Commentary

Californians voted their values of dignity, respect, and accountability at the polls in 2018. The SEIU's effort will continue through 2020. We’ll be looking to see whether House members stick to their promises and vote their values on Capitol Hill.

Jerry Brown's half-century of dealing with the political media culminated this week with an open-ended interrogation before the Sacramento Press Club.

Los Angeles teachers’ issues are fundamental, among them: bloated class sizes, lack of full-time nurses in 80 percent of Los Angeles schools, annual waves of destructive layoffs, and a student-counselor ratio so bad that the United Teachers of Los Angeles’s demand is to bring it down to 500-1. The Los Angeles Unified School District has legitimate financial issues. However, the district has repeatedly projected deficits which don’t materialize. Moreover, the district’s reserve is now almost $2 billion, an unprecedented figure.

Duane Baker, Temecula I fully agree with this commentary.  The power of the governor can and should be used in specific cases when the governor feels that there are new facts or that a miscarriage of justice has occurred. Mass clemency does not meet that test and ignores the specifics of each case. My father’s murderer, […]

There’s reason for optimism that there can be a truce in California’s water wars. The State Water Board adopted the first phase of a far-reaching revision to the Water Quality Control Plan for the Sacramento‒San Joaquin Delta and its watershed. Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom’s support and involvement will be essential to carry this effort to a positive conclusion.

The passage rate for California's licensing test for lawyers has plummeted to an all-time low and law school deans, worried about losing accreditation, are urging the state Supreme Court to lower the test's minimum passing score.

Anti-death penalty activists are calling on Jerry Brown to commute all death sentences in California. Like all governors, Brownis vested with a broad power to grant clemency. With that broad power comes the responsibility to use it for its intended purpose and not to block laws where the governor merely disagrees with the people’s decision. The responsible choice, the respectful choice, the democratic choice is to just say no to blanket commutation.

Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature took the drama out of the annual budget process, passed popular laws on education funding and climate change, responded to crises such as drought and wildfire, and maintained a united front against Trump’s unpopular policies. His tenure offers a successful model for governing the state in the future. Will Brown be a hard act to follow for Gavin Newsom? Maintaining fiscal stability and an effective partnership with the Legislature will be the key ingredients.

A many-sided battle over control of Tres Hermanos, a 2,500-acre Southern California cattle ranch, is business as usual in southeastern Los Angeles County.

Rose Elizabeth Bird, the court’s first woman, remains Jerry Brown’s most consequential judicial appointment. It's possible to trace bare-knuckled fights over the judiciary to the ones over her confirmation and retention. Today’s court again is led by a woman, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, and its rulings rarely resonate beyond legal circles. But the war on the judiciary continues.