California Voices

By Holly J. Mitchell and Jen Flory, Special to CalMatters There are few more nerve-racking experiences than sitting in a dentist’s chair writhing from severe pain.  You trust the dentist to fix the problem, relinquishing yourself to his or her care, while under pain medication. Sitting in that dentist’s chair, the last thing on your mind […]

On paper, California has some of the nation’s best open records laws, the latest of which allows access to previously secret information about police misconduct. However, passing a sunshine law is one thing, while applying it may be entirely different. That’s currently being demonstrated vis-à-vis the aforementioned law granting access to police misconduct records. The […]

Recent weeks have seen a debate of sorts about the image and reality of contemporary California. Is it, as Gov. Gavin Newsom contends, a nation-state proving that economic prosperity, multiculturism and social progress can advance together? “California is what America is going to look like,” he told a television interviewer. “California is America’s coming attraction.” […]

California’s aging water infrastructure desperately needs an upgrade.  Shorter, more intense rain storms, less snowpack and more prolonged stretches of drought reflect the reality of climate change. There’s no one project, no single action, that will save California from a dry and unreliable water future.  We need a broad portfolio of solutions that includes storage […]

Recent weeks have seen a debate of sorts about the image and reality of contemporary California. Is it, as Gov. Gavin Newsom contends, a nation-state proving that economic prosperity, multiculturism and social progress can advance together? “California is what America is going to look like,” he told a television interviewer. “California is America’s coming attraction.” […]

RE: “Hedge funds’ proposal to ‘rescue’ PG&E is probably too good to be true,” July 5, 2019. Former Assemblyman Mike Gatto made inaccurate and misleading claims about the proposal outlined in a recent court filing made by the Ad Hoc Committee of Pacific Gas and Electric Company Bondholders. Here are the facts: The committee is comprised of a diverse […]

Will legislators consider that two seemingly different policy choices debated currently share a similar principle and therefore require a like solution? I’m looking at Senate Bill 206 by Sens. Nancy Skinner of Berkeley and Steven Bradford of Gardena to allow college athletes to be paid for the money-making use of their name, image, and likenesses, and the […]

The Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom are grappling with the most significant utility-related public-policy issue our state has faced in some time–California’s wildfire vulnerability and the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Crafting a legislative solution is challenging. Add an active bankruptcy court proceeding and billions of dollars at stake, and the stage is […]

The state budget package that Democratic legislators and Gov. Gavin Newsom just enacted is sprinkled with billions of dollars in extra goodies for their most important political constituency, labor unions. Take, for example, Senate Bill 90, the budget’s omnibus education measure. It would allocate $3.1 billion to reduce mandatory payments that local school districts would otherwise […]

California’s political leaders have made the long-overdue decision to clean up the Central Valley’s contaminated drinking water, and help cash-strapped rural water districts. The catch: rather than assess a fee on water users or tapping into the state’s budget surplus, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature relied on cap-and-trade money to pay for a portion […]