Negotiations will continue tomorrow, but the possibility of another strike beginning Tuesday morning looms over the heads of Bay Area commuters. The postponement of a strike comes after Gov. Jerry Brown issued a 60-day cooling-off period, which ended Thursday night.

BART submitted its “last, best and final offer” at 4 p.m., an indication that no further negotiation is possible and a move that was rebuffed by some elected officials, including state Assemblymember Nancy Skinner.

“We want the trains to keep running, and we need both sides to keep talking to get there,” Skinner said. “So when BART management cut off negotiations today by putting forward a final offer at 4 p.m., we were disappointed, and we felt it did a lot of damage because it impeded progress.”

Gladys Rosario covers city news. Contact her at grosario@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @gladysrosario93.

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In signing the TRUST Act, Gov. Jerry Brown has taken a tremendous positive step in extending rights not only to students or lawyers but also to undocumented Americans guilty of minor offenses. The new law limits the duration undocumented people can be held to 48 hours maximum, provided they haven’t committed a felony.

And even though there are people who have succeeded in part because of the opportunities afforded by the DREAM Act and legislation like it, millions more will benefit from the TRUST Act.

Until now, the state Legislature seldom addressed head-on the issues of granting rights to undocumented Californians who probably aren’t future cardiologists or business executives. In demanding that these people be “model citizens” in order to access basic public resources — student financial aid, acquiring a driver’s license and so on — we affirm that you have to prove your worth in America, unless you were lucky enough to be born here.

Additionally, the TRUST Act has garnered support from surprising places. In a meeting last week with a group representing undocumented students and their supporters, UC President Janet Napolitano, who formerly oversaw the federal department responsible for deporting undocumented people, said she told Brown the new law would be “good for the State of California.”

Still, there’s a long way to for California to go.

In 2007, the median household income of undocumented immigrants nationwide was $36,000, nearly $15,000 below the national median. Furthermore, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that these families paid more than $10 billion in taxes in 2010 — money they are paying for services the government doesn’t allow them to receive. Simply put, undocumented immigrants are American  regardless of what their passports read, and they pay the tax dollars to prove it.

For now, legislation such as the TRUST Act is an encouraging sign of change to come. Let’s hope Brown and the state Legislature follow through.

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Benny Grush/Staff

Although BART management and labor unions failed to reach an agreement Thursday night, union leadership agreed to extend talks through the weekend, narrowly averting what would have been this year’s second BART strike.

In early August, San Francisco County Superior Court granted Gov. Jerry Brown’s request for a 60-day “cooling-off” period that barred BART employees from striking. This expired at the end of Thursday. If the two sides had failed to reach an agreement by then, BART employees could have gone on strike Friday, disrupting more than 400,000 daily commuters.

Talks between BART and labor unions are set to resume at 10 a.m. Friday. If an agreement is not reached this weekend, the unions could strike as early as Monday.

Negotiations earlier this week were stalled by various stumbling blocks as the parties sought to come to a consensus and avoid a repeat of the summer’s BART strike, which lasted from July 1 to 5.

On Tuesday night, unions and BART management were “very close” to an agreement, according to Des Patten, a spokesperson from Service Employees International Union Local 1021. However, negotiations fell through after BART management said there had been a miscommunication.

“That was an unfortunate situation,” Patten said. “We just told them, ‘You were at this point, and that’s where we expected you to be’ and what we were ready to talk about.”

One of the main points of contention during recent negotiations was an offer from BART to increase pay by 10 percent over four years, which unions said was insufficient.

“There’s no such thing as a 10 percent raise, because you first subtract the amount of money that will be used to pay for the pension, and then you subtract the amount that will be paid for medical,” Patten said. The service employees union also made “significant changes” to its wage offer during negotiations, he added.

On Thursday afternoon, BART spokesperson Jim Allison said BART management planned to present a new offer that was “greater than that 10 percent over four years.”

Previously, the two sides unofficially agreed on a plan to reimburse employees 72 cents for every $1 they contribute toward their pensions. The unions and BART management entered Thursday’s negotiations with this agreement tentatively in place, Allison said.

Another major issue discussed this week was safety measures in the workplace for BART employees, such as insufficient lighting and overgrown brush along tracks.

