California Voices

Chris Ising, Culligan Water Service: Assembly Bill 792 by Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Francisco would require plastic beverage containers in California to be made with at least 25% recycled content material by 2021. The measure would force up prices on products that communities like Paradise need, literally, to survive.

The bottom line of another electric utility overhaul is uncertain.

Maurice Goens, Advance Peace: Police are the only solution to battling street violence. In Stockton, the community group, Advance Peace, is helping stop shootings.

The vote required to enact special purpose taxes for local governments is legally up in the air after a San Francisco judge validated two tax measures that didn't receive two-thirds voter support.

Kids today are tracked like no other generation. Click by click, site by site, companies track every move kids—and all consumers—make online.  That’s because our data and our viewing habits are worth a lot of money. For today’s kids, personal information, activities, hobbies, and networks are exposed and often for sale from birth, making kids […]

RE: “New state budget a windfall for unions,” July 4, 2019. People across California bust their butts to take care of their family members and others in the In-Home Supportive Services program while barely making minimum wage. Yet CALmatters commentator Dan Walters seems alarmed  because they now have a little more “leverage” to try to get decent […]

By Holly J. Mitchell and Jen Flory, Special to CalMatters There are few more nerve-racking experiences than sitting in a dentist’s chair writhing from severe pain.  You trust the dentist to fix the problem, relinquishing yourself to his or her care, while under pain medication. Sitting in that dentist’s chair, the last thing on your mind […]

On paper, California has some of the nation’s best open records laws, the latest of which allows access to previously secret information about police misconduct. However, passing a sunshine law is one thing, while applying it may be entirely different. That’s currently being demonstrated vis-à-vis the aforementioned law granting access to police misconduct records. The […]

Recent weeks have seen a debate of sorts about the image and reality of contemporary California. Is it, as Gov. Gavin Newsom contends, a nation-state proving that economic prosperity, multiculturism and social progress can advance together? “California is what America is going to look like,” he told a television interviewer. “California is America’s coming attraction.” […]

California’s aging water infrastructure desperately needs an upgrade.  Shorter, more intense rain storms, less snowpack and more prolonged stretches of drought reflect the reality of climate change. There’s no one project, no single action, that will save California from a dry and unreliable water future.  We need a broad portfolio of solutions that includes storage […]