San Jose's public employee unions will have a fresh face to spar with behind closed doors in the coming weeks. City spokesperson Lenka Wright confirmed to San Jose Inside on Friday that Alex Gurza will no longer serve as the city's lead negotiator on labor contracts.

The office of Attorney General Kamala Harris has informed the county that Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen broke no laws when giving some of his top deputies extra admin leave to make up for lost wages. In a letter to County Executive Jeff Smith, who asked the AG to start a civil investigation in April, Alicia Fowler, a senior assistant attorney general in the Employment and Administrative Mandate division, wrote: “Based on all the information that the county provided to us, including extensive documentation and in-person interviews, we have concluded that there has been no violation of law.”

The legal battle everyone expected over Measure B’s passage began Wednesday, as the city filed for a federal judicial review (a.k.a. “declatory relief”) and attorneys representing police and firefighters unions filed two lawsuits in state court. All of this will take months, if not years, to resolve, so we’ll focus on some of the more interesting commentary surrounding the legal battle.

Payday lending offices offer immediate financial relief to many of San Jose’s most cash-strapped citizens, but the high interest rates can leads to crippling debt when more loans are required to pay off the first. It’s a vicious cycle that brings interest rates to as high as 460 percent in some cases. This week the city’s planning commission made new recommendations on how to curb the proliferation of offices that many view as predatory lenders.