“Some areas of the tunnels are extremely dark, and you can’t see very well — it’s a danger for employees,” Patten said. “If something goes wrong and (patrons) have to evacuate the train, it’s very dark, and people could stumble and fall.”

Throughout this week, the two sides made progress on smaller, nonmonetary issues, including work regulations, according to Patten.

News editor Megan Messerly contributed to this report.

Contact Jessie Lau at jlau@dailycal.org.

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The TRUST Act, or the Transparency and Responsibility Using State Tools Act, will prevent local law enforcement agencies from detaining undocumented individuals on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for more than 48 hours if they are eligible for release or have not committed a serious felony.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, introduced the bill as a response to the Secure Communities federal program, which allows the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to screen detainees based on their immigration status by running their fingerprints through a federal database.

“While Washington waffles on immigration, California’s forging ahead,” Brown said in a press release. “I’m not waiting.”

Last fall, Brown vetoed an earlier iteration of the law, requesting that certain types of serious crimes that were not part of that version, such as child abuse, be included in the list of serious felonies.

The law Brown signed had been amended to include the changes and is designed to  help rebuild trust between immigrant communities and local law enforcement. According to the law, undocumented residents are less likely to cooperate with police when it “could result in deportation.”

Secure Communities has led to the deportation of more than 90,000 California residents — more than in any other state, according to data from the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties.

Last Tuesday, UC President Janet Napolitano, previously Secretary of Homeland Security, met with students who were part of the Statewide Multicultural Student Coalition, a universitywide group of undocumented students and their supporters that formed in response to her appointment.

At the meeting, Napolitano informed the students that she had discussed the TRUST Act with Brown, telling him she thought it would be “good for the state of California,” said UC spokesperson Shelly Meron.

Leti Volpp, a professor of law at UC Berkeley, said California should encourage legislation that recognizes immigrants as part of the community rather than removing them from it.

However, Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., raised concerns about public safety issues and how law enforcement officials would be able to arbitrarily determine which individuals will be subject to immigration enforcement.

“(The law would) force them to release people who should be left in custody,” Vaughan said.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, undocumented individuals accounted for 6.8 percent of California’s population and 9.7 percent of the state’s labor force in 2010.

There are about 200 undocumented students on campus as of 2012, according to Meng So, the campus’s first undocumented student program coordinator.

Volpp said she hopes the TRUST Act will “remove daily insecurities” for undocumented students in California.

Contact Jeff Landa at jlanda@dailycal.org.

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The legislation, known as Assembly Bill 484, will fully replace the current STAR testing system in the 2014-15 school year with a new statewide computerized exam that will assess students’ knowledge on an individual basis and the success of the new curriculum that many states are in the process of adopting nationwide.

“This is one of the most important and revolutionary changes to education policy, and California is the right state to lead the way,” said Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, who drafted the bill, in a press release.

The testing system — Measurement of Academic Performance and Progress — differs from STAR in style and content, according to Frank Worrell, a professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education. Unlike STAR, which predominantly uses pencil and paper, MAPP is completely computer-based, allowing the test to adapt to the ability of the test-taker.

Worrell posed a hypothetical in which two students are given 10 questions and both students answer the first four questions correctly to explain how MAPP works.

“Then one student answers question five wrong, and the other answers it right,” Worrell said. “The first student will then get an easier question designed to figure out what that student doesn’t understand. The one who answers it right will get a more complex, challenging problem.”

Worrell added that the benefit of the test is “a more precise understanding of what students are learning and where their weaknesses are.”

MAPP also tests what students are learning in the classroom — namely, the new Common Core standard, which will be rolled out on a practice basis for some subjects in some grades for the 2013-14 school year.

The curriculum aims to make students think critically and conceptually, making them competitive for a globalized college and career environment, said Karen Hemphill, president of the Berkeley Unified School District School Board.

Hemphill added that the curriculum seeks to change the way schools teach English and mathematics. For mathematics, changes will help students gain a better conceptual understanding of arithmetic and algebra.

Meanwhile, English reading curriculums will feature less fiction. Hemphill estimates that students in middle school will read approximately 50 percent nonfiction, while high school students will read about 70 percent nonfiction.

