California Voices

During his campaign for governor, Newsom set a goal of building 3.5 million new units of housing by 2025. Nothing that occurred in the Capitol this year would even begin to make that happen.

Once again, California poverty ranks number one in the nation due partly to high costs for essentials like housing, gas and electricity.

Amee Raval and Sona Mohnot, Asian Pacific Environmental Network and Greenlining Institute: Simply put: climate change acts as a threat multiplier that magnifies differences in income, race, health, zip codes, immigration status, housing, and other factors that determine whether a community can access the resources needed to cope and recover from climate disasters.

Jennifer Pierre, State Water Contractors: California needs to reshape how it manages the rivers of the Sierra Nevada and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta by providing more water for the environment, more restoration, more funding and more collaborative science. That can happen through voluntary partnerships, not Senate Bill 1, which seeks to tap into public sentiment against President Trump without solving California’s water war.

John McManus, Golden Gate Salmon Association: Gov. Gavin Newsom has a choice: side with the California environment or with the Trump administration on the question of water diversions. Trump is finalizing plans to rip up restrictions on diverting Northern California water to farmers in the dry western San Joaquin Valley, at the expense of salmon runs that feed families, coastal economies, and ports throughout the state.

Joie Acosta and Regina Shih, RAND Corporation: California utility companies are increasingly triggering power outages by their own accord to try to prevent wildfires. But the practice may endanger elderly people and individuals with power-dependent medical devices.

Conflicting Superior Court decisions will force the state Supreme Court to clear up the uncertainty it created over the vote requirement for some local tax increases.

Maurice Hall, Environmental Defense Fund: This amazing natural underground storage is the critical foundation of our entire water system. Water from our rivers and streams leaks into the aquifer. If we don’t manage groundwater pumping, levels of groundwater as well as rivers and streams will decline, compromising the wildlife, farms and cities that depend on them.

Politics in San Diego, California's second largest city, is turning more Democratic and is likely to see a few upcoming high-stakes competitions.

Re: “In going after Trump, California is going too far with environmental legislation,” Sept. 9, 2019: Assemblyman Adam Gray insists on clinging to the past, a past of broken water policy, where Central Valley power brokers dictate policy for the rest of the state.   What Senate Bill 1 aims to do is to provide a […]