Excerpted from Orange County Register
By Dan Walters
The state’s stubbornly high unemployment rate, nearly 50% higher than the national rate, means that the state Employment Development Department’s lackluster service to jobless Californians who need benefits for food and shelter will continue to draw media and political heat.
California’s unemployment department is in the hot seat — again.
Excerpted from Irvine Community News and Views
Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris has announced her selection of Families Forward of Irvine, as the 74th Assembly District’s 2020 Non-Profit of the Year.
Families Forward is a non-profit focused on ending homelessness for local Orange County families. Families Forward exists to help families in need achieve and maintain self-sufficiency through housing, food, counseling, education, and other support services.
Excerpted from Orange County Breeze
Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris announced her selection of Families Forward of Irvine, as the 74th Assembly District’s 2020 Non-Profit of the Year. Families Forward is a non-profit focused on ending homelessness for local Orange County families. Families Forward exists to help families in need achieve and maintain self-sufficiency through housing, food, counseling, education, and other support services.
Excerpted from OC Breeze
Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris has announced that the California State Coastal Conservancy has allocated a $2,460,000 grant to acquire the 44-acre Newland Marsh property in Huntington Beach from the California Department of Transportation, and to transfer the property to the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy (HBWC).
Excerpted from OC Breeze
In an effort to keep high-paying jobs in the state and maintain a robust laboratory force to provide COVID-19 testing, the Legislature has passed Assembly Bill 1327 with bipartisan support.
Excerpted from Coast Online
By Oceana Christopher
Share Our Selves (SOS), the Costa Mesa-based community health center, celebrated its 50th anniversary this August with the unveiling of a new mobile health unit.
Excerpted from Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s unemployment agency is not answering 60% of the calls it receives for help as the overwhelmed department struggles to work through a backlog of more than 1 million pending claims five months into the pandemic.
Employment Development Department Director Sharon Hilliard told a panel of frustrated state lawmakers on Monday that the agency is on pace to have 3,700 people working in its call center by January, up from the 350 employees prior to the pandemic.
Excerpted by Daily Pilot
By Sara Cardine
For the past 50 years, community health center Share Our Selves has made strides to serve as many vulnerable and low-income people as possible, offering medical, dental and social services throughout Orange County with a main office in Costa Mesa.
Excerpted from OC Breeze
Sixty-one California lawmakers sent a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom advocating for immediate and structural reforms at the state’s Employment Development Department (EDD). Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, EDD has displayed a shocking inability to disperse unemployment benefits as millions of Californians struggle without income. (Full Letter Attached)