UpFront News Briefs
March 19, 2004
OVERHEARD
“Sometimes my mom uses it as a coaster.”
— High school senior Andy Ng of Daly City, Calif., on the demise of the hard-bound encyclopedia. Digital versions of Britannica, World Book and Encyclopedia Americana are competing on the World Wide Web.
VOTING RIGHTS
Suit to Increase Access for Disabled
Advocates in Los Angeles, Calif. for the disabled are suing four of the state’s largest counties, demanding they install voting machines that can be used by blind or paralyzed voters in time for the November presidential election. The suit’s outcome also could have bearing on the availability of machines equipped for Asian language assistance.
The action, filed Mar. 8 in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, accuses Secretary of State Kevin Shelley and the four counties of violating the rights of the disabled.
Secretary of State spokesperson Doug Stone said Shelley would have no comment until he has seen the action.
According to the suit, disabled people who wish to vote must use absentee ballots and ask others for help.
“I can choose to do an absentee ballot, but then I have to rely on the person reading it to me to be honest and vote the way I want them to vote,” said Ardis Bazyn, secretary of the California Council for the Blind. “I want to feel secure in my vote. I want to have a private vote.”
The counties named in the lawsuit are Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and Santa Barbara. During the Mar. 2 election, only one of Los Angeles County’s 4,571 precincts had a voting machine for disabled people, according to the action.
In all, 44 California counties lack the machines, but plaintiffs said the four they targeted were selected because they are among the state’s most populous and have changed their voting equipment since touch-screen machines became available in 1999.
The touch-screen machines the advocacy groups want installed cost about $3,000 each, according to plaintiff attorney John E. McDermott.
They come with headphones the visually impaired can use to hear and select their ballot choices. They also have a straw-like device paralyzed voters may use to mark their ballots.
The touch-screen machines also present ballots in multiple languages, said Kathay Feng of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, whose group also supports the lawsuit. Machines could aid, for instance, voters who use Chinese-language ballots in San Francisco.
“As complicated as propositions are, sometimes seeing the ballot in a second language is helpful for voters to make sure the choices they want are actually what they end up casting,” Feng said.
— The Associated Press
BANK MERGER
Native Hawaiians to Appeal
A Native Hawaiian group likely will ask for judicial review of the Federal Reserve’s order approving Bank of America’s merger with FleetBank, a spokesman said on Mar. 8 in Honolulu, Hawai‘i.
The Fed’s board of governors voted 6-0 Mar. 8 to clear the merger creating the third-largest U.S. bank, less than two weeks after a federal judge in Honolulu dismissed a suit brought by Native Hawaiians who claimed Bank of America had not complied with commitments to provide tens of millions of dollars for loans and low-income housing in Hawai‘i.
Ian Chan Hodges, a spokesman for the Hawai‘i Fair Lending Coalition, said Mar. 8 that the group is considering an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to modify or stop the merger in order to force Bank of America to fulfill commitments made on two occasions, including one in 1994.
The group also is contacting stockholders in advance of the bank’s stockholder meeting next week, to advise them of possible efforts to reverse the merger approval.
“The 9th Circuit could modify the order, which would have a material impact on the stockholders,” Hodges said.
He noted that the Fed’s order tried to address the Hawai‘i issues.
The order notes that Bank of America has made progress toward that goal and has been working with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to fulfill its commitment.
Micah Kane, the agency’s chairman, said the bank has already provided some $69 million in financing and grants to Native Hawaiians, and has promised to make the remaining $80.6 million available.
In a Dec. 15 letter to Kane, Douglas B. Woodruff, president of Community Development Banking for Bank of America, said he was affirming the bank’s commitment to finance and promote affordable housing for Native Hawaiians.
“I think we’ve laid out a plan by which we can assure that Bank of America will remain engaged to fulfill the commitment,” Kane said.
Bank of America began a lending program for Hawaiian Home Lands homesteaders in 1994 after the Hawai‘i Fair Lending Coalition accused it of discriminating against Hawaiians in its lending practices.
In response, the bank said it would set aside $150 million for loans to homesteaders and $30 million for low income housing on Kauai. The commitment was also a condition of Bank of America’s 1998 merger with Nations Bank, according to Hodges.
The Fair Lending Coalition had sought to stop the merger in federal court, but U.S. District Judge David Ezra last month dismissed the case, saying he lacked jurisdiction.
The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act approved by Congress in 1920 set aside 203,500 acres for a Hawaiian Home Lands Program to provide up to 99-year leases on land to applicants with at least 50 percent Hawaiian blood.
— A.P.
CHINATOWN HEALTH
Post-Sept. 11 Increase in Asthma
Researchers said Mar. 8 they found a significant increase in the number of asthma clinic visits and asthma medications for children living in or near Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood in the year following the terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center towers.
“This study suggests that the collapse had clinical consequences for children with asthma and that we have reason to be concerned about chronic respiratory consequences for these asthmatic children,” said one of the authors of the study, Dr. Anthony Szema, an assistant professor of medicine at Stony Brook University in Garden City, N.Y.
The study by Stony Brook researchers appears in the March issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
It found that in the year before Sept. 11, 2001, 306 pediatric asthma patients made 1,044 visits to a health clinic in Chinatown, northeast of Ground Zero. That jumped to 510 patients and 1,554 visits in the year following the collapse of the twin towers.
“The question that remains to be answered is: Are these kids going to need more visits to doctors and more medications for the rest of their life?” Szema said.
Federal officials announced a week after the Sept. 11 attacks that the air in downtown Manhattan was safe to breathe. Last fall, an internal watchdog at the Environmental Protection Agency found the agency gave misleading assurances about the air quality at the White House’s direction, downplaying health risks from the debris, for national security reasons.
— A.P.
Memorial
Herbert Choy Dies
Federal appeals Judge Herbert Y. C. Choy, the first Asian Pacific American to serve on the federal bench, died on March 10. He was 88.
Choy was named to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by President Nixon in 1971. He achieved senior status when he retired in 1984 but continued to work on cases for the San Francisco-based court.
Choy was born on Kauai in 1916 to Korean immigrants. He received his law degree from Harvard University, and was the first Korean to be admitted to the bar.
He served as a territorial attorney general and was a law partner of former U.S. Sen. Hiram Fong, who recommended him to the 9th Circuit.
“Judge Choy will be remembered by all who knew him as a man with enormous integrity who richly deserved the high positions he received but did not always seek,” said 9th Circuit Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder.
Choy was a role model and “historic figure,” said 9th Circuit Judge Richard Clifton.
“He was a mentor to dozens of highly respected lawyers,” said Hawai‘i U.S. District Judge David Ezra. “We deeply regret his passing but the legacy he has left of public service will not quickly be forgotten.”
— A.P.
Comments
Got something to say?