California’s independent state auditor will investigate the understaffed California Labor Commissioner’s Office over its persistent backlogs in workers’ wage theft claims, issues highlighted in a series of articles last year by CalMatters.

The audit would start Sept. 1 — that is if budget hearings before then don’t first address the agency’s problems to the satisfaction of lawmakers who approved the investigation.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee on Wednesday called for the audit over the objections of some of the state’s biggest labor unions, who argued the probe was unnecessary.

Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower on Wednesday also pushed back against an audit, testifying that her office already is undertaking multiple reforms to address her agency’s backlogs.

The Labor Commissioner’s Office has struggled for years to address wage claims in a timely manner. Wage theft — the failure of employers to pay the minimum wage, overtime premiums, or provide meal and rest breaks — primarily affects low-wage workers who are often immigrants or people of color, studies show.

Each worker’s claims by law are supposed to be heard in 120 days and decided 15 days after that. But CalMatters, in its series, uncovered that between 2017 and 2021, the state averaged 505 days.

After that, back pay can take years to recover, and many who win their claims are never paid. The backlog was exacerbated last year, when new wage theft claims hit a record 38,000 and wait times climbed past 800 days.

“What is it going to take to get to 120 days? Is it additional measures to compel employers to participate, and if that’s the case, in which ways?” asked Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat from Chula Vista who chairs the legislative audit committee.

“I am willing to give an opportunity for those questions to be answered,” he said. “But I’d like to see detailed answers, not just ‘we’re going to do better when we hire more people.’”

Alvarez held out the possibility that the committee could rescind their audit request before September if budget hearings satisfactorily address the issues the audit would target. The Labor Commissioner’s Office is seeking $12 million in the next fiscal year to hire 43 additional employees with the goal of reducing the time to hear a claim to 200 days.

The audit came at the request of State Sen. Steve Glazer, a Walnut Creek Democrat, who agreed to the compromise to delay the audit until Sept. 1. The audit request put Glazer, a moderate Democrat, at odds with labor groups and workers’ advocates.

The California Labor Federation and several unions and worker centers wrote earlier in March that an audit would divert time and attention from an already understaffed agency.

The California Chamber of Commerce testified in favor of the audit. Ashley Hoffman, a lobbyist for the Chamber, told the committee it is important to the state’s employers that bad actors be held to account and that disputes between employees be resolved expediently, out of court.

In addition to wage claims, California workers can also file lawsuits against employers through California’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), a 19-year-old law that gives workers the same powers as the state to sue employers and recover civil penalties on behalf of coworkers. If they win, the workers can get a quarter of the penalties while the rest goes to the state for labor enforcement.

In 2022 the Department of Industrial Relations, the agency that houses the Labor Commissioner’s Office, received 5,813 notices of new PAGA suits, according to state data.

The Chamber is among several business groups that succeeded in getting a measure to repeal the private enforcement law on the 2024 ballot.

Hoffman told the committee that workers get more of their back wages when they go through the Labor Commissioner’s process instead of filing a lawsuit with a private attorney.

In her testimony Wednesday, García-Brower said she is working to overhaul her office’s wage claims staff by recruiting recent graduates from the University of California, filling key managerial positions and implementing new pilot initiatives in certain offices, among other measures.

García-Brower, an appointee of Gov. Gavin Newsom, is the former director of a group that helped the state investigate wage theft in the janitorial industry before she became labor commissioner and is considered an ally of the unions and worker advocates who opposed the audit.

The labor and worker groups advocated instead for increased funding for García-Brower’s office, higher penalties for employers who violate labor law and an expedited hiring process for the Department of Industrial Relations. They also argued for boosting the use of criminal charges against problem employers and expanding local officials’ abilities to sue businesses on behalf of workers to relieve pressure on the state.

Lorena Gonzalez, the former assembly member who heads the California Labor Federation, told CalMatters in an interview before the hearing that an audit would be a distraction.

“Everyone knows there’s a problem, including the labor commissioner,” Gonzalez Fletcher said. “I don’t think an audit is going to tell us anything we don’t know already.”

But at the hearing García-Brower conceded that the issues in her office went beyond a staffing shortage.

Assemblymember Jim Wood, a Democrat from Ukiah, and a member of the legislative audit committee, said his office had considered proposing an audit of the Labor Commissioner’s wage claim issues.

He told García-Brower that his office struggled to get data on wage claims from her office, and that some of his constituents had faced people who worked for her who “are not always terribly friendly and very dismissive sometimes.” That prompted García-Brower to agree.

