California Voices

Juan Haines, San Quentin News: I’ve had my new set of teeth for about five months. Today, my friends compliment me on my smile. I put on a little weight and my health is much improved. And I appreciate that the governor and the Legislature have ended the $5 co-pay.

As California increases its income tax bite on the wealthy, some are tempted to flee, but how many do is debatable.

Mary Creasman, California League of Conservation Voters: We’re missing the bigger picture about the climate crisis. The PG&E power shut off is a story about the climate crisis and corporate greed. It is a story about how California is unprepared for the massive change we need to make in order to cope with what’s happening.

Californians pay high gasoline prices, but there's a "mystery surcharge" that Gov. Gavin Newsom wants investigated.

Christina Kim, Educators for Excellence-Los Angeles: Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed into law legislation by Sen. Nancy Skinner, Berkeley Democrat, to end suspensions for “willful defiance” for 4th through 8th-graders. This new law represents a big moment for California. We know that suspensions for willful defiance and disruption are too often used to push students, particularly students of color, out of school.

Gov. Gavin Newsom seems to have a problem dealing with the politics of transportation.

Daniel Barad, Sierra Club: Instead of continuing to create policies that use our money to pay the logging industry to incinerate its trash, the state must ban pile burning and demand that logging companies help develop a sustainable, clean biomass utilization plan.

Paul Souza, Barry Thom, and Ernest Conant, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Bureau of Reclamation: The Bureau of Reclamation has proposed a new system of operating California’s water system in a flexible way based on storage and has incorporated a new commitment to performance objectives and scientific peer review. Collectively, these new approaches will improve the likelihood that drought effects on winter-run Chinook will be lessened.

Joel Bellman, writer: In a blue state, in a blue city, on the Bruin blue campus of a public university system that once gave rise to the Free Speech Movement, why were the UCLA administration and Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, a liberal Democrat, bent on charging and jailing four young protesters for briefly interrupting a 2018 campus speaking appearance by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin?

Legislation this year ranged from the semi-ridiculous to the obviously justified. Gov. Newsom is a conventional liberal who did show a bit of political fortitude.