LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A new law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown will provide much-needed tax relief for business impacted by natural disasters.

The bill, authored by Assemblyman Bill Dodd (D-Napa) and Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg), will grant the Board of Equalization the authority to defer business tax payments without additional costs or fees.

The idea for this new law was brought forward by Board of Equalization Chairwoman Fiona Ma in the aftermath of the 2015 Valley fire in Lake County.
 
“The Board of Equalization can now grant tax relief to countless business across the state who have been impacted by natural disasters. I’d like to thank Gov. Jerry Brown for recognizing the urgency of this bill and acknowledging that California needs to do more to assist victims in the recovery process,” said Dodd. “This was a team effort and I’d like to acknowledge Sen. Mike McGuire and Chairwoman Fiona Ma who fought tirelessly to help provide victims with the relief they deserve.”
 
“Lake County has seen tremendous devastation in the wake of the Valley fire last year, and now the Clayton Fire and small businesses need assistance in the aftermath of these disasters. We’re grateful to partner with Assemblymember Dodd and BOE Member Ma to ensure local business owners have some peace of mind and needed tax relief during this recovery period,” McGuire said.
 
Over the past several years California has experienced some of the most destructive fires in its history.

In 2015 Assemblymember Dodd’s Fourth Assembly District contained nearly 58 percent of the total extinguished acreage by Cal Fire across the entire state.

In Lake County alone, the Valley fire destroyed nearly two thousand structures over a 23-day period, ultimately becoming the third most destructive fire in California history.

The 2016 wildfire season has already devastated communities across the state, with the Clayton fire in Lake County destroying hundreds of buildings.
 
“Victims are already traumatized from their disaster experience. Thank you Gov. Brown for providing tax relief to small business owners. I’ve been honored to work with Assemblymember Dodd and Sen. McGuire on AB 1559, which will help provide tax relief assistance for businesses affected by these kinds of disasters,” said Ma.
 
Under this legislation, the Board of Equalization could grant filing extensions on a quarterly basis to victims of natural disasters for sales tax, use tax, and other taxes.

The bill will take immediate effect statewide, empowering the BOE to provide relief to businesses impacted by recent fires from Lake County to Big Sur to San Bernardino County.

The bill also would allow the BOE to help victims recover from future major fires, floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters.
 
Dodd represents the Fourth Assembly District, which includes all or portions of Yolo, Napa, Sonoma, Lake, Solano and Colusa counties. Visit his Web site at www.asm.ca.gov/dodd .

Many people have some firmly held – but incorrect – beliefs regarding estate planning concepts. These misconceptions can negatively affect how people choose to proceed.

Let’s debunk some common misconceptions.

If I have a will does that mean my estate avoids probate? No. Having a will is often a ticket to a probate.

When a California resident dies with a probate estate that has a gross value of $150,000 or more the will is submitted to court for probate. A trust could have been used to avoid probate.

If I have a trust does that mean I do not need a Will? No. Having a trust means that the assets transferred into the trust avoid probate.

Usually people keep some assets outside their trust (e.g., vehicles and day to day checking account). A pour over will accompanies a trust and directs that these assets be transferred to the trust. So long as under $150,000 in assets pass under the will no probate is required.

In addition, a will may be used to make certain smaller gifts to friends outside of the trust in order. That way, these minor beneficiaries, unless they are also heirs, do not then have to receive a copy of the trust.

If I am named as the executor in a decedent’s will doesn’t that make me the executor? No. The will has to be admitted by court order to probate and letters testamentary have to be issued. Only then does the nominee become the executor.

Isn’t a will notarized? No. Unlike trusts and deeds wills are not notarized. Wills are witnessed by two disinterested persons who sign an attestation clause. By disinterested I mean that the witnesses receive no personal benefit to themselves or to their family under the will.

If I have a trust doesn’t that mean no administration is needed once I die? No. A trust still requires administration to settle the trust estate. That said, settling a trust estate generally involves less expense, less time, and less aggravation than settling the same estate (assets) inside a court probate.

If I don’t have a will or a trust then won’t my assets simply go to the State? No. Not having a will or a trust invites an intestate probate without a will, unless the estate is under $150,000 in which case small estate procedures can be used.

