California Voices

LaVarne Burton, American Kidney Fund: For 22 years, the neediest patients in California have turned to the American Kidney Fund for help staying insured. We help only low-income patients. If Gov. Gavin Newsom signs AB 290, signed, the American Kidney Fund will end our program for the 3,700 dialysis and transplant patients we help in California and all those who might need our assistance in the future.

Leslie Teicholz and Leif Wellington Haase, writer and consultant: The need for affordable housing scarcely requires more justification. But now that the state’s largest health care providers and reform advocates are backing affordable housing initiatives, it brings new momentum and ideas to debates in Sacramento.

Becky Boblak, a Berkeley mom: Only about 10% of students travel on their own steam to school. One-third take buses and about 50% get to school via car. I understand why. It just isn’t safe. Too often, the danger is from a car speeding down the street.

Re: “With Gov. Newsom’s veto of SB 1, California seems stuck in same old water fight ‘binaries’,” Sept. 29, 2019. It’s easy to get caught up in the heated rhetoric of the moment as did Kim Delfino in her guest commentary. Water users working to finalize the voluntary agreements were faced with a difficult situation. […]

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a chilling proposal earlier this year to double detention capacity in California with 5,600 new beds, all near those offices. If built, these facilities will further entrench incarceration for generations to come. That’s one reason why Gov. Newsom should sign AB 32. It would provide a critical check on this underhanded move.

Having acted twice to protect California's children, Gov. Gavin Newsom can have a trifecta by signing legislation to mandate later school starting times.

Kim Delfino, Defenders of Wildlife: In his State of the State speech, Gov. Newsom said that to protect our water supply and delta fisheries, we “have to get past the old binaries.” After the veto of SB 1, the question is whether the governor and his administration will break the “old binaries,” and demand from the water users what is truly necessary to ensure a future that includes a healthy Bay Delta for all.

Can a nine-county regional agency in the San Francisco Bay Area solve its chronic and acute shortage of housing?

Monte Ward, Hollister Ranch Owners Association: For years, the state of California has wanted to expand public access to the beaches at Hollister Ranch in Santa Barbara County. The state has been unsuccessful, some claim, because rich property owners have thwarted the will of the people This is nonsense.

Sandi Matsumoto, The Nature Conservancy: Five years ago, California became the last state in the West to regulate groundwater. Many thought this would be impossible until the need for groundwater management became overwhelmingly clear during the last drought. We should not wait for the next drought to finish what we’ve started