Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome to the KMUD News for the evening of Wednesday, October 21st.
I'm your news director, April Lewis, and I'm glad to be with you for this broadcast.
This episode includes stories on the SEIU protest in Eureka, a new chief executive and County Council in Mendocino, federal action impacting Humboldt county funding, and on a local story of human trafficking that led to a conviction and jail time.
But first, some updates and alerts. This is KMOD News.
Starting off with with a plea to our listeners.
KMUD is currently in the middle of our fall drive.
Needless to say, with no federal funding, we need money to keep the news going.
If you care about your nightly newscast, if you care about the station's emergency alerts run by the news department, it's time to donate and keep your local news and fire Alerts on Air donatemud.org or call 707-923-39-1111 and become a station member or swing by our studios in Redway at 1144 Redway Drive.
Next is an announcement from the Humboldt county association of Governments as recent tragedies on Broadway show all too clearly the traffic safety crisis continues to negatively impact the lives of Humboldt county residents.
From 2018 to 2024, there were 165 fatal crashes on Humboldt county roads.
Total crashes fell over that period, but fatal crashes held steady at around two dozen per year.
The concept of Vision Zero holds that no road deaths are acceptable, and a system that shares responsibility between safe road design, safe road users and safe speeds can get us there.
The Humboldt county association of Governments has released a public draft of the regional Vision Zero Action Plan that spells out the problem and charts a path of local action to reverse course.
The draft finds 125 of the 165 fatal crashes happened outside of city limits, with the deadliest stretches on U.S. 101, 299 and Highway 96, where drivers often leave the road on curves 27% of crashes that killed or seriously injured someone involved alcohol or drugs 42% of fatal crashes happened after dark, many on roads with no Streetlights, and nearly 30% of fatal crashes involved a person walking or biking.
The plan highlights 10 intersections and 10 highway segments for priority fixes, with 16 of the top 20 hotspots on state highways.
Proposed countermeasures include protected left turn arrows, brighter lighting, speed feedback signs, rumble strips and curve warnings.
Countywide, the plan calls for impaired driver awareness, a road sign audit and a safety checklist for every road project that the Humboldt county association of Governments helps Fund.
To learn more about the plan draft and the public Zoom meeting on Wednesday, October 28, call 707-444-8208.
And up next, our main stories. This is KMUD News.
State workers on the north coast joined thousands of colleagues across California today in the first statewide strike in the history of the state's largest employee union. KMUD's Ryan Hudson was on the picket line across from Eureka City hall at
[00:04:08] Speaker C: the corner of fifth and K streets in Eureka. Local State workers held down a picket line this afternoon demanding fair labor negotiations with the state.
There were signs, chants, megaphones and even pizza.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: A fair contract is alright.
[00:04:26] Speaker D: That is why we have to fight.
[00:04:28] Speaker E: A fair contract is alright, that is
[00:04:31] Speaker B: why we have to fight.
[00:04:32] Speaker F: A fair contract is alright.
[00:04:35] Speaker G: That is why we have to fight.
[00:04:49] Speaker C: Members of SEIU Local 1000, about 100,000 workers in more than 140 state departments walked off the job for one day.
The union says it's the first strike in its 44 year history.
Previous strikes had been avoided when negotiations were able to move forward.
However, that is not the case today.
We spoke with SEIU Local 1000 representative James Kopel. He's the union steward for SEIU's four county district here on the north coast.
He says this is not a symbolic walkout and it is not an informational picket.
[00:05:31] Speaker D: My name's James Keppel. I'm a budget control officer with caltrans.
This is the first strike SEIU local has had in its 44 years representing state employees.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: The union's contract with the state expired on June 30, he explained. SEIU says the Newsom administration, through its bargaining arm, the California Department of Human Resources, or calhr, has refused to negotiate seriously.
In July, the union filed an unfair practice charge with the Public Employment Relations Board. That's the state's labor board.
[00:06:10] Speaker D: This is a one day unfair practice strike. We do not want to harm the communities we serve or stop government services. We all believe intrinsically that's why we serve the public in keeping these systems running.
But we also recognize we have to stand up and help. Part of this is to let people know the state is breaking the law and we are asking, I think that's a small ask for the state to follow the laws they make us all follow.
[00:06:45] Speaker C: Calmatters reports that in late September the board sided with the union, concluding calhr, quote, refused to meet and confer in good faith.
The union argues that is what makes today's walkout legally protected even though its old contract had a no strike clause.
