California Voices

Andrew Malcolm: California is a special place. I've lived here by choice twice, nearly a quarter-century in total. I have no regrets about living here. And I don't regret leaving here. As the neighbor said, "California's not the same anymore."

Dane Strother, Sacramento-based Democratic strategist: I moved to California to learn. I’m here to watch. I’m here to work. I’m slowly not adding three hours every time I check the time. I’m grudgingly waiting for the walk sign. I have one professional chapter left to write in life and the new drawings on the Etch-A-Sketch are of new friends and a place I believe in.

California voters and politicians tend to issue sweeping policy changes but then settle for half-a-loaf implementation.

Erica Costa, former Assembly Fellow: Differences between Republicans and Democrats permeate much of what occurs in the Capitol. But the California’s Assembly Fellowship Program can prepare people for meaningful careers in a highly charged partisan atmosphere, regardless of their party affiliation.

It appeared that California voters would be deciding two multi-billion-dollar tax increases next year, but one was dropped and the second is not a slam dunk winner.

Austin Brown and Dan Sperling, UC Davis: Imposing fees on electric vehicles in California could reduce their sales by 10–24%. The result would be a small increase in transportation funding would come at the expense of the long-term benefits that electric vehicles deliver for individuals and for society. The upshot is that imposing new fees won’t solve our transportation problems. It will only make them worse.

Forty years ago today, a year-long power struggle erupted in the state Assembly, one that fundamentally changed the Capitol's culture.

Re “‘Tax exhaustion’ may be on the horizon,” Dan Walters, Dec. 9, 2019. Conflating Marin and Los Angeles parcel tax defeats misses the billion-dollar elephant in the room.    In the four highest cost counties in California—Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara—well over half a billion dollars of property tax, collected for and allocated […]

Re “Spending California’s surplus, how lobbying affected one consumer protection bill, and what came of Schwarzenegger’s Million Solar Roof goal,” WhatMatters, Dec. 10. It really upset me to see the reporting on Assemblyman Phil Ting’s proposal to use California’s budget surplus to throw more money at undocumented immigrants. Although a noble and generous gesture, I […]

Nat Kreamer and Mark Ferron, Advanced Energy Economy: More than half a million Californians work in the advanced energy industry, which makes the products and services required to power economies with 100% clean, reliable, safe electricity. Partnering with this industry will provide Gov. Newsom and his team expertise and resources to help solve California’s wildfire and blackout crisis.