California Voices

Gov. Gavin Newsom is scaling back a statewide bullet train and twin water tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. But both still face high hurdles.

Online retailers have leveraged their power to extract subsidies from cities desperate for tax revenue. Those cities have agreed to give the retailers half or more of the sales tax paid through the retailer not just by their own residents but by people in every city in the state. Online retailers are reaping as much as $1 billion a year in taxpayer dollars through these kickbacks.

California has more charter schools than any state in the union. Yet our haphazard charter laws force school boards to grapple with loopholes and unintended consequences, too often creating havoc in our state.

California not only has the nation's highest rate of poverty, thanks to high housing costs, but its highest level of income disparity, and raising the state's minimum wage may be reducing job creation.

IPOs are bringing rideshare companies tens of billions of dollars in investment. But the companies mistreat drivers who are the backbone of their businesses. Thousands of Uber and Lyft drivers are going on strike across California on May 8 to call for basic rights and protections like those afforded through Assembly Bill 5.

A collection of commentaries by Dan Walters over the past week.

One of California's great challenges is to make sure we have enough trained and qualified people to care for patients to address the increasing demand for health care services. Our health care workforce shortages pose a fundamental threat to people; ability to live healthy, thriving lives that strengthen all of us.

We need to make quality health care affordable to everyone who lives in California, immigrants and people born in the U.S. alike. Removing exclusions to health care for undocumented Californians is one step on the road to an equitable and workable healthcare system.

Lobbyists who earn six figures working for elite environmental groups and their 1-percenter donors can afford to buy Teslas. But low and zero emission automobiles are still too pricey for most Californians.

The earthquake authority is able to retrofit about 2,000 homes a year through its Earthquake Brace + Bolt program. SB 254 bill would allow the authority to increase the number of retrofits to 25,000 per year, an unprecedented commitment to increasing our residential resilience.