Specifically, they are they're breaking the law by doing what?
[00:07:11] Speaker D: They're breaking the law because they are not negotiating in good faith.
Typically, in negotiation, whether it's with your wife or whoever, you know, it's a give and take. You try to find compromise that neither one of you is happy with, but you all agree upon. And right now, the state is basically just, no, there's no give and take. It's just a flat, blanket denial on everything.
[00:07:35] Speaker C: The union wants roughly a 20% raise over three years, 7% in each of the first two years, and 6% in the third year. It also wants lower health care costs and stronger telework protections.
Governor Newsom's order requiring most state employees to be in the office physically four days a week took effect on July 1, and it remains a major sticking point.
Union leaders also point to raises they say the state has delayed.
For example, a 3% increase due this summer previously agreed to was pushed back to July 2027.
[00:08:17] Speaker D: We have custodians, nurses, dental assistants, pharmacy techs, analysts, receptionists, you name it.
Full spectrum of state workers are on the line today demanding respect.
[00:08:34] Speaker C: The strike only lasts for one day. Workers do not get paid for it, and the union says they can't use vacation or sick time.
A strike fund does exist, but the union says it isn't meant to replace lost wages.
Union president Annika Walz has warned of possible delays at the DMV and at the Employment Development Board while picket lines were set up in Sacramento, Oakland and Los Angeles, among other places, in addition to here in Eureka.
[00:09:07] Speaker D: Come back to the table and bargain. You say there's no money, but plenty of studies show there are.
And we just want the respect that we deserve for serving our communities and our state day in and day out.
[00:09:22] Speaker C: CALHR does not generally discuss active bargaining in public, and as of this afternoon, no deal has been announced.
For KMUD News, I'm Ryan Hudson here in Eureka.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: KMUD News speaks with Humboldt County Sheriff's Office Lieutenant Peter Leipzig on the recent sentencing of Georgi Antonov Tanov and the effort needed to find victims of human trafficking in remote locations.
On Thursday, October 15, Judge Stephen Steward sentenced Georgie Antonov Tanove of Bridgeville to 320 days in jail on charges of grand theft of wages, false imprisonment, failure to secure workers compensation insurance, and unlawful possession of cannabis for sale. But that doesn't tell the whole story, and the pathway to Georgi Tanove's conviction was anything but straightforward. KMUD News spoke with Lieutenant Peter Leipzig, head of Humboldt County's drug task force. And marijuana enforcement team to learn more. The investigation into Georgi Antonov Tanov started with a tip of from trapped worker Javier Escamilla Garcia to the Mexican consulate.
[00:10:43] Speaker G: Yeah, they had reached out to the Mexican consulate.
They weren't really sure where to turn, what the process of this was. All they kind of knew is they weren't in a spot and they needed to get out of there.
And so thankfully the Mexican consulate was on it and they got ahold of the sheriff's office and alerted us to what was going on.
Obviously it was a game of telephone going through kind of a third party like that. So a couple days of kind of back and forth communication, but we were ultimately able to kind of determine where they were and kind of the status of what was going on there.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: But getting to victims on a remote cannabis farm run by Georgi Antonov Tinov was no easy feat. Lt. Leipzig says it took two attempts to access the property.
[00:11:33] Speaker G: It's in the Neyland area up above Bridgeville.
Definitely a remote area as far as our county goes.
You know, probably a two plus hour drive from any paved road.
Definitely some weather was playing a factor in this. This was in the middle of the winter and we had recently had a snowstorm, so that was playing, playing into it. And then at that point we had heavy rains and so we had a lot of snow meltdown occurring as well.
To get to this particular property, there's a creek that has to be crossed and basically it created an island of where this property was two ways in and out. But with the creek crossing, it was unpassable.
And so initially, the first time we went up there, we weren't even able to access the property.
We didn't have the equipment right there with us. And we actually had to kind of recoup and go back down and come back up with swift water rescue equipment and facilitate basically a full scale search and rescue operation just to get our investigators in there and get to our victim.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Once law enforcement arrived at the farm site named Showers Pass Farms, they found conditions indicative of human trafficking.
[00:12:53] Speaker G: Basically poor living conditions, small cabin area the victims had been living in.
At this point, you know, they were out of food.
They were unable to, you know, get food drops or anything like that.
And that had stopped, I think, several weeks prior to us contacting them.
They had a, you know, a generator and we're kind of rationing fuel and the usage of it just because they knew that's how the, the one way they did have to communicate outward was by having power.
