California Voices

Bill Lucia, EdVoice: Nearly half of California students can’t read at grade level. The key to developing strong readers is providing teachers with the preparation and knowledge. Lawmakers should make teaching practices based on the science of reading a budgetary and policy priority.

Jessica Millan Patterson, California Republican Party: California has serious issues and needs serious leaders to fix them. Unfortunately, Gov. Gavin Newsom has spent much of his first year grabbing headlines with unnecessary fights with the federal government and ignoring the Californians he was elected to protect.

Brendan Rawson, San Jose Jazz: California has overreached in its effort to address the challenges in today’s tech platform gig-work economy. The live music sector, the progenitor of the term “gig” work, is being swept up by this law. The irony would be comical if it were not such a serious problem.

Separating the Capitol's grain (serious legislation) from the chaff (symbolic fluff) is now always easy.

Karthick Ramakrishnan and Robert P. Jones, UC Riverside and PRRI: We must stop painting all Asian Americans with a broad brush. Such a brush erases the distinct cultures and experiences of individuals and harms people who don’t meet a tidy image of quiet, hardworking, striving Asian Americans who will pull themselves up by their bootstraps to achieve the American Dream.

Although it's a presidential election year, most of California's significant political action will be elsewhere on the ballot.

PG&E plunged more than two million people into darkness, many for several days, in October. The utility, whose downed power lines in 2018 ignited fires that killed 85 people and destroyed 10,000 homes, has resorted to what it calls “proactive de-energization” to avoid starting more fires. This well-meaning preemptive move to protect the public has […]

Jeff Davi, Carmel Realtor: For over a century, the Monterey Peninsula relied on the Carmel River as its primary source of water. But the State Water Board has issued orders that will preclude most of that use in the future. A California American Water desalination plant would would remove salt from seawater and make it drinkable, averting what could be a water crisis. The California Coastal Commission should approve the project.

Hundreds of bills will be introduced in the Legislature this year but there are a few items that should top the session's agenda.

Liz Bergeron, Pacific Crest Trail Association: Shortchanging our public lands is shameful and shortsighted given their value. The Pacific Crest Trail Association not only supports tackling the maintenance backlog, we support full and permanent funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.