Oakland News: Richmond Wins LBL Campus Competition, Mayor Recall Update

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Richmond beats Alameda and Oakland for LBL Second Campus

After a tough, competitive battle for the right to play host to the long-planned-for second campus of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, it was announced at 8 AM that Richmond was the winner. Richmond, already location of property and facilities owned by the University of California, beat Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland, and two other developer partners for the right to be the location of the new development.

Mayor Recall Snag Gives Quan A Chit

The effort to recall Oakland Mayor Jean Quan is well underway, with the Oakland City Clerk’s Office having approved Oakland Activist Gene Hazzard’s petition, and with the Oakland City Attorney allowing other groups to have their own recall efforts.

But the dirty little secret is that a problem with Hazzard’s approved application – many say he did not property notice it in the local newspapers – can give Quan a chit in the game of derailing the recall effort. First, the City of Oakland’s City Attorney’s Office is not going to publicly go against the Oakland City Clerk’s action in approving Hazzard’s application. Second, it’s left for Quan to throw a wrench into the effort when all is said and done after signatures are gathered.

As to how that’s going, just reading the temperature of the city, it doesn’t seem like there’s a real desire to recall Mayor Quan. Let’s look at it from this point of view: Quan didn’t take any money from the City’s till, and that’s the reason the last time a sitting Oakland Mayor was booted from office, and that was in 1961. Absent that, what Quan went through with Occupy Oakland any Mayor of Oakland would have been caught in. Well, OK, I take that back; she screwed up. But the public seems willing to forgive her, if only because the Occupy Oakland movement has degenerated into something people are tired of.

Stay tuned.

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