California Legislature

For a bill described by its author as “the most significant political reform of the last 50 years,” Senate Bill 1439 sure didn’t get much attention when it was working its way through the Legislature last year. The law, authored by Sen. Steve Glazer, passed without a single “no” vote. It was co-authored by an […]

California spends more than $15 billion a year on its prison system. Now, with the number of people behind bars plummeting, the Newsom administration is moving to shut down more institutions.

Sacramento and Palo Alto offered up a tale of two California energy policies Wednesday as legislators considered the best way to stick it to Big Oil and Gov. Gavin Newsom talked up Tesla’s expansion plans. The two events reflected two contrasting — arguably, contradictory — policy imperatives that the state faces:  That was highlighted at […]

Today, four months after Gov. Gavin Newsom called upon the Legislature to tax the excess profits of oil producers in California, we may finally get some details about the proposal. Or we might not.  A Senate committee is slated to hold its first hearing on the “windfall profits penalty” proposed by the governor and introduced […]

California doesn’t really need 2,600 new laws, right?  Nevertheless, state lawmakers proposed 500 new bills on Friday, the 2023 session’s introduction deadline, bringing the total to about 2,600. That’s the most in more than a decade, according to veteran Capitol lobbyist Chris Micheli. More than 1,000 are “placeholder” bills without specific language. Reminder: More bills […]

Advocates and lawmakers are calling for fully independent commissions to decide election districts for cities and counties across California. While about a dozen new commissions drew maps after the 2020 Census, in many other places, politicians or their appointees did.

For the first time, a new state report offers a bird-eye view of how much the state has spent to halt homelessness — nearly $10 billion over three years. Of the half-million Californians who made use of those services, more than 40% ended up housed. Which also means the majority did not, or the state lost track of their whereabouts.

From CalMatters politics reporter Ben Christopher: In 2021, state lawmakers made a request: The newly convened California Interagency Council on Homelessness should put together a “comprehensive view of the homelessness response system.” In short, the legislators said: We’d like to know how much the state is spending to address its homelessness crisis, where the money […]

California Democrats want to change the state constitution to safeguard a right that is already firmly protected across the state, just in case the U.S. Supreme Court decides to do away with it.  Oh, and putting it on the ballot will probably help Democrats in the 2024 election. If that all sounds familiar, you might […]

From CalMatters political reporter Ben Christopher: In 2017, California lawmakers passed one of the state’s most controversial and consequential housing laws, but they included an expiration date — 2025 — to see how things panned out. Sen. Scott Wiener, the San Francisco Democrat who authored the bill, is pleased with the results so far. Monday, […]