Commentary

Floodplain reforestation projects are biodiversity hotspots and climate-protection powerhouses that cost far less than old-fashioned gray infrastructure of levees, dams and reservoirs. They provide highly-effective flood safety by strategically spreading floodwater.

California's green chemistry program can protect families and the environment from hazardous chemicals, and stimulate economic innovation. But after 10 years of progress, California legislators must expand this important effort with a stronger Safer Consumer Products Program.

Jerry Brown's unwillingness to monitor how local school districts are educating their students is giving way to successor Gavin Newsom's pledge to increase accountability.

As President Trump works to undermine access to health care, we’re counting on the Legislature to join Gov. Newsom in making a new $100 million investment in reproductive health care a reality. Lives are depending on it.

California school districts set poor example for their students when they overspend revenues and then seek bailouts from Sacramento and/or voters.

Bill Tobey, Sacramento “Falling chunks of concrete from the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge struck a car and forced a complete closure of the busy span on Thursday, causing traffic jams and diversions across the region. … It was the latest jolt for an aging span that periodically suffers gashes and holes.”—The San Francisco Chronicle. I’m so […]

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

California faces a serious gap in health care workers. Seven million Californians, the majority of them Latino, African American, and Native American, live in Health Professional Shortage Areas — a federal designation for counties experiencing shortfalls of primary care, dental care, or mental health care providers. The California Future Health Workforce Commission offers solutions.

Self-driving vehicle technology could exacerbate entrenched social and environmental problems, if we don’t make deliberate policy choices, especially for marginalized groups. We can easily imagine a dystopian scenario in which people with money purchase personal self-driving cars, while the rest of us are mired in congested streets, with reduced mobility as public transit gets short-changed due to ridership loss.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blames a shortfall in state income tax revenues on the flight of rich taxpayers to Florida because federal tax laws no longer allow them to write off state and local taxes. What about California?