7 dead in related Northern California shootings, will Bezos buy Commanders?: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: 7 dead in related Northern California shootings

California saw more shootings Monday after a Saturday incident left 11 dead. Plus,the Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing to examine the lack of competition in the ticketing industry, USA TODAY Money Reporter Elisabeth Buchwald explains how employers are under growing pressure to publicly share how much a job pays, New York City and other East Coast areas have gotten little snow this winter, and Washington Commanders Reporter Chris Russell looks into a report that Jeff Bezos could be the next owner of the Commanders.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Tuesday, the 24th of January, 2023. Today, more shootings in California. Plus a look at the lack of competition in the ticketing industry, and employers are under growing pressure to share how much a job pays.

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Seven people are dead after a pair of related shootings in Northern California. The Monday incidents happened at two plant nurseries on the outskirts of Half Moon Bay, 30 miles from San Francisco. Police have taken a 67-year-old suspect into custody and say he appears to have acted alone. Officials believe he's a worker at one of the facilities, and so two were the victims. The violence came just days after 11 people were killed in Monterey Park, California near Los Angeles. The area is a tight-knit Asian American community and victims were celebrating the Lunar New Year, when police say a 72-year-old gunman attacked a local dance hall. He then killed himself as police moved in. You can read more about this week's shootings on USATODAY.com.

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The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing today to examine the lack of competition in the ticketing industry. The move comes after outrage from Taylor Swift fans over Ticketmaster's mishandling of her concert ticket sales. The company canceled the pop star's general public ticket sale in November for her upcoming tour, and hundreds of thousands of snubbed fans never got tickets. Senator Amy Klobuchar chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights. She previously criticized the company with a letter to its CEO.

Ticketmaster's monopoly in the entertainment industry had already been under intense scrutiny even before the Taylor Swift debacle. Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010, eliminating it as a competitor, and the company now controls an estimated 70% of ticketing in the US, according to CNBC. Today's hearing will likely go into the company's ticket selling and pricing practices, and it also just gives a chance for lawmakers to chastise the company.

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With new laws from Colorado to Rhode Island, employers are under growing pressure to publicly share how much a job pays. Producer PJ Elliott spoke with USA TODAY Money Reporter Elisabeth Buchwald to find out the benefits of sharing salary information.

PJ Elliott:

Elisabeth, thanks for joining the podcast again.

Elisabeth Buchwald:

Thank you for having me on.

PJ Elliott:

We've heard a lot about pay transparency over the last few years, and I think I'm a little bit older than you, but definitely more recently in my lifetime than ever about the topic. I want to start with this. Now, Colorado passed their pay transparency law in May of 2019. It went into effect last January. Basically, it requires employers to include compensation in their job postings. Where else have salary transparency laws or pay equity laws, as they're sometimes called, where else have they been passed?

Elisabeth Buchwald:

It's been done on a state by state measure and then cities, and then sometimes even at the county level. I'll just give you a couple big state examples. California started off gradually with paid transparency laws, and now what went into effect at the beginning of this year is something quite similar to Colorado's law where employers have to give a good faith range of what they think the employee for a certain position should be earning.

Connecticut, if you're applying for a job, you have the right to ask for a range, and in some cases employers have to provide that. In Washington state, they're required to provide a minimum and a maximum, so it really does vary. And then, a big city example is New York City. They introduced a similar Colorado law at the end of last year.

PJ Elliott:

So what impacts have these laws had so far? Have they made pay more equal for women and minorities?

Elisabeth Buchwald:

I think a lot of it is too early to tell. There's going to be studies done on this for years to come. In general though, pay transparency can have a good benefit in terms of leveling the playing field for women and minorities, because it gets people more information and gets people talking. So they could go back to their employer and say, "Hey, the guy next to me is making this, I'm only making that. What's going on there?"

PJ Elliott:

Is there any chance that something might pass at the federal level?

Elisabeth Buchwald:

It's hard to say. I don't know that there's a huge appetite for it. Right now, at the federal level, the only law that relates to it is that you have the right to talk about pay with your coworkers, and you shouldn't be facing any kind of repercussions for that.

PJ Elliott:

Yeah. Most of us were taught never to have those conversations with coworkers. How do we begin those conversations in ways that aren't intrusive or awkward to other coworkers?