While Hemphill said she was excited for the changes, she acknowledged there would be a districtwide learning curve as the new curriculum is implemented. To ease the transition, the district plans to host workshops for teachers and parents. It also plans to give intermediary tests this year to make sure students are prepared for next year’s MAPP.

Contact Savannah Luschei at sluschei@dailycal.org.

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Kore Chan/Staff

California may become the first state in U.S. history to allow undocumented immigrants to practice law after passing the state bar exam.

Gov. Jerry Brown has until Oct. 13 to sign AB 1024, a bill that would grant undocumented individuals licenses to become lawyers regardless of their immigration status.

“This is the only country that they have known as their own, and until the federal government passes comprehensive immigration reform, it is something we have to do to ensure dreamers can have normal lives,” said Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, who introduced the bill.

The bill was introduced after the Supreme Court of California in 2011 ruled to withhold the law license of Sergio Covarrubias Garcia, an undocumented immigrant, after the state bar that approved his license disclosed his legal status.

But it was not until Sept. 4 of this year that the state Supreme Court heard oral arguments from both sides of Garcia’s case. The court decided that while it is against federal law to issue professional licenses to undocumented immigrants, the law allows room for state legislatures to grant professional licenses to undocumented immigrants through state legislation.

Garcia’s case has not existed in a vacuum. Similar cases have appeared across the country involving undocumented immigrants; Jose Manuel Godinez-Samperio in Florida and Cesar Vargas in New York faced difficulty obtaining their licenses to practice law. Earlier this year, Godinez-Samperio’s case was dismissed, leaving him without a license.

Because of these struggles, Vargas has decided to help create the DREAM Bar Association, a group that supports and provides resources for other undocumented law students nationwide.

Despite the hanging threat of deportation, these students have chosen to voice their experiences in pursuing a law career. Vargas’ group has already recruited about 30 members, who often work together to write briefs for one another about reasons they should qualify for law licenses.

“We cannot stand in the shadow — I have seen other DREAMers fighting for others, and I think those people inspired me to take action and do my part and push for immigration reform and have DREAMers admitted (into college),” Vargas said. “The more people know about your story, the more people understand that it is a personal issue. My goal is to push the conversation forward.”

Gonzalez, who earned her own law degree from UCLA School of Law, chose to push for the bill just before the legislative recess in mid-September. She said it was important to support the students who have worked hard to earn their degrees.

“I’m not any better, I didn’t study any more and there is a lack of equity that doesn’t allow these DREAMers who worked hard and did everything right to pursue what they want, and it just doesn’t seem right,” Gonzalez said.

It is unclear how many undocumented students are studying law in the UC system, but Gonzalez estimates there are 15 systemwide. The figure does not take into account students who did not want to identify as undocumented, undergraduates thinking about pursuing a law degree or law school graduates.

Leti Volpp, a law professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, said she wouldn’t be surprised if more undocumented students see law school as a viable option if the bill passes.

Volpp also said AB 1024  is another small step toward seeing undocumented immigrants as part of “our community.” The students who are able to pass the bar exam should not be excluded due to their legal status but should be praised for their accomplishment, she said.

“Half of the applicants to the California state bar get rejected every year,” Volpp said. “Legal status is the least important question on whether or not someone should be allowed to practice law.”

Contact Jose Hernandez at jhernandez@dailycal.org

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Katherine Chen/Staff

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill Monday requiring motorists to give at least three feet of road space to passing bicyclists.

Assembly Bill 1371, authored by Assemblymember Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, will enact the Three Feet for Safety Act on Sept. 16, 2014, updating the law that requires drivers to keep a safe distance from bicyclists but does not specify that distance.

“It’s pretty important to have legislation that has a clear requirement so you aren’t just relying on people’s good will,” said Danita McGinnis of the Missing Link Bicycle Cooperative, a cooperatively owned bicycle shop and repair service in Berkeley.

Bradford introduced the bill in February. Brown has vetoed similar legislation twice, including last year’s SB 1464, which would have allowed drivers to cross a double yellow line to pass bicyclists. According to Bradford, Brown was concerned  these provisions would increase the risk of accidents and create lawsuits for the state.

