News Articles
As mass shootings continue at an alarming rate, any helpful legislation is welcomed with open arms. On Capitol Hill, one such measure, proposed by U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, a gun owner himself and Chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, would allow police to obtain gun removal warrants from judges whenever someone is having a mental health crisis and is deemed a danger to himself or others.
Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, and three of his House colleagues from Northern California asked the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Tuesday to tighten regulations on crude oil transportation by rail. The four urged the DOT to make crude shipments safer before those shipments dramatically expand in the state, as predicted.
By Tony Burchins
On a visit to the humongous Mare Island factory that helped rebuild the Pacific Fleet after Pearl Harbor, U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson on Thursday was honored for his work to help Vallejo's former military base.
Thompson, D-St. Helena, received the 2014 Association of Defense Communities Congressional Leadership Award at a brief ceremony in historic Building 680 on Nimitz Avenue, where Blu Homes, Inc. moved its corporate headquarters in January.
By Donna Beth Weilenman
U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, has joined three other California members of Congress in asking Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx to make crude shipments by rail safer.
Thompson, Benicia's member of the House, as well as Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, George Miller, D-Martinez, and John Garamendi, D-Fairfield, have written Foxx, asking him to issue regulations and speed up rules that would prevent future accidents during crude delivery by rail.
It's been a long road, but the anticipated opening of Sonoma Valley Community Health Center's new facility is now just three weeks away.
"It's absolutely gorgeous," said Health Center CEO Cheryl Johnson of the newly-renovated structure, located at 19270 Highway 12, across from Maxwell Village Shopping Center. Johnson said the 18,000-square-foot facility is slated to open July 22, though there is still much to be done.
Deadly mass shootings occur with such alarming regularity that the public can be forgiven for believing there's no way to prevent them.
But lawmakers and experts concerned with the connections between mental illness and violence insist that solutions exist.
And, they say, many of them can be found in California, where laws on the books are credited with reducing the gun death rate 56 percent in the past two decades, according to data compiled by San Francisco's Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
A decade and a half after a husband and wife donated 642 acres of rangeland to American Canyon, the Newell Open Space Preserve at last lived up to its name, officially opening to the public Saturday.
Long an expansive but inaccessible backdrop to a growing city, the tawny, grassy hills and oak groves of American Canyon's northeast corner finally became public space in a dedication ceremony attended by about 80 spectators, many of them equipped with boots, sun hats and water flasks to hike the preserve's 2.6-mile uphill trail on a sun-drenched morning.
In the wake of recent shootings in Portland, Ore., Las Vegas, Nev. and Santa Barbara, Congress members Carol Shea-Porter (D-New Hampshire), a member of the House's Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, and Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), the task force's chairman, led a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) signed by 163 members of Congress demanding a vote on substantive legislation to address gun violence.
U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-5) announced a $376,423 U.S. Education Department grant has been awarded to Mendocino-Lake Community College.
The grant comes from the Education Department's College Assistance Migrant Program, or CAMP.
U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, has reignited a push to reform gun laws in America following high-profile incidents of gun violence in Santa Barbara and cities in Washington, Oregon and Nevada recently.
Thompson chaired a task force on preventing gun violence in the House of Representatives in early 2013, following a mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012 that left 26 children and adults at the school dead.