There’s one outcome for the City Council election that Bea Roberson says she can’t let happen, and it’s the reason the first-time candidate decided to put her name on the ballot to begin with. “We cannot let the [Richmond Progressive Alliance] win again,” Roberson said, standing near the dais in the city chambers after a council meeting. She said if she can make it out of the election with her sanity, she doesn’t plan on running for any other political…
Candidates for the Richmond City Council, Congress and the West Contra Costa Unified School District school board appealed to Richmond youth at a Kennedy High School candidate’s forum Thursday. Graduating seniors from teacher Jeff Pollock’s AP Government and U.S. Government courses gathered in the school cafeteria for the event. Kennedy High School counselor J.P. De Oliveira said he started organizing the event a month and a half ago when Virginia Fuller, the Republican candidate for the 11th Congressional District seat,…
The Texas-based movie theater chain Cinemark USA Inc has joined the campaign against Richmond’s Measure N, adding nearly $107,000 in non-monetary contributions against the measure between July 15-Sept. 30, according to campaign statements filed with the City Clerk. During that period, Cinemark was one of two contributors to the Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes, which has spent $2.2 million this year in opposition to Measure N. CCABT’s other — and largest — contributor is the American Beverage Association, a lobby…
Residents got a glimpse at what this year’s City Council candidates would look like on the dais in the City Council Chambers at a candidate forum Monday night. Ten of the 11 candidates attended the forum, moderated by the League of Women Voters and the Richmond Neighborhood Coordinating Council. Anthony Green was absent. “It amazes me that there’s so many candidates for three seats,” resident Karen Leong Fenton said. Fenton said watching the forum helped since she normally depends on…
Richmond’s auto dealerships are being revived from what managers in Richmond are calling the worst few years of sales they’ve ever seen. The city has reported a 35 percent increase in auto sales tax revenue for the first quarter of 2012. From January to March of 2012, new and used auto sales brought in $418,308 for the city in sales tax, up from $307,947 in the same period in 2011. Jim Totah, the director of sales operation for companies such…
The city’s campaign disclosure law—which a federal judge suggested was unconstitutional earlier this month— was amended by the City Council Tuesday night. In a special meeting five days earlier to read through the amendments, Councilmember Jim Rogers said the revisions toned down the ordinance’s aggressiveness. “I guess you could look at [the original ordinance] as a Cadillac,” Rogers said. “And this one here, I guess you could look at it as a Ford.” The revisions to the ordinance addressed several…
Nearly a week after a judge criticized its campaign disclosure law, City Council considered making amendments Thursday to dial down what Councilmember Jim Rogers called the law’s aggressiveness. “I guess you could look at [the original ordinance] as a Cadillac,” Rogers said. “And this one here, I guess you could look at it as a Ford.” The city’s current campaign law requires a committee that receives more than one-third of its money from contributors outside of Richmond to write on…
A U.S. district judge told city attorneys this morning that Richmond didn’t “stand a chance of a prosecution” in enforcing its campaign disclosure laws against an anti-soda-tax group. The Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes filed a lawsuit against the city to prevent it from enforcing a law that would require the group to devote one-third of any mailer’s campaign disclosure section to the words “major funding from out-of-city-contributors.” Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled that the ordinance did not apply to…
[Editor’s note: this story has been corrected from a previous version to note that the the ordinance requires the text reading “major funding from out-of-city contributors” to take up one-third of the disclosure section of the front page of a mailer. The disclosure section itself takes up one-quarter of the front page.] An anti-soda tax lobbying group will argue in federal court tomorrow that the city cannot force it to disclose its financial contributions on campaign mailings. The Community Coalition…