And so just Kind of very dire conditions as far as what we were seeing up there, as far as housing and food and water and just the general necessities of life.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: Some of Georgi Antonov Tanov's original charges, including human trafficking charges, were dropped in early April.
At that point, the Humboldt County Superior Court maintained there wasn't enough evidence of human trafficking for charges related to two alleged victims on the site. During a preliminary hearing, Lt. Peter Leipzig says that evidence to bring human trafficking charges can be dependent on victim cooperation and the trauma they experience.
[00:14:10] Speaker G: This is a human trafficking case.
This is one of those things where if it boils down to the cooperation of the victim, and so we got him out of there and we got him to a safe place, got him home, and it boils down to kind of their willingness to come back and be a part of this.
For a lot of victims, once they're in a safe place, they don't want to have to relive the trauma basically, that they were going through. And that's required as far as going through and testifying and being a part of these cases as they go through the court process. And so it's a weighed option that, you know, part of a prosecution strategy.
What's it worth?
What's this conviction worth? And is it worth putting our victim through this again? And so in this scenario here, you know, case by case, it's going to be a little bit different, but in this one, it wasn't worth basically subjecting our victim to this kind of trauma again. So we went for kind of a lesser and ended up dropping the human trafficking component.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: After the search and rescue operation, Georgi Antonov Tanov was arrested while on another cannabis farm he was running. For community members who may be interested in looking for local signs of human trafficking, Lieutenant Leipzig stated some things to look for. That includes the expectation that cannabis businesses are held to the same standards as other industries.
[00:15:40] Speaker G: All these businesses have to have kind of the standards of any other business, right? So people being tucked away on properties for day in and day out, if they're working 24 hours a day, if they can hear people, you know, essentially working 24 hours a day in these places, that's. That's not. Not a good sign. That's oftentimes an indicator of labor trafficking.
Living on site directly where they're working is a big indicator that it's fine to have, you know, housing options and whatnot on these farms. You can't be living exactly in the same exact places where you're working.
Oftentimes you know, the environmental issues are oftentimes big indicators of these types of things. Just as far as that nobody's taking care of the property. It's.
There's runoff, there's no access to actual functioning bathrooms and so there are pit toilets and whatnot that these people are having to use. And oftentimes it can be observed from open roadways and that kind of thing.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: Human trafficking and specifically labor trafficking are still issues in Humboldt county and across the Emerald Triangle.
While the activity in Humboldt county is markedly less than at the height of the cannabis boom, there are still serious cases of exploitation.
Many community members are frustrated with the Humboldt Sheriff's Department's tactics when it comes to combating human trafficking, especially the large scale utilization of low flying helicopters over private property.
In the case of Georgi Antonov Tanov, information first came via a foreign government's consulate as opposed to surveillance work by the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office.
While the debate on appropriate surveillance will continue, combating real cases of human trafficking is an effort anyone can get behind.
If you see signs of trafficking in your area, you can contact the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office crime Report line at 707-445-7251.
For KMUD news, I'm April Lewis.
Mendocino county has a new chief executive and county council which Roger Coryell reports
[00:18:01] Speaker A: that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter.
[00:18:12] Speaker E: Mendocino county has a new chief executive and a new county council board chair. Bernie Norvell swore in both Tuesday and Ukiah minutes after supervisors voted 5 to 0 to hire each of them. Sarah Pierce has been interim CEO since June. Her three year contract pays 275,000 a year. Norvell says some residents asked whether the county hired her because it had run out of options.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Supervisor Klein and I faced one yesterday in a community meeting and it was so okay. Well, we're hiring Ms. Pierce because we've run out of options and I just want to make it perfectly clear from my opinion that is not the case.
[00:18:54] Speaker E: The county ran two searches before Pierce supplied. Supervisor Ted Williams said she is the right fit.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: What I found is she's the least political person in the room and I think that creates the right dynamic that we have five elected supervisors and a fantastic administrator.
[00:19:10] Speaker E: The one public comment came from John Risk of Meadow Farm. He noted the county's median income is about 68,000 a year.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Can you sustain these salaries for through retirement have you been able to? I don't think you have, pierce says
[00:19:27] Speaker E: the job is personal.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: I want to see Mendocino succeed.
It is a special place to me as my family has been here for over a century.