Elisabeth Buchwald:

Yeah, it's a good question. I think it really depends on the situation, especially a lot of us as remote workers, you don't want to get things in writing. But there are resources you could start off at before you even have to have a conversation with a coworker. There's Glassdoor, which in some cases we'll provide salary ranges. And also, another good place to look or that could kick off the conversation is because so many states and cities are requiring employers to disclose ranges, you should look at that and perhaps discuss with a coworker of yours and say, "Oh, I didn't realize the range was this." It could naturally spark a conversation.

PJ Elliott:

Elisabeth, before I let you go, I know that the Money team is working on something for tax season. Do you want to tell the listeners what's going on?

Elisabeth Buchwald:

Yeah, so starting this Sunday, we have a really great tax newsletter that'll be going on, and I'll be writing the first newsletter. You could subscribe to the Daily Money by going to our site and searching for it, and you could enter your email right there, and then you'll have that in your inbox every day, and now on Sundays.

PJ Elliott:

Great. Elisabeth, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Elisabeth Buchwald:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

Parts of the US have seen historic winter weather this season, but other areas have been left wondering where's all the snow? Washington DC, Philadelphia and New York City have all had very little accumulating snow so far this winter. The average accumulation through the third week in January and New York City is about 10 and a half inches, nearly eight inches in Philly and nearly five inches in Washington. Each city though has only seen a trace of flakes so far this winter. That could change tomorrow with snow showers expected in Philadelphia and New York, while DC will get rain. But the rest of the winter may also be mild when it comes to snow on the Eastern Seaboard. AccuWeather is calling for above normal temperatures for the region in February.

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Could Jeff Bezos be the next owner of the Washington Commanders? According to a report from the New York Post, the answer is yes. Producer PJ Elliott spoke with Chris Russell, a Commanders reporter and host of Russell & Medhurst on the Team 980 in Washington, to find out more.

PJ Elliott:

Chris, thanks for joining the show.

Chris Russell:

Thanks, PJ. Good to be with you, pal.

PJ Elliott:

The New York Post is reporting that Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, could be buying the Washington Commanders from Daniel Snyder, but first he'd have to sell the Washington Post. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Bezos out of the running initially, just a week or so ago?

Chris Russell:

Well, that was in the first round of bidding that - according to multiple reports, Front Office Sports, I think, had at first - he didn't submit a bid in that first round of bidding. And Bank of America, who is handling the potential transaction for the Snyder family, was desperately trying to reel him in and lure him in to make a bid, presumably to pump up the price. Because remember, there was an initial report that somebody on the Snyder side or the Bank of America side had leaked to Forbes about saying that the offers were well north of 7 billion, and then when the next report came out, there were no offers apparently more than 6.3 billion. So getting Bezos in, is a huge thing for Bank of America and presumably Dan Snyder. But that's the rub, is that Dan Snyder reportedly despises Bezos so much, and more specifically or just as much, the Washington Post, that maybe that's the reason why we have this report coming out, which is trying to basically see if they can separate and divide Bezos from the Washington Post.

PJ Elliott:

Do you know what timeframe we're looking at for new ownership?

Chris Russell:

Well, I think the earliest that this could be formally approved, would be late March at the owner's meetings. The next probability after late March would probably be sometime in May, but a deal has to be agreed to, and then all the background stuff - the financials and the complicated contractual language that nobody really knows exactly what goes into that between all the lawyers - would have to then be hashed out in order for a formal vote to be taken place.

PJ Elliott:

You lay out that timeline, how is the front office able to do their day-to-day jobs with no real direction on what the new owner, whoever that will be, wants to do?

Chris Russell:

Yeah. Well, team president Jason Wright said it was business as usual late last week when they opened up their sports book at FedEx Field. When Ron Rivera and Martin Mayhew were last made available right after the season, they said that they were going to meet with the Snyder's on Martin Luther King Monday, and that did not happen. Now, they were supposed to meet with the Snyder's once again late last week. We're not sure if they actually did have that meeting or not. And that was more about budgeting, and do we have the money to go into free agency. So that remains to be seen.

PJ Elliott:

Chris, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Chris Russell:

You got it, PJ. Good to be with you.

Taylor Wilson:

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us seven mornings a week right here, wherever you're listening right now. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Half Moon Bay shootings, could Bezos buy Commanders? 5 Things podcast