California Voices

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 […]

Assemblyman Adam Gray, Democrat from Merced: The implications of Senate Bill 1 are profoundly disturbing, forcing the state to ignore evolving science. We’ve got until Sept. 13 to either kill or fix this wrongheaded bill. If we don’t, it very well could set back progress on our rivers for decades.

Dustin Weatherby, California Taxpayers Association. Thanks to a transparency law passed by a bipartisan vote, taxpayers receive important information about local tax and bond measures. But there’s a legislative attempt to effectively exempt local jurisdictions from this requirement to be honest and transparent with taxpayers.

Re: “A law intended to create more transparency misleads voters. This bill will fix it,” Sept. 5, 2019: Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblyman Mark Stone claim their bill will increase transparency for local bonds and parcel taxes. But the opposite is true. Their bill would relegate important taxpayer information to being buried deep in the […]

Jared Martin, California Association of Realtors: If our state is to continue leading the nation, we must address the housing shortage with policies that will actually lead to more housing. Simply put, a rent cap would be a bandage on a festering wound and would nothing to solve the root cause of higher rents.