“I sat across six different labor commissioners, and most of them were dismissive,” García-Brower said, referring to her time as a labor activist. “So this is a deep, systemic problem within the culture of this agency, which is why we’re digging down deep to ensure that people understand we are a public facing agency. We were created to serve the public.”

Senator John Laird, a Democrat from Salinas who sits on the committee, said García-Brower’s acknowledgement that the office’s problems went beyond staffing issues swayed him in favor of the audit.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Nancy Carol Woodward of Ferndale passed away unexpectedly February 27 at her home.

She is survived by three sons: Aaron Hutsch of Highlands Ranch, Colo., Eli Woodward of Fortuna and Miley Betts, also of Highlands Ranch, Colo.; two siblings, Richard Woodward of Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Janet May of Flagstaff, Ariz.; four grandchildren Vance and Olivia Betts, Lauren Hutsch and Lexie Swanson; and one great-grandson, Wyatt Swanson. Nancy was predeceased by her parents, Robert and Elaine Woodward of Belleville, Illinois.

Born April 18,1945 in Woodbury, N.J., Nancy was raised in Belleville, Illinois. Her late teens and early 20s brought her to various spots in the country before she and her sons settled into the scene in San Francisco in the 1960s.

After decades working as a decorated seamstress and costume designer in the San Francisco Theatre scene, she was lured to Blue Lake in the mid 1980s by the Dell’Arte Players Company for a quieter life and better schools. She lived just a block from the gymkhana in Blue Lake, where she rediscovered her love of horses. Her first horse, Nugget, lived on Jackson Hill until she traded up for her “river house” off Rancheria Road. There she began acquiring several animals and found a new passion in the Alpaca breeding business. In 2008 she and her brood moved out to Oeschger Road outside of Ferndale, where she spent her remaining years farming in a quiet valley with a peek-a-view of the Pacific Ocean.

A virtual celebration of her life is being planned.

Throughout her life she was an accomplished reader, gardener and an amazing chef. Nancy truly excelled in everything she tried. Loved by so many, she will forever be dearly missed.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Nancy Woodward’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

HUMBOLDT TODAY: The “North Coast Woman of the Year” has been named; an image on social media causes a disturbance at McKinleyville High School; plus, it’s time to risk hypothermia for charity again. Those stories and more on today’s newscast with John Kennedy O’Connor.

FURTHER READING: 

• Eureka Names Fresh Freeze Drive-In as Business of the Year, Local Drag Queen Ultra Payne as Artist of the Year for 2022
• McKinleyville High Students Cause Alarm With Photo of Themselves Holding a Gun That Turned Out to Be a Toy
• Yurok Tribal Judge Abby Abinanti Named Sen. McGuire’s ‘North Coast Woman of the Year’
• State May Scale Down Its New Home Loan Program Designed to Assist First-Time Homebuyers

HUMBOLDT TODAY can be viewed on LoCO’s homepage each night starting at 6 p.m.

Want to LISTEN to HUMBOLDT TODAY? Subscribe to the podcast version here.

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If you love Humboldt, then you know the only thing more fun than living here is getting to experience this truly unique county through someone else’s eyes. That is why the Outpost jumped at the opportunity to document some of California Arts Council executive director Jon Moscone’s visit to our humble home earlier this week. 

This was Moscone’s first visit behind the Redwood Curtain, he told the Outpost during a stroll on Monday, and he was excited at the chance to get to better know one of the rural regions that California Arts Council (CAC) serves. Moscone lives in San Francisco and was appointed to the CAC in 2021 2022, after serving as chief producer at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He has a long history with the Bay Area and a rich background in theater and the arts. 

But even though he’s seen much art in his life, we still managed to enchant Moscone with some of the wonderful weirdness and community projects that exist within the arts and culture of rural Humboldt County. 

“The Kinetic Lab was so funky and wild,” Moscone said toward the end of his two-day visit. He added that projects like the Da Gou Rou Louwi’ Cultural Center, the Arcata Arts Institute and the Jardin Santuario really stuck out to him as having positive impacts for their communities. “To see the process and the work that’s happening – that really is what inspires me the most.” 

The primary draw for Moscone’s Humboldt visit was the fact that Eureka holds one of California’s 14 cultural districts, which were designated by the CAC in 2017 for their cultural diversity and unique artistic identities. So of course Eureka’s cultural district (which includes much of the Downtown and Old Town neighborhoods) was included in Moscone’s visit, but he also had a chance to see many other local cultural and artistic gems, with Leslie Castellano –  Eureka city councilmember and executive director of the Ink People – acting as his guide. 

