful tool with the capacity to profoundly change virtually all aspects of life — and putting it in the hands of every one of us, builders and destroyers alike.

Silicon Valley’s tech industry, famed for its move-fast-and-break-things ethos, has embarked on an arms race to monetize the transformative and potentially destructive technology. Many of those in the midst of the surge are worried about the dangers — expected and unexpected — that await.

A generative AI market didn’t exist just a few months ago. Then late last year, San Francisco’s OpenAI released a stunning iteration of its ChatGPT bot, which has advanced so rapidly that people in many cases cannot distinguish between what is produced by a human or generated by a bot.

Now even many of the most fervent believers in technological advancement worry that this time tech is going to break everything.

Venture capitalist Chon Tang, founding partner of UC Berkeley startup accelerator SkyDeck, speaks at a SkyDeck event on April 4, 2023 (courtesy of SkyDeck/photo by Marla Aufmuth)

“Everybody should pay attention,” said Chon Tang, a venture capitalist and general partner at SkyDeck, UC Berkeley’s startup accelerator. “This is not a new toy. This is not a fad. This is not VCs looking for attention and founders trying to create hype. This is a society-changing, species-changing event. I’m excited by this technology but the downsides are just so immense. We’ve unleashed forces that we don’t understand.”

The White House recently raised an alarm about AI’s “potential risks to individuals and society that may not yet have manifested,” and urged accountability and consumer safety protections.

The technology uses sophisticated computing, but its basic concepts are simple: Software is “trained” through information feeds — from data sources such as Wikipedia, scientific papers, patents, books, news stories, photos, videos, art, music, voices and even previous and potentially problem-ridden AI outputs, much of it copyrighted and scraped from the internet without permission. The chatbot then spits out results based on “prompts” from the user.

Chatbots can write a term paper, corporate marketing copy or a news story. They can conduct research, review contracts, perform customer service, build websites, create graphic design, write code, create a “photograph” of a Congressional candidate smoking meth, or a faked video of your significant other having sex with your neighbor.

A bot can copy someone’s voice from a social media video clip so a scammer can call their grandparents with a desperate plea for money, create a fake charity showcasing heart-wrenching images in the wake of a major disaster, or chat someone into investing in nonexistent stocks.

For now, generative AI often produces inaccurate results. It can’t understand emotion, or nuance, and lacks the common sense to understand, for example with ChatGPT, that a book cannot fall off a shelf because it “lost its balance.”

Microsoft, in a multi-billion-dollar deal with OpenAI, has turned its Bing search engine into a chatbot, and Google is struggling to catch up with its in-development Bard. New bots are arriving daily, with almost any imaginable function, from turning data into charts to getting puppy-raising advice, to scraping the world wide web for the content needed to create an app.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers warned in a paper recently that generative AI could produce recipes for chemical weapons and addictive drugs.

Worries about generative AI also come from inside the house: “Unintended consequences,” the ChatGPT bot told this news organization recently when asked about its future, “could result in negative impacts on people, society, or the environment.”

Negative impacts, bot? Discrimination in hiring or lending, it said. Harmful misinformation and propaganda, it said. Job loss. Inequality. Accelerated climate change.

Ask Silicon Valley startup guru Steve Blank about generative AI and he’ll start talking about nuclear weapons, genetic engineering and deadly lab-created viruses. Then he’ll tell you about long-ago research scientists seeing potential catastrophes from those technologies and putting on the brakes until guardrails could go up. And he’ll tell you what’s different now.

“This technology is not being driven by research scientists, it’s being driven by for-profit companies,” said Blank, an adjunct professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University. “If the hair’s not standing up at the back of your neck after looking at this thing, you don’t understand what’s just happened.”

Silicon Valley’s history with social media — prioritizing revenue, rapid growth and market share, with too little regard for damaging fallout — does not bode well for its approach to generative AI, Blank said. “Morals and ethics are not on the top of the list, and unintended consequences be damned,” Blank said. “This is kind of the ultimate valley thing. I’d be pissed off if I was in the rest of society.”

Blank worries about job losses and weaponization of AI by governments, and most of all, given the lightning pace of the technology’s evolution, that “we don’t know what we don’t know,” he said. “Where’s this stuff going to be in 10 years?”

Google CEO Sundar Pichai pledged in a New York Times interview last month that in the AI arms race, “You will see us be bold and ship things,” however, “we are going to be very responsible in how we do it.” But Silicon Valley has a history of shipping bold products that ended up linked to eating disorders, foreign meddling in U.S. elections, domestic insurrection and genocide — and Pichai refused to commit to slowing down Google’s AI development.

