Two eagerly awaited American events take place this week: the State of the Union address and the Super Bowl. The broadcast audience for Super Bowl XLVIII on Sunday will be significantly larger than the President’s State of the Union address on Tuesday. However, there should be no doubt that the state of the National Football League—concussion issues aside—is better than our Union’s.

San Jose may weaken an ordinance that guarantees a living wage to anyone working for a private tenant of a city-owned property. The 16-year-old living wage policy requires commercial and other private tenants on city leases to pay above the minimum wage, at least $15.78 an hour with benefits or $17.03 without. Other items on Tuesday’s City Council agenda include changes to the city’s cardroom ordinance, an audit of employee travel expenses and a six-figure contract for new art and light displays.

Given that clientele often overlaps, Santa Clara County will integrate its departments of Drug and Alcohol Services and Mental Health. Also, on the agenda for Tuesday’s county Board of Supervisors meeting: a new name for the South County Airport, making campaign disclosure forms available online and funding an anti-terrorism law enforcement communications network.

Pete Constant’s withdrawal from the San Jose mayor’s race sent shockwaves through a desperate California Republican Party. Trying to carve out a niche for itself in the Silicon Valley, Constant was seen as the best hope for the party to make an inroad into San Jose. Now one lucky Democratic candidate could gain considerable support.

Last month Fly delved into the litigious world of John Mlnarik, a local attorney and former candidate for a seat on the Santa Clara City Council. Mlnarik had open lawsuits against three four separate parties connected to his abysmal 2012 campaign, and an interesting countersuit coming back his way. Elena Rivkin Franz, a former employee of Mlnarik’s, accused him of using staff and resources from his law firm—The Mlnarik Law Group—to assist his campaign under the table. Fly did a little digging and found that the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) has had an open investigation since September into the campaign of Mlnarik, who is currently the president-elect of the Santa Clara County Bar Association.

As city leaders continue to ponder how to regulate local pot shops, Councilmember wants to limit all campaign contributions from collectives, their owners and employees, and spouses of these people. Also on the agenda: upcoming city-sponsored screening of a human trafficking documentary and a letter asking for more security cameras at City Hall.

The Santa Clara County Office of Education and its Board of Education have been working to address education inequality through a myriad of measures, including the authorization of high quality charter schools. For this reason, I am troubled and angry about what happened at a seven-hour meeting last week.

The beginning of the New Year is a time for resolutions and “Top Ten” wishlists. This is my Bill Wilson Center wish list for addressing some of the major issues around homelessness for our youth.

Neil Struthers is out as CEO of the powerful Santa Clara & San Benito Counties Building & Construction Trades Council, a source tells San Jose Inside. The circumstances of his departure from the labor organization are unclear. The Building and Trades Council oversees the training and representation of 23 craft unions and more than 30,000 construction industry workers employed in Silicon Valley, according to the organization’s website.

For nearly two months, San Jose Councilman Xavier Campos has repeatedly refused to talk with Metro/San Jose Inside about fictitious business filings he and incarcerated former county Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. initiated for their past political campaigns. The business filings had identical names to their political committees. An experienced political consultant described the filings as “somewhere between suspicious and corrupt,” as they could have been used to cloak a duplicate, secret bank account. On Thursday, however, Campos finally addressed the unusual fictitious business filings, when Metro/San Jose Inside sent reporter Stephen Layton to the councilman’s public office hours at Mayfair Community Center. Registered for the event under his own name as a San Jose resident concerned about crime, Layton recorded the brief conversation, which took place in a public facility, with Campos and the councilman’s chief of staff, Nicole Willett.

A video campaign launched by the San Jose Police Department and the Office of the Independent Police Auditor aims to solicit tips from the public to solve homicide cases that have gone cold. “Make the Call, San Jose” airs on CreaTV and is funded by the SJPD.

The Democratic Central Committee voted last week to speed up its endorsement process, giving the group two more months to rally behind its chosen San Jose mayoral candidate (hint: Dave Cortese). As a result, some candidates who would be up for consideration—but unlikely to win the endorsement—are now saying they didn’t want the committee’s backing in the first place.

It’s sad to see some of the data on how poor and minority children perform in school in San Jose and the greater Silicon Valley, says Santa Clara County Board of Education Trustee Joseph DiSalvo. The results of longitudinal student test data have long indicated a sizeable achievement gap—a gap that threatens our region’s long-term economic viability. We can and must do better, especially in a district like Morgan Hill Unified.

San Jose will start looking for ways to pay for body-worn cameras on police officers, which Independent Police Auditor LaDoris Cordell says will lessen citizen complaints and keep officers accountable for the way they conduct themselves in the field. That and more at this week’s Rules and Open Government Committee meeting.

Pete Constant, the lone Republican contender in this year’s crowded field for mayor of San Jose, bowed out of the race Tuesday. His exit drops the number of San Jose councilmembers running to succeed Mayor Chuck Reed to four: Rose Herrera, Sam Liccardo, Madison Nguyen and Pierluigi Oliverio. County Supervisor Dave Cortese, who previously served on the council, is also considered a strong contender.

Last month, Fly broke the Earth-shattering news that county supervisor and San Jose mayoral contender Dave Cortese isn’t too fond of Walmart. He refused to mention the store by name in an invite to his campaign kickoff, instead noting that the party was near a “Big Box” store. Crazy, we know. But just when the Internet was nearing recovery, a couple of mayors decided to reignite the fight.