After spending part of Monday morning enjoying a steel pan drum performance in beautiful Trinidad, Moscone and Castellano met up with the Outpost and Centro Del Pueblo staff at the Jardin Santuario in Arcata. As the sun unexpectedly shined down, Brenda Perez, executive director of Centro Del Pueblo, gave Moscone a tour of the gardens and shared some of the background and future plans on the community garden project. 

A crew of volunteers, including folks from the Presbyterian Church that sit in front of the garden, were busy building a new garden shed, using almost entirely salvaged wood, and the master gardener Adan Cervantes was planting a patch of Nopal cacti. 

Moscone was touched by the amount of community involvement that goes into the garden, but he was also shocked to hear about the repeated acts of vandalism on the garden’s sign. 

“What they’ve had to struggle through with some of the desecration of their space, and to be resilient from that and to keep going, and using the earth and growing as part of an artistic process of community building – that was probably at the center of my heart for the whole time [of my visit],” Moscone said at the end of his Humboldt trip. 

Moscone gazes at kinetic creations

After the Jardin Sanctuario, Moscone was taken to the Creamery District, where Jacqueline Dandeneau, executive director of the Arcata Playhouse and Playhouse Arts, took him on a tour of the various work spaces and artistic oddities. Neroli Devaney, station manager of Humboldt Hot Air, gave Moscone a tour of the station and Shoshana and Linnea Mandell took him through the dance studios at Redwood Raks. Of course, no visit to the Creamery Building would be complete without a tour of the beautiful chaos of old bike sculptures at the Kinetic Lab. 

Later on Monday afternoon, Moscone got to tour Eureka’s cultural arts district, check out spaces like the historic Eureka Theatre, the gallery at the Redwood Arts Association and the North Coast Repertory Theatre, where local drag performer Tucker Noir was teaching a performance workshop with some students. Asking some questions about local drag, Moscone was saddened to learn about how local drag shows had been canceled due to threats. 

Another part of the tour that left a big impression on Moscone was a visit to Eureka’s old Chinatown neighborhood, where Vicki Ozaki of the Humboldt Asians and Pacific Islanders in Solidarity (HAPI) provided the history behind  the Chinatown mural “Fowl” painted by artists Dave Kim and Cate Be. Like many others, Moscone knew nothing about the history of Eureka’s Chinatown or the expulsion of Chinese people in the 1800s and the fact that they were not legally allowed to return until the 1950s. 

After visiting the Chinatown mural, Moscone learned about another horrific segment of Eureka’s past, stopping at “The Sun Set Twice on the People That Day” – a mural painted by several local Native artists — and based on a poem written by the late Brian Tripp. The poem and mural focus on the story of the 1860 massacre of the Wiyot people on their sacred island, Tuluwat (also known as Indian Island) in Humboldt Bay. On Tuesday Moscone also had a meeting with Marnie Atkins at the Da Gou Rou Louwi’ Cultural Center in Old Town. 

Moscone and Atkins at the Da Gou Rou Louwi’ center in Eureka in front of a piece by Rick Bartow

Monday’s jam-packed itinerary ended with a mixer at the Ink Lab in Old Town, where Moscone met many people who work in the arts and cultural realms in Humboldt County. Moscone spoke to the crowd about his experiences from the day and the importance of helping support the arts. 

“I have experienced first hand what it is means to bring together disparate community out of struggle, out of some sense of despair, but with a deep sense of hope and optimism for the future,” Moscone told the crowd. “I will do what I can over my years under Governor Newsom to support you and the work that you do to uplift yourselves and your communities to make real impact and real change. I am so honored to be here.” 

In a later interview with the Outpost, Moscone said that he was impressed by the amount of work going into local art projects and programs here, but that he felt that Humboldt County really needs a lot more infrastructure in place to help support and connect these programs. He hopes that the $700,000 awarded by the CAC to the cultural district will help with that, but understands that there is also much more funding that will be needed in the future. 

“We have to focus our funding on impact,” Moscone said. “And if we can do that, we can make some changes that I hope will benefit our rural communities…What I don’t like is building things on the backs of artists or cultural workers. We need to find all the ways we can integrate artists into other agencies’ work –  like the parks and Caltrans – the opportunities that exist for more artists to get paid to do that.” 