The decedent’s heirs stand to inherit the decedent’s estate, subject to creditor claims. If the heirs don’t claim their inheritance, then the estate of a deceased resident of California may “escheat” to the state of California.

If I want to disinherit one or my heirs then don’t I leave him or her $1 in my will? No. If you want to disinherit someone expressly say so in your will and trust using a disinheritance clause. Leaving a $1 bequest is unnecessary and offensive.

If I get married doesn’t that mean that my assets become community property assets? No. Certain assets can remain your separate property even during marriage. Any premarital assets, any inheritances and gifts received during marriage are all your separate property, provided you keep them in your name and don’t otherwise transmute (change) them into community property by signing a written transmutation instrument.

If I live with someone as though we were married for seven years in California doesn’t that create a Common Law marriage? No. But while Common Law marriages are not created in California, they are still recognized here if one was validly created elsewhere in a Common Law state.

If one or more of the foregoing misconceptions apply to you, then what other misconceptions do you also have? How are these misconceptions affecting your choices and actions? What are you going to do about it?

Dennis A. Fordham, Attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and 707-263-3235. His Web site is www.DennisFordhamLaw.com .

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County health officials have confirmed the first human case of West Nile virus in the county this year, at the same time as new detections of the virus have been reported in sentinel chicken flocks.

Lake County Public Health received confirmation this week of the human West Nile virus case, according to Dr. Karen Tait, the county's health officer.

Due to privacy laws, Tait could not give a lot of specifics about the case, which involve a Lake County resident.

She said the individual, who is in their 50s, contracted the infection in late July in the county. The patient recalled being at home and getting a mosquito bite.

“The patient actually recovered really well,” with no complications, said Tait.

Because West Nile virus is a reportable disease, it's part of Public Health's routine surveillance, Tait said.

The law requires that both health care providers and laboratories report the diagnosis to Public Health, she said.

“For reporting and verification purposes, clinical lab tests sometimes have false positives,” said Tait, so before they can count a case, it has to be confirmed through a public health lab.

Those public health labs usually require about a 21-day turnaround, said Tait. “That's why there is such a long lag time before we could announce it,” she said, although in a previous report on West Nile issued late in August Tait had stated that they were investigating a suspected human case.

Lake County had two human cases of West Nile virus last year and one case in 2014, according to state records.

As of Aug. 31, 123 human cases of West Nile virus had been reported in 23 of California's 58 counties, an increase from the 97 cases reported at the same time last year. Forty-six of current cases were reported in the past week, according to health officials.

Two West Nile virus-related fatalities were reported this year by Sacramento and Yolo counties. 

Health officials said it only takes one bite to get West Nile virus from an infected mosquito, and anyone of any age can get this disease.

Symptoms of the mild form of West Nile virus include fever, headache, body aches, nausea vomiting, and occasionally swollen lymph glands or a skin rash. While the illness may last only a few days, some people report being sick for several weeks.

The severe form of West Nile, which occurs in less than 1 percent of cases, can affect the nervous system and can be fatal. 

Tait said Public Health coordinates with the Lake County Vector Control District to do mosquito trapping in areas of concerns and additional abatement if it's warranted.

Vector Control conducts routine surveillance for West Nile virus throughout the active season. Positive detections typically occur in mosquitoes, followed by dead birds and sentinel chicken flocks. 

The district reported that two sentinel chickens recently tested positive, bringing the total to four for the year. Additionally, 32 mosquito samples and three dead birds in Lake County have tested positive for West Nile virus. 

“Finding West Nile virus in sentinel chickens shows that there is risk for people to get West Nile virus from the mosquitoes that are biting now,” said Jamesina Scott, Ph.D., district manager and research director.

Tait said all indications are that West Nile virus season is in full swing. “Since there is no specific treatment for the virus, the best approach is to avoid exposure to mosquito bites.”

People can become infected with West Nile virus when bitten by a mosquito after it has bitten an infected bird, the reservoir for the virus, according to Tait and Scott.

Dr. Scott explained that local West Nile virus activity often continues into September and October.  “The risk of picking up West Nile virus from a mosquito bite is highest now because the mosquitoes are older – they’ve fed several times and have had more chances to pick up West Nile virus and pass it along to the next host they bite.”