“I believe Governor Brown felt the amendments to AB 1371 created a safe environment for bicyclists, while ensuring that the bill did not create further safety concerns and legal dilemmas for the state,” Bradford said in a statement.

The bill makes violations of the new provision punishable by a $35 fine and imposes a $220 fine on drivers if they injure a bicyclist in a collision and are found to have violated the rule.

Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin said he expects that violations of the law will be enforced like any other traffic law violations.

“I do think there will be challenges with enforcing a law like this, in the same way that cellphone and texting laws seem to be thinly enforced,” said Joe DiStefano, a board member of Livable Berkeley, a coalition of Berkeley citizens and activists.

DiStefano, who takes his two kids to school by bicycle every day, said he appreciates having the law on the cyclist’s side.

“It’s also the cyclist’s responsibility to not put him or herself into positions where cars don’t have a choice … putting everyone in violation of that three-foot rule,” DiStefano said. “It goes both ways.”

According to Bradford, California had the second-highest number of cyclist fatalities in the country in 2009.

“I think it’s important in cities where there’s a lot of bike riders,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington. “One of the things that discourages people from riding their bikes is fear of collisions.”

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak of District 8, which includes parts of College Avenue that are only one lane each way and do not have bike lanes, said both bikes and vehicles have to share the lane.

“It may cause some slight delays — the motorists might have to wait a second,” Wozniak said. “Sometimes you have to do that for public safety.”

Tara Hurley covers city news. Contact her at thurley@dailycal.org.

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It’s time to test your trivia knowledge (and school pride) again! You might have already tried guessing which celebrity went to Cal, but did you know a whole slew of prominent political figures were students here too? Try figuring out which of the two people listed together used to be Golden Bears. We’ll give you the answers, so don’t cheat with Google …

Round 1: Francisco I. Madero or Zulfikar Ali Bhutto?

Answer: Both!

Sorry for tripping you up so early, but did you know that two different presidents once walked across Sproul Plaza? Madero — the first revolutionary president of Mexico — went here for a year to learn agriculture and brush up on his English. Bhutto, the former president and prime minister of Pakistan, got his bachelor’s degree in political science — with honors!

Round 2: Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jerry Brown?

Answer: Jerry Brown.

Cali’s current governor got a bachelor’s degree in classics at UC Berkeley in 1961 before going to law school and eventually launching a political career. Now if only the Terminator had gone here too…

Round 3: Barbara Lee or Janet Napolitano?

Answer: Barbara Lee

Our future UC president is new to the school, but Rep. Barbara Lee got a masters in social work from UC Berkeley in 1975.

Round 4:  Haakon Magnus or Frederik Christian?

Answer: Haakon Magnus

Otherwise known as Crown Prince Haakon, the Norwegian heir apparent beats out Danish Crown Prince Frederik in this competition. Prince Haakon got his bachelor’s degree in political science from UC Berkeley in 1999.

Know any other political hotshots who call themselves Cal alumni? Let us know by commenting!

Image sources: hsbfrank ,ABQ MUSEUM PHOTOARCHIVES, Dr Ghulam Nabi Kazi, Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer, Officer Phil, Youth Radio, Center for American Progress, United Nations Development Programme and VisitCopenhagen under Creative Commons.

Contact Erum Khan at ekhan@dailycal.org.

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California’s current minimum wage of $8 per hour is ahead of most other states, but legislators in Sacramento correctly identified that it was not enough for most families to live on and accordingly took action.

That said, the legislation still has not caught up to the sky-high cost of living in Berkeley. Even with the minimum wage of $10 per hour, California’s new law still would not be enough for workers living in Berkeley to meet basic needs, according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator. The calculator, which uses data from sources such as the Census Bureau and Consumer Expenditure Survey, estimates the minimum hourly wage needed to get by in Berkeley for a single adult is $11.51.

This is not to say that the increase is pointless or that it will only be felt by those at the bottom of the income ladder. As people earning minimum wage make more, employers who pay just above the minimum will likely be forced to raise the wages of their staff in order to compete for workers. This effect should ripple throughout the economy, elevating incomes and ensuring workers get a healthier chunk of their employers’ profits.

