Media 2-12
Judge James Brown issued a ruling in favor of Jerry Roberts, who writes this publication’s Capitol Letters political column, in an arbitrated dispute with Ampersand Publishing, parent company to Roberts’s former employer, the Santa Barbara News-Press. Brown ordered the company to resume arbitration and pay Roberts’s attorney fees, which the company had refused to do on grounds that the case’s arbitrator had missed legal deadlines. The arbitrator in question has previously sided with Roberts in a dispute over whether he had defamed Ampersand. (/roberts212)
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Fired Santa Barbara News-Press employees-including Dawn Hobbs and Melinda Burns-on 2/6 returned to the Highway 101 overpass on Anapamu Street to once again protest the paper and to recognize the two-year anniversary of the anti-News-Press stunt that cost them their jobs. The dispute stems from the paper’s refusal to acknowledge the then-employees’ vote to unionize. This time hanging banners reading “Something stinks at News-Press” for traffic passing below, the dismissed journalists protested in the company of Teamsters union members dressed as skunks.
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for just north of the Sandpiper Golf Course, resulted in a tie vote, with Jonny Wallis and Bill Shelor voting against it and Brent Daniels and Doris Kavanagh voting for it. The commission’s fifth member, Julie Solomon, was absent, so developer Chuck Lande opted to take the matter before the Goleta City Council for final approval or denial.