She recommended that residents inspect their yards for sources of standing water where mosquitoes develop, such as ornamental ponds, wading pools and unmaintained swimming pools. 

“Getting rid of standing water in your yard prevents mosquitoes from growing there and protects you, your family, and your neighbors from mosquito bites and the diseases they carry,” she said.

Scott said people want to know what the “best” repellent is. “The best repellent is the one that you will use, and there are several good choices now available as sprays, lotions, or wipes.” 

The US Environmental Protection Agency has registered five different active ingredients in mosquito repellents that are proven effective: DEET, Picaridin, oil of lemon eucalyptus, IR3535, and para-menthane-diol (a synthetic version of oil of lemon eucalyptus. These five ingredients are proven to be effective and safe Scott explained. 

“But they only work if you apply them,” Scott said. “And always read the label and follow the directions.” 

Contracting the virus is largely preventable by taking simple, but very important precautions, such as the following, suggested by Vector Control:

– Dump or drain standing water. Mosquitoes can't begin their lives without water. If the water cannot be drained (like an unused swimming pool), call the Lake County Vector Control District at 707-263-4770 for free mosquitofish.

– Defend yourself against mosquitoes by using repellents containing DEET, Picaridin, IR3535 or oil of lemon eucalyptus. For more information about effective mosquito repellents, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at http://www.cdc.gov/westnile/faq/repellent.html .

– Avoid being outdoors when mosquitoes are present, typically dawn and dusk.

– Report neglected swimming pools by calling 707-263-4770 or visiting www.lcvcd.org . Anonymous calls are accepted. Just one neglected pool can produce more than one million mosquitoes and affect people up to five miles away.

Residents can contact the Lake County Vector Control District at 707-263-4770 from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, or online at www.LCVCD.org to request help for mosquito problems, report neglected pools and other mosquito sources, or for information about mosquitoes, ticks, and other vectors and the disease they transmit. 

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

Cool brown dwarfs are a hot topic in astronomy right now. Smaller than stars and bigger than giant planets, they hold promise for helping us understand both stellar evolution and planet formation.

New work from a team including Carnegie's Jonathan Gagné has discovered several ultracool brown dwarfs in our own solar neighborhood. Their findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Brown dwarfs are sometimes called failed stars. They are too small to sustain the hydrogen fusion process that powers stars, so after forming they slowly cool, contract, and dim over time.

Their temperatures can range from nearly as hot as a star to as cool as a planet and their masses also range between star-like and giant-planet-like.

They're fascinating to astronomers for a variety of reasons, mostly because they can serve as a bridge between stars and planets and how the former influences the latter, particular when it comes to composition and atmospheric properties. But much about them remains unknown.

“Everyone will benefit from the study of brown dwarfs, because they can often be found in isolation, which means that we can more easily gather precise data on their properties without a bright star blinding our instruments,” Gagné said, who is also a collaborator of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) at Université de Montréal.

Discovering new brown dwarfs will help scientists to better quantify the frequency at which they occur both in our solar neighborhood and beyond. Knowing the abundance and distribution of brown dwarfs provides key information on the distribution of mass in the universe, and on the mechanism of brown dwarf formation, for example, whether they form in isolation or instead are ejected from larger planetary systems.

To that end, the team, led by Jasmin Robert of Université de Montréal, believed that although hundreds of ultracool brown dwarfs have already been discovered, the techniques used to identify them were overlooking those with more-unusual compositions, which would not show up in the color-based surveys generally used.

So they surveyed 28 percent of the sky and discovered 165 ultracool brown dwarfs, about a third of which have unusual compositions or other peculiarities. When talking about brown dwarfs, ultracool means temperatures under about 3,500 Fahrenheit or 2,200 kelvin

“The search for ultracool brown dwarfs in the neighborhood of our own Solar System is far from over,” said Gagné. “Our findings indicate that many more are hiding in existing surveys.”

CLEARLAKE, Calif. – A local man known for carrying a Japanese sword with him everywhere drowned in Clear Lake after falling out of his kayak while on the way to an island to practice his swordsmanship.

The body of Kenneth Anthony Jacintho, 30, of Clearlake was recovered on Monday, according to Lt. Steve Brooks of the Lake County Sheriff's Office.

Brooks said Jacintho was reported missing on Sept. 2 after falling out of his kayak in the water off of Clearlake.

At about 6:15 p.m. that day Central Dispatch received a call about a boating accident that occurred offshore of Austin Beach, Brooks said.

Brooks said the report came in from a 16-year-old female who had been in the boat with Jacintho.

The teen told authorities that she and Jacintho – who she identified as her swordsmanship teacher – had launched a small kayak from Austin Beach, Brooks said.

The two were headed toward “Sunflower Island,” which Brooks said is another name for Monitor Island. Maps show that the island is about three miles away from the beach.

Brooks said they were paddling in a northwest direction when the kayak got turned sideways by wind-driven waves. The waves then knocked both Jacintho and the teenager into the water.

They tried to swim toward the kayak but Brooks said the wind blew it away from them.

As Jacintho was trying to get to the kayak, he yelled “No!” and disappeared under the water, based on the teenager’s report to authorities, Brooks said.

Brooks said the teen then swam to shore and reported the accident. Sgt. Andy Davidson, who heads up the Sheriff’s Marine Patrol, already was in the area and coordinated the search for Jacintho ahead of the arrival of another Marine Patrol member, Sgt. Dennis Ostini.

The Northshore Dive Team responded and assisted with the search, according to Northshore Fire Chief Jay Beristianos.

Beristianos said the team made a dive looking for Jacintho but only found a tree that on the sonar resembled a body with the arms up.

Brooks said shortly after 9 a.m. Monday a woman who was out kayaking saw Jacintho’s body floating in the water off of Austins Beach and called to report it.

Ostini got to the scene just after 9:30 a.m. and found Jacintho 400 feet off of Austins Beach, Brooks said.

During the search Jacintho's kayak also was recovered. Brooks said it had two samurai swords – also known as katanas – strapped to it.

Lt. Tim Celli, acting chief of the Clearlake Police Department, said Jacintho was known for carrying a sword with him everywhere around the city.

Jacintho also went by the name “Kairo Seijuro,” which is how the teenager who reported the boating accident referred to him, according to the sheriff’s office report.

Under the Seijuro name, he was profiled by an Arizona television station in 2012 after a video surfaced of him breaking up a fight on a light rail train by wielding his sword at some of the combatants.

However, his claims of having studied swordsmanship in Japan were questioned in a number of online videos and forums by martial arts practitioners.

He moved from Arizona to Clearlake in 2014, according to posts on his Facebook page.

Brooks said Jacintho's cause of death is pending autopsy results.

Jacintho’s drowning is the fifth on Clear Lake this year, all of them occurring since the Memorial Day weekend, Brooks said.

All of the drowning victims were men, four of them having been boating shortly before their deaths occurred.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

UPPER LAKE, Calif. – An early morning high speed chase around Upper Lake led to a vehicle crash and a small vegetation fire.

The crash occurred just before 2:30 a.m. Friday on Elk Mountain Road.

For about 15 minutes before the crash, Lake County Sheriff's deputies were involved in a chase with a vehicle – a description of which was not immediately available – according to radio traffic.

The pursuit wound all over Upper Lake, with the vehicle being chased by deputies running stop signs and speeding past the high school at about 50 miles per hour, based on radio reports.

The chase then led onto Elk Mountain Road, where deputies reported that the vehicle they were chasing was crossing the double yellow lines and traveling at speeds of about 80 miles per hour. At that point, deputies were reporting that they believed three juveniles were in the pursuit vehicle's back seat.

The vehicle finally crashed into a ditch in the area of 12657 Elk Mountain Road, with the driver bailing out and running toward the White Rock Canyon area, deputies said.

Deputies said the vehicle burst into flames, and they requested firefighters respond due to the fire moving quickly into vegetation. A total of four people were reported to be injured.

Northshore Fire and Cal Fire responded. Firefighters arriving on scene initially requested a REACH air ambulance, later canceling it and transporting patients via ground ambulance.

The forward progress of the fire was stopped just after 3 a.m., with the size estimated at an eighth of an acre, according to radio reports.

Just before 3:45 a.m., reports from the scene indicated that fire units would be on scene for mop up for up to an hour.

It was not clear early Friday if the driver of the vehicle was located and taken into custody.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.