For students, this act will provide a much-needed boost to those working part-time jobs, many of which are at or near the minimum wage. The measure also includes workers who have wages that include tips; California’s tipped minimum wage is $8 right now, but the federal tipped minimum wage is only $2.13. California is boldly setting the example that it is unfair to pay tipped workers such a substantially lower amount, as they have been stuck with the same wage floor for the last 22 years.

However, California should just be the beginning.

Nationwide, entry-level workers at corporations such as Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Amazon and elsewhere make very little and are often overworked, while shareholders and corporate officers reap substantial profits.

In that vein, UC Berkeley public policy professor and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has launched a petition on MoveOn.org calling on the CEOs of McDonald’s and Wal-Mart to increase the base pay of their workers to at least $15 per hour. State legislators would be prudent to think even bigger and advocate the new act to be expanded to other states as well.

Smaller businesses with just a few employees may initially be forced to shed workers or reduce hours as a result of the new law. This should be negligible damage, though, when compared to the standard-of-living increases that workers will experience.

California experiences one of the largest income gaps in the country, and a higher minimum wage may not close it. The new law will not completely ensure all Californians are able to earn a living wage. But it’s a start, and it’s a promising indication as to what direction the state government aims to go.

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Kore Chan/Senior Staff

The ASUC Senate has introduced a bill in support of reforming Prop. 13, an amendment to California’s constitution that placed limits on property taxes, in hopes of raising state revenue and increasing funds for higher education.

SB 9, which was co-authored and sponsored by ASUC External Affairs Vice President Safeena Mecklai, calls for the ASUC to formally express support for Prop. 13 reform as part of a larger long-term campaign by the UC Student Association to increase college affordability.

Additionally, if the bill is passed, Mecklai would express the ASUC’s position to university officials and elected public officials, including Gov. Jerry Brown.

After its passage in 1978, Prop. 13 decreased property taxes, which subsequently decreased government revenue generated from these taxes.

SB 9 states that “because Proposition 13 allows commercial property owners to avoid paying their fair share in taxes, the resulting budget deficit causes the State Legislature to continue to reduce funding for education.”

“We want to use the student voice and our student power to encourage our legislators to look at ways to use revenue from commercial property taxes to refund our education,” Mecklai said in an email.

UC tuition has increased from $6,654 in 2007 to $12,834 in 2013, according to the bill, making it increasingly difficult for middle- and low-income students to attend UC Berkeley. According to SB 9, budget cuts have also caused a significant number of faculty layoffs as well as increased class sizes and an increase in the number of graduate students teaching classes.

By reforming Prop. 13, property taxes would be able to produce much-needed revenue for the state to increase funds for higher education and other priorities, said Tanay Kothari, a third-year UC Berkeley political economy major who co-authored the bill.

“Even limited, reasonable Proposition 13 reform such as this would go a long way toward allowing the state to provide better services for its residents,” Kothari said in an email.

The bill proposes reforms to Prop. 13, including the regular reassessment of nonresidential properties, which could generate $6 billion in additional revenue for the state.

According UC Berkeley professor of economics Alan Auerbach, the “split-roll” approach to property taxation, the reform method outlined by SB 9, separates commercial property from residential property.

“Supporters (of this approach) have viewed it over the years as more politically feasible than the simple repeal of Prop. 13, and it would raise a substantial amount of additional revenue,” Auerbach said in an email.

Jesse Rothstein, a professor in the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, also said he supports the proposed reforms to Prop. 13.

“I think the proposed change to the assessment of commercial property is a good move,” Rothstein said. “The state needs to break out of the chains that Proposition 13 created, and this is a good step in that direction.”

However, others questioned whether reforming Prop. 13 would actually help garner funds for higher education. Auerbach said that higher education funding has historically not been discussed in relation to Prop. 13.

He noted, however, that “like a lot of other states, California faces continuing pressure from increases in some areas of spending … and a consequence has been a squeeze on other parts of the budget, including higher education.”

SB 9 will be discussed in committee on Monday and brought before the senate at Wednesday’s meeting.

Jennie Yoon is the lead student government reporter. Contact her at jyoon@dailycal.org.

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