“The big companies are fearing being left behind and overtaken by the smaller companies; the smaller companies are taking bigger chances,” said Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics Program at Santa Clara University.

An open letter last month from tech-world luminaries including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter CEO Elon Musk raised concerns that generative AI could “flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth” and “automate away all the jobs,” but it received the most attention for highlighting future “nonhuman minds” that might “outsmart, obsolete and replace us.”

Emily Bender, director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Washington, said the letter’s fears of an “artificial general intelligence” resembling Skynet from the “Terminator” movies is “not what we’re talking about in the real world.” Bender noted instead that data hoovered up for AI bots often contains biased or incorrect information, and sometimes misinformation. “If there’s something harmful in what you’ve automated, then that harm can get scaled,” Bender said. “You pollute the information ecosystem. It becomes harder to find trustworthy sources.”

The tremendous power of generative AI has suddenly been handed to bad actors who may use it to create hard-to-stop phishing campaigns or to build ransomware, raising the specter of catastrophic attacks on businesses and governments, Raicu said.

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Yet many critics of generative AI also recognize its gifts. “I’ve really struggled to think of a single industry that’s not going to be able to get tremendous value because if it,” venture capitalist Tang said.

Greg Kogan, head of marketing at San Francisco database-search company Pinecone, said companies in a wide variety of industries are developing generative AI or integrating it into products and services, leading to “explosive” growth at Pinecone. “Every CEO and CTO in the world is like, ‘How do we catch this lightning in a bottle and use it?’” Kogan said. “At first people were excited. Then it turned into an existential thing where it’s like, ‘If we don’t do it first, our competitors are going to launch a product.’” Silicon Valley, from startups to giants like Apple, has gone on a hiring spree for workers with generative AI skills.

Tang believes engineering and regulation can mitigate most damage from the technology, but he remains deeply concerned about unstoppable, self-propagating malware sowing devastating chaos worldwide, and automation of vast numbers of tasks and jobs. “What happens to that 20% or 50% or 70% of the population that is economically of less value than a machine?” Tang asked. “How do we as a society absorb, support that massive segment of the population?”

​ Orange County Register 

California’s lowest paid health workers want a raise; industry leaders are pushing back

• April 25, 2023

By Ana Ibarra | CalMatters

Supporters of a proposal to raise the minimum wage for California health workers point to Inglewood, where last fall voters approved a wage hike that primarily applied to staff at dialysis clinics and at the city’s only hospital. But the implementation of that local measure has been bumpy, signaling potential problems for the larger effort.

Inglewood’s ordinance went into effect Jan.1, raising the minimum wage for those workers to $25 an hour. Then in March, Centinela Hospital Medical Center, a 362-bed acute care facility owned by Prime Health Care, laid off 48 workers and reduced hours for others, according to a complaint filed earlier this month by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West. The union led Inglewood’s measure and is sponsoring the statewide bill.

READ MORE: LA County supervisors say contracted hospital workers will get health benefits

The union alleges hospital administrators made the cuts in retaliation to the newly implemented wage increase, even though the city ordinance prohibits health facilities from funding the pay increase by laying workers off or reducing their benefits.

Centinela officials maintain the hospital is complying with Inglewood’s minimum wage ordinance. They say they laid off workers after a thorough assessment that determined the hospital was overstaffed in certain units. Centinela offered nearly half of the affected staff other positions within the hospital and many accepted, according to a hospital spokesperson.

“The recent reduction in force was entirely unrelated to the ordinance and affected 2% of the staff,” Susan Lowe, Centinela’s spokesperson, said in an email. “It was related to strategic changes in operational needs and improvement measures, and staff have been added in areas that positively impact patient care and address community needs.”

RELATED: Valencia healthcare workers hold unfair labor practice strike

While the lawsuit is pending, the union is advocating for a broader pay hike for California health workers via Senate Bill 525, by Los Angeles Democratic Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, a longtime labor leader. Durazo’s bill calls for a minimum hourly wage of $25 that would be adjusted annually for inflation. California’s minimum wage is currently $15.50, although it’s higher in some cities and counties.

If the proposal becomes law, the new minimum wage would go into effect in January 2024 and benefit an estimated 469,000 health workers. It would include people who make slightly more than $25, who would likely get a corresponding pay increase, according to an analysis by UC Berkeley’s Labor Center.

