Stories you shouldn’t miss:
1. Is Oakland Mayor Jean Quan trying to help city employee unions avoid making substantial concessions? That appears to be a basic question stemming from the mayor’s controversial proposal to sell the shuttered Henry J. Kaiser Center to Oakland’s Redevelopment Agency for $28.3 million. The Chron reported that Quan wants to use proceeds from the sale to help close Oakland’s massive $58 million budget deficit. But at least three councilmembers — Desley Brooks, Ignacio De La Fuente, and Larry Reid — allege that the proposal is illegal because it would use money from a different redevelopment area than the one that the closed Kaiser center resides in. The council, as the governing body of the redevelopment agency, has the power to scuttle the proposal, and if it does, it could force employee unions to choose between making bigger concessions than they want or watching hundreds of their members get laid off.
