My-turn

Lobbyists who earn six figures working for elite environmental groups and their 1-percenter donors can afford to buy Teslas. But low and zero emission automobiles are still too pricey for most Californians.

The earthquake authority is able to retrofit about 2,000 homes a year through its Earthquake Brace + Bolt program. SB 254 bill would allow the authority to increase the number of retrofits to 25,000 per year, an unprecedented commitment to increasing our residential resilience.

The United States has unilaterally imposed a series of escalating tariffs on Chinese imports to pressure China to reform its unfair trade practices and slow China’s rise as a global tech power. This strategy has been ineffective. More troubling, it places California’s robust economy and innovation leadership at risk.

While the housing first model does not require sobriety, it clearly encourages sobriety. It has been shown that people who voluntarily sign up for supportive services are more likely to discontinue substance use, participate in job training programs, and attend school.

The impacts of a single tunnel are unknown absent further study. No details exist about the size, location, cost, construction timetable or how at single tunnel might operate. What is clear is that a conveyance-only plan is not a viable, sustainable solution for Northern and Southern California.

Our economy and workforce are transforming, especially in California. We cannot restrict workplace flexibility with bad court rulings, such as Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles. Instead, we need to ensure Californians have the opportunity to choose the terms on which they work.

California needs lawyers who reflect the state’s rich diversity. Recognizing the importance of this, lawmakers recently amended the State Bar’s public protection mission to include the furthering of diversity and inclusion in the profession. Admittedly, we have a long way to go.

One would expect to see growing devotion by the Democratic-led California Legislature to do more to help Californians access electric cars and cut pollution from delivery trucks. Instead, the California Assembly, specifically its transportation committee, has been the graveyard for legislation designed to help advance zero-emission vehicles.

Failure to respond to California’s sexually transmitted disease crisis will have serious and direct health consequences for Californians, ranging from infertility and blindness at the individual level, to facilitating the development of multi-drug resistant and untreatable gonorrhea infections similar to cases already occurring outside the United States. If Californians don’t demand urgent action to stop this crisis in its tracks, we will doom the current generation of young adults to a legacy of ill health they did not deserve.

Despite crime being at historic lows, overall school shootings doubled between 2013 and 2018. Appallingly, in each of these attacks, information known to school officials, law enforcement, counselors, friends and neighbors reasonably should have been used to prevent the attack. Assemblyman Kevin Kiley's AB 1722 would require a common-sense approach to building best practices into our regional school safety plans to avert such shootings.