Qualifying workers would receive an average increase of $5.74 per hour, which would increase operating costs at health facilities by about 3%, the report said. Some lower-paid workers in health facilities include nursing assistants, patient aides, medical technicians and janitorial workers.

READ MORE: Hollywood Presbyterian workers to picket, citing staffing shortages

The proposal faces a great deal of opposition from industry heavy hitters, including hospital executives, clinic leaders and the doctors’ lobby, which argue this isn’t something all providers can afford or easily implement, especially when they’re dealing with other stressors in their budgets. The California Chamber of Commerce lists the bill as a “job killer.”

But union leaders say the time is now, especially as the industry grapples with workforce shortages that are burning out current staff. “Twenty-five dollars an hour breaks down to roughly $50,000 a year,” said Renee Saldaña, a spokesperson for SEIU-UHW. “It’s not asking for the moon, this is just the baseline of a fair wage for the people who provide vital treatment.”

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Who would benefit

Eneryk Santana last month joined the tens of thousands of people who commute daily across the San Diego-Tijuana border for work or school. He’s a medical assistant at San Ysidro Health Center in Chula Vista and the high cost of living on the U.S. side, he said, forced him to look for housing in Mexico.

To avoid rush hour traffic at the border crossing, he tries to leave his place by 4 a.m. While the border cities are less than 20 miles apart, the process of crossing the border can take up to a few hours on busy days. The commute has been an adjustment, but he said his monthly rent in Tijuana is about $1,000 less than what he was paying in Chula Vista  — a significant difference for someone making $22 an hour.

RELATED: Thousand Oaks healthcare workers to protest short-staffing, low wages

For Santana, a boost in pay would allow him to consider moving back to the U.S., he said. Ideally it could also mean more people attracted to this type of work. “Being short-staffed, when someone calls off, we don’t have much staff who can cover,” Santana said. “And it’s hard not only for workers, but also for the patients, who sometimes have long wait times.”

Workers in clinics and hospitals account for about half of all workers who would see a boost in pay under Durazo’s bill, according to the analysis from UC Berkeley’s Labor Center. Because of their current low earnings, workers in home health services and nursing homes would see the biggest difference — approximately a 40% increase.

Three-fourths of the workforce who would receive a raise under the bill are women, and almost half are Latino, according to the report.

The fight against industry

Hospitals are leading the opposition to the wage hike, arguing that some facilities are in  precarious financial situations. A handful of hospitals in the state have reduced or plan to reduce services. Last week a Montebello hospital filed for bankruptcy and a hospital in the San Joaquin Valley closed its doors at the beginning of this year.

Having to boost minimum wage pay, hospital leaders say, would only add to that strain. A wage hike at this time “takes a very serious problem and makes it impossible,” Carmela Coyle, president of the California Hospital Association, recently said in a call with reporters.

Punctuating its point, the hospital association released a report earlier this month that found that 1 in 5 hospitals are in an “unsustainable financial position” and at risk of closing. Hospitals are considered at-risk if their incomes aren’t covering costs, meaning they are losing money, and have increasing debt, said the report, which sampled 114 hospitals.

Health economists have described the current landscape of California hospitals as a mixed bag with independent and rural hospitals, especially, experiencing severe financial pressures.

During the peak of the pandemic, hospitals had increased expenses but also received financial aid from the federal government. That funding phased out in 2022. The state has not yet audited totals for this last fiscal year, but in 2021, altogether California hospitals posted earnings of $11.9 billion, up from the $8.5 billion hospitals recorded in 2019, according to financial data from the Department of Health Care Access and Information.

A coalition of counties has also voiced its opposition to the bill, noting the bill would apply to workers at county public health and mental health departments, as well as clinics and hospitals operated by counties.

Implementing such a bill would cost the counties hundreds of millions of dollars annually, said Kalyn Dean, a legislative advocate with the California State Association of Counties. To absorb that cost, she said, counties could be forced to reduce services and cut jobs in other government departments.

Meanwhile, clinic leaders say that while they support the idea of boosting pay for their workers, they are subject to strict reimbursement rules that do not allow them to take on the additional expense. The vast majority of community health centers’ patients are covered by Medi-Cal, the health insurance program for low-income people. Medi-Cal pays these centers a fixed amount per patient visit. Modifying that amount to afford a wage increase would require both state and federal approval, said Dennis Cuevas-Romero, vice president of government affairs at the California Primary Care Association, which represents health centers.