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CORRECTIONS: this Article has been changed from its original version to correct place names and to give local artist Cate Be credit for her assistance with the mural “Fowl.” 

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office needs the public’s help to locate missing person Luis Carlos Silva, age 50, of McKinleyville. Silva is missing under unknown circumstances.

Silva was reported missing by a family member after not being in contact with them for an unusual length of time. He was last seen on March 2, 2023.  

Silva is described as a Hispanic male, 5 feet 4 inches tall, approximately 200 pounds, with long brown/gray hair, a beard and hazel eyes. He may be in possession of a gold 2008 Toyota Corolla, California License Plate: 6BHN411.

Anyone with information regarding Silva’s possible whereabouts should call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251.

Eureka Mayor Kim Bergel unveiled her picks for Business of the Year and Artist of the Year during last night’s Eureka City Council meeting. Out of the dozen businesses and artists selected for monthly recognition by the City of Eureka throughout 2022, Bergel hand-picked her absolute favorites … (drum roll): Fresh Freeze Drive-In and local drag queen Ultra Payne!

Bergel | Screenshot

Bergel took a moment to recognize each of the winners during Tuesday’s council meeting. She fondly recalled “many great memories” visiting Fresh Freeze as a child and, as an adult, visiting the iconic Henderson Center drive-in with her own children. 

“Fresh Freeze has been a huge part of my life,” she said. “When my parents dated one thousand years ago, they dated at Fresh Freeze. And when I was a little girl, I would go to Fresh Freeze after church every Sunday for those delicious corndogs. As a grown-up, I have two kids myself and we would ride our bikes to Fresh Freeze during the summer for ice cream and the best milkshakes in town.”

Fresh Freeze owner Paula Adams-Hamilton accepted a plaque and bouquet from Bergel and thanked the City of Eureka for the recognition. “This has been so fun for us – for me and the team at Fresh Freeze,” she said. “Preserving Fresh Freeze and keeping it around for many generations to come is my goal and I couldn’t do that without the support of the community.”

Local drag queen Ultra Payne (A.K.A. Sky Celeste) was named Artist of the Year for 2022. Bergel thanked Ultra Payne for her contributions to Eureka’s arts community and for being a part of “such a multifaceted art[form].”

“When I think about drag, I think about the beauty in the makeup and … all the time it takes and the dedication to be so beautiful. I look at the attire [and] everything that you wear and how beautiful it is … . You’re like an art piece … but you also have this great presence about you, and you can perform. … It’s just fabulous. I’m just so appreciative to have you here with us today.”

Ultra Payne, dressed in a half black tuxedo and half off-the-shoulder ivory gown with her hair piled high in a black-and-white-streaked updo, graciously accepted the award and thanked the city for recognizing a drag queen as Artist of the Year.

“Eureka and Humboldt at large is just such a welcoming and inclusive place, even with everything in the world going on right now, especially regarding drag,” she said. “It’s very, very nice to know that I am a part of a community that is so accepting and welcoming of people who are so different than the “norm.” I am just very, very happy to be able to be a part of the bigger picture and to spread my art to so many different people.”

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A pair of McKinleyville High School students sparked alarm on campus today with a black-and-white photo, posted to social media, in which they’re standing on campus holding what turned out to be a water gun. 

Shortly after 12:30 p.m., McKinleyville High School Principal Nicholas Collart issued the following email to staff, parents and others in the school community:

Dear Mack High Community,
During 5th period today at school our administrative team received a black and white picture which seemed to show two students holding a gun on campus.

We immediately located the students, confiscated the object and recognized that the gun was fake, a water gun, and not a threat, the fake gun is in our possession and we are responding to the students in the picture. 

As we believe the picture may be circulating on social media we immediately asked our staff to read a short message to relay this information to our students and staff.  We felt that it was also important to reach out to you all immediately as well.

Our students and staff’s safety is our first priority, we appreciate you reading this email and if you have any questions please contact me at 707 839-6405 or at ncollart@nohum.k12.ca.us 

Roger Macdonald, superintendent of the Northern Humboldt Union High School District, also sought to allay any fears with a email saying the gun was a plastic toy.

“Administration is dealing with discipline and extra supervision is out at lunch to make sure everyone understands the situation,” Macdonald said in his email.

Reached by phone, Collart reiterated that there was no threat on campus, despite the appearance of the photo.

“Those things can be scary … ,” he said. “If the picture had been in color it probably would have been a lot simpler.”