My-turn

Online lead generators and lenders provide innovative financial services that reach Californians who aren’t being served by banks and credit unions. Ensuring laws are modernized, embrace innovation and protect consumers should be the Legislature’s top priority.

We have a short period of time until the next fire season hits us. PG&E’s troubles have Californians demanding better solutions from their utilities, now. Sustainable business models and partnerships with solar leaders looking to protect fire-prone communities are a start.

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.

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 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.

Californians rejected Proposition 6 in November, and voted to continue spending billions of dollars each year to rebuild our transportation infrastructure. Not a penny of that money or any other broad-based transportation funding should be diverted to finance risky privatization schemes. When it comes to “public-private partnerships,” those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

The California Consumer Privacy Act offers some protections but it must be fixed, or else consumers will lose.

Recent lawsuits between the state and the city of Huntington Beach are unfortunate. But hopefully they ultimately lead to collaboration and resolution between both sides and a recognition that we can make more progress when cities and the state work together.