The Buzz 01.21.21

FREE SPEECH

If money is speech, a number of big corporations are loudly saying to the Republican Party: Play by the rules, and if you don’t, we will drop you. Big business is famously aligned with the GOP, but since the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, at least a dozen corporate contributors have announced their intent to withdraw political donations to the 155 lawmakers who voted against certification of the Electoral College vote. The list includes household names like Hallmark, chemical giant Dow, credit card companies MasterCard and American Express, hotel chain Marriott and health insurance company Blue Cross Blue Shield. Other corporations, including tech giants Google and Facebook – the latter of which is embroiled in its own free speech debate after blocking President Donald Trump’s account in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot – have announced their intention to halt political contributions entirely. The group End Citizens United, which aims to overturn the Citizens United ruling, wrote: “Corporations need to take a big step in resisting this attempted coup by demanding refunds and cutting off financial support for insurrectionists.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“We’re just hanging on by our thumbnails.” -Restaurateur Pat Ottone of Ottone Restaurant Group, which closed two of its four restaurants, including Lallapalooza, during the pandemic.

GOOD WEEK / GREAT WEEK

GOOD:

Water recycling on the Monterey Peninsula has gotten two major boosts in recent weeks. First, Congress approved a budget package that includes a federal grant of about $15.5 million to support Pure Water Monterey, the project that takes wastewater and purifies it for urban consumption. There were 19 applicants across the western United States, and Pure Water Monterey was among seven selected, receiving the largest grant of all. The next thing that happened was a new appointment on Jan. 7 to the board of the Monterey One Water, which operates the water recycling plant. Scott Donaldson replaces John Gaglioti as the representative of Del Rey Oaks to the M1W board. Ahead of his selection, Donaldson committed publicly to breaking with Gaglioti and supporting the environmental review process for expanding Pure Water Monterey – and his additional vote should be enough to break the tie that kept the expansion project in limbo.

GREAT:

The bad news is that Cafe Lumiere, and the equally adored Osio Theater, are closed for good. The good news is that the reason for their closure may be fixed after all. Their former landlord, Green Valley Corporation, which was also the developer of the Osio Plaza, began defaulting on their loans to the city of Monterey in September of 2019 – way before the pandemic, way before calls for rent relief. According to correspondence obtained by the Weekly through the California Public Records Act between city officials and Green Valley, negotiations had been going on since 2019 – with the developer offering the city full ownership of the property in exchange for complete loan forgiveness (a total of $2.5 million). Finally, on Jan. 14, Green Valley paid the city $380,000, and is now current on their loan. Monterey hopes the developer will keep up with payments, as the revenue helps develop other housing plans.