California Voices

From all appearances, the California Legislature’s 2017 session was one of the most liberal – or progressive, as liberals prefer to say – in the state’s history. In fact, legislative leaders such as Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon are saying as much. However, despite the overall left-of-center tone to the session that ended last week, the […]

Anthony Rendon, the speaker of the state Assembly, calls the first half of the Legislature’s biennial session, which ended last week, “the most productive and progressive legislative session in memory.” He’s right, if one measures such things by the outpouring of potentially far-reaching measures, including an extension of the cap-and-trade program for reducing carbon emissions, […]

With the 2017 legislative session completed – for better or worse – California politicians are raising money, hiring campaign staffers and mapping strategies for the 2018 elections that will: Bring California a new governor, fill at least four other statewide offices and perhaps – although not likely – elect a new U.S. senator; Determine whether […]

It’s time for liberal Californians – and that appears to be most of us – to take a chill pill. Their bitter disdain for President Donald Trump – and by extension everyone who voted for him, belongs to his party or even agrees with any of his bombastic pronouncements – is leading them into blind […]

Sometimes, if you are stubborn enough, you can fight city hall, or a state bureaucracy, and emerge as a winner. It took nearly a quarter-century, but Gilbert Hyatt is a winner in his long-running battle with California tax collectors over whether he was a Californian or a Nevadan when he began collecting multi-million-dollar royalties for […]

Senate Bill 769 was just one of dozens of measures that were effectively killed by legislative appropriations committees this month without formal votes or explanations why. All of the sidetracked bills were important to their sponsors and legislative authors, of course, but few had the potential socioeconomic impact of SB 769, which would have extended […]

Nearly seven decades ago, historian Carey McWilliams assessed California’s first century of statehood and labeled it “The Great Exception” for its many attributes. The same phrase could be applied to the California Legislature, which habitually carves out great exceptions for particular interests from laws everyone else must obey. State tax codes are riddled with loopholes […]

If we – the California public – are to hold politicians and other government officials accountable, we must first know what they are doing or not doing. Thus, the first point of conflict is always access to records of official action or inaction. The current legislative session is the first one affected by a 2016 ballot […]

Californians are dealing with a late summer outbreak of devastating wildfires. Even the National Guard has been called out to fight them. On Tuesday, the Legislature began the final, furious days of its 2017 session with hundreds of bills still in limbo, including a package of housing measures that everyone considers vitally important to the […]

The cultural firestorm over statues, flags and other symbols of the Confederacy, ignited by a violent clash of white supremacists and their opponents in Charlottesville, Virginia, would seem far removed from California. Not so. California became a state in 1850 largely because of pre-Civil War political maneuvering over slavery and the fear among northern politicians […]