[00:19:36] Speaker E: The new County Council Michael Rossi comes from Santa Clara County's council's office, where he's worked since 1996. He'll be paid 271,000 a year.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: On behalf of my wife, Shannon and I, it is an honor to serve as the county's next county council.
[00:19:55] Speaker E: Rossi starts December 6th. For Bay City News, Mendocino Voice and KMUD News, I'm Roger Coryell.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Legislative consultants have given Humboldt county supervisors a heads up on potential federal level funding impacts. Daniel Mintz reports.
[00:20:20] Speaker F: In a briefing on how federal actions could affect local funding, Humboldt County's Board of Supervisors was told of potential hits related to a cost shift and census changes, as well as $750,000 of funding for the county's public health lab, largely hinging on the outcome of the midterm elections, upcoming federal actions and their potential effects and were described at the supervisors October 20th meeting by the county's legislative consultants.
Hassan Sarsour of Paragon Government relations noted the October 1 start of the federal fiscal year, but no one's expecting a budget to be passed by then. A continuing resolution for the current budget expires December 11, and Sarsour's prediction is that maybe they get a few of the less controversial bills taken care of and then they punt the rest into the new year.
Funding for the county's public health lab is in the mix, but bumping the budget will impact it.
[00:21:24] Speaker H: We do have an earmark in play. There's $750,000 for the public health lab. That's a project I know we've been trying to get funded for quite a while. They did open up some of the eligibility on the programs in the House, so we were able to submit that one. Congressman Huffman was able to secure that $750,000 to in the House bill, but that doesn't move forward unless we get the full budget finalized. So that's another great incentivizer. Earmarks. A lot of folks have projects in play that they'd like to see move forward. If you do have a long term continuing resolution, which has happened in the past, where you go through the entire year, you don't get those earmarks.
[00:22:00] Speaker F: Permitting reform is also afoot and Sarsour said a good thing about it is that offshore wind energy is, quote, treated on the same level. It treats other energy projects, which would prevent an administration from pulling back permits that have already been issued. But he added that environmentalists have concerns and it will minimize tribal consultation and limit tribal challenges to federal actions.
The next census is coming up in 2030, and Paragon's Rachel Mackey said the Trump administration wants to only count citizens and green card holders.
She said that, together with the ways questions are framed around race, ethnicity and age, could result in what she described as an undercount, which has funding impacts.
[00:22:50] Speaker I: We're really concerned that they could all lead to an undercount, which is when you know individuals who reside in the county are not accounted for in the sense that not only could that impact the flow of money to the state of California and to the county, but it could also impact your ability as a board and the ability of county agencies to plan to recognize and understand the demographics, the economic conditions of the county to be eligible for certain grants and loans and even earmarks. These are things that depend on things that like area median income and you calculate those figures using population data. So there are also of course implications for apportionment which is related to congressional representation.
So in whole this is a pretty alarming proposal for state and local officials.
[00:23:48] Speaker F: Also on the way is a $2 billion CalFresh food assistance cost shift related to state level payment error rates.
Mackey said there's a push to delay the shift whose impacts could fall on the county.
[00:24:03] Speaker I: This is a priority for a year end package that this delay needs to happen now because the state has to start planning and budgeting and figuring out how it's going to pay for this cost shift and we need more time to get payment error rates reduced so that California is is on the hook for less money because we know there's a very solid chance that that that benefit cost shift could come down to the county in terms of who's responsible for bearing those those costs. This comes at a time that eligibility for the program has also been narrowed significantly due to other changes in HR1. And we have the medi cal work requirements slated to begin January 1st as well. So anything we can do to ease things up for the eligibility workers and make sure that they have the resources they need to be accurate in their work and get people the right amount of money at the right time is critical.
[00:24:57] Speaker F: Other significant federal doings include a rule from the Office of Management and Budget, which Sarsour said would give political appointees more say in federal grant decisions and would essentially mean a red president could prevent funding from coming to you.
Also at the meeting, supervisors approved a change to an outdated rule limiting indoor cultivation operations in resource zones to buildings constructed before 2016.
With the change, indoor cultivation is allowed in new and recently constructed buildings in farmland and forestry areas in Eureka. For KMUD News, this is Daniel Mintz.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: That's all for our news broadcast. Thanks for listening.
Thanks to our rotation of broadcast engineers Dennis Marr, Katie Phillips, Bianna Federico, Michael McCaskill, Larry Lashley and Javier Rodriguez. Also thanks to our reporters for this broadcast, Daniel Mintz, Ryan Hudson and Roger Correo.
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