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“Unlike other businesses, we can’t just say, ‘OK, the state requires us to increase the minimum wage, let’s just increase the cost of our services.’ We are prohibited from doing so,” he said.

Some provider groups are likely to seek an exemption from this bill, but community health centers say they would like to find a way to make this work because a “nightmare” scenario would be for their clinic employees to leave for better-paying jobs at a nearby hospital.

“Our health centers want to get there,” Cuevas-Romero said. “I think the questions are: Where’s the money coming from? And how do we implement it?”

​ Orange County Register 

Coachella 2023: Our 50 best photos from Weekend 2

• April 25, 2023

The 2023 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is now officially over, but let’s take a look back at the second weekend of the festival, which took place at the Empire Polo Club in Indio on April 21-23.

RELATED: Our 50 best photos from Weekend 1

Though very similar to the first round of the fest, Weekend 2 is always a bit more special. More of the kinks have been worked out of the sets, the artists are comfortable and playful and fresh surprise guests are added to the lineup.

The long weekend featured headlining sets by Bad Bunny, Blackpink and Sunday replacement headliner, Blink-182, who stepped in after Frank Ocean bowed out of Weekend 2. Other performers included Gorillaz, Sofi Tukker, Björk, Willow, Porter Robinson, Elyanna, Labrinth, Metro Boomin and many, many more.

 More Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival news

Coachella 2023: Blink-182, Skrillex, Four Tet and Fred Again close out Weekend 2

Coachella 2023: See photos of performers and fans from Sunday, Weekend 2

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Coachella 2023: Stage designers talk about enhancing the fest experience

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​ Orange County Register 

NFL draft: Chargers looking to add playmakers for Justin Herbert

• April 25, 2023

Brandon Staley heads into his third draft as the Chargers coach confident in his core group of starters.

Los Angeles’ objective heading into this year is to improve the depth of a franchise that made the playoffs last season for the first time since 2018, but continues to have a string of significant injuries yearly.

“We’re at the point now, with where our team is, where we can just keep onboarding the right type of players, the right type of guys in the right spots because I think we have our starters kind of situated for the most part,” Staley said during the scouting combine.

Staley and general manager Tom Telesco are looking to give quarterback Justin Herbert as many playmakers as possible.

The Chargers have a solid receiving trio in Keenan Allen, Mike Williams and Joshua Palmer. Still, they have yet to be able to stretch the field consistently or generate mismatches for explosive pass plays. They also need to build depth at the position since Allen is going into his 11th season and missed seven of the first nine games last season with a hamstring injury. Williams was sidelined for five games.

“Team speed is something that we’re committed to. We just want to make sure that we don’t force the issue,” Staley said. “It’s more about the player we want to draft than that specific trait. If we can find the player that matches the trait, that would be great. But we’re trying to have people that can impact the offense, and that can come in a lot of different places.”

Receivers Zay Flowers (Boston College), Jordan Addison (Southern California) and Jaxon Smith-Njigba (Ohio State) are possibilities if they’re still on the board when the Chargers go on the clock with the 21st pick.

PICK ‘EM

It will be the first time the Chargers have the 21st overall selection. It will be the fourth time since Telesco has run the draft room that the Bolts will pick in the 20s in the opening round. He took cornerback Jason Verrett 25th overall in 2014, defensive tackle Jerry Tillery with the 28th selection in 2019 and linebacker Kenneth Murray Jr. with the 23rd selection three years ago after making a trade with New England to get back into the first round.

Los Angeles has seven selections this year.

NEEDS

Besides a speedy wide receiver, an all-around tight end, a running back and depth on the offensive and defensive lines are on the Chargers’ wish list.

Gerald Everett is a solid receiving tight end and Tre McKitty, a third-round selection in 2021, is a blocking specialist, but Los Angeles lacks a player who can do both equally well. That might be more of a priority this upcoming season, with Kellen Moore taking over as offensive coordinator and his tendency to use more two tight end sets.

Austin Ekeler has been the team’s top running back for the past three seasons, but he is locked in a stalemate with management and has received permission to seek a trade. Staley and Moore have also prioritized having a consistent running game.

DON’T NEED

A starting quarterback. Telesco is expected to try to get a long-term extension with Herbert done before the start of the season.

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LOW RETENTION

Telesco has consistently hit on his first-round picks — including linebacker Joey Bosa, safety Derwin James, offensive tackle Rashawn Slater, Williams and Herbert — but he hasn’t had the same luck outside the first round.

Only four of 39 players eligible for a second contract have re-signed with the Chargers.

​ Orange County Register