Scott Wiener

The California Coastal Commission has broad authority to protect the state's shoreline. Now, some want to curtail its power over affordable housing proposals.

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, […]

Programming note: The newsletter will take a break on Monday, Jan. 16 for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. We’ll be back in your inbox Tuesday, Jan. 17. California’s projected $22.5 billion deficit means budget cuts are almost inevitable — much to the chagrin of climate activists, public health advocates and others who have criticized […]

Hanging over the heads of California’s newly sworn-in state lawmakers — and likely to be top of mind when they return to Sacramento next month — are the state’s intertwined housing and homelessness crises. That was made clear Tuesday, when Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco introduced for the third time a bill […]

Friday’s attack on Paul Pelosi, husband to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, that sent the 82-year-old to the hospital with a skull fracture and other serious injuries has cast a harsh light on the intertwined, deeply ingrained problems facing California and the nation with just a little over a week until the Nov. 8 […]

With demand rising for mental health care, and providers in short supply, experts explain how California got here - and where we may be headed.

Although a California bill would have allowed vaccines for teens without parental consent