Daily Business Report: August 5 2026
SANDAG: Fixing La Mesa Boulevard trolley traffic would cost half a billion
by Drew Sitton | Times of San Diego
After months of study, SANDAG presented possible ways to untangle a traffic snarl at one of the La Mesa’s busiest intersections — Spring Street and La Mesa Boulevard — but without a path to implement those expensive solutions.
The proposed solutions, which include elevating trolley tracks or moving them underground, are three to four times La Mesa’s annual budget. The city council won’t implement those ideas any time soon.
“We’ll let our great-grandchildren know about this,” said Mayor Mark Arapostathis, to chuckles from those on the dias and in the crowd.
Mount Hope Residents Are Creating a New Vision for Their Community
by Mariana Martínez Barba | Voice of San Diego
Elena Franco has good and bad memories of growing up in Mount Hope.
She remembers riding her bike around the neighborhood, catching tadpoles at a dirt lot and playing basketball with her older brother and neighbors.
Then, there’s the bad. People she knew were shot and killed. Her next-door neighbor was murdered at Dennis V. Allen Park. When she was 14, she tried to stop a group of guys from beating up her brother, and she got hurt too.
by Megan Barth | California Globe
A new analysis (see below) from the Paragon Health Institute finds that nearly half of Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion enrollees in 2024—approximately 9.2 million people—were likely ineligible under federal rules, imposing a net federal cost of $32.9 billion that year.
California accounted for a disproportionate share: an estimated 3.1 million improper enrollees, or 62 percent of the state’s expansion population, at a federal cost of $10.4 billion.
The report, “Medicaid Expansion’s Growing Improper Enrollment Crisis,” authored by adjunct scholar Liam Sigaud, estimates the ineligible share at 46 percent of the 20.2 million expansion enrollees under a central assumption of 70 percent take-up among those who qualify. That represents an 88 percent increase from the 4.9 million improper enrollees (33 percent) estimated for 2019. Even under a more conservative full take-up assumption, the national figure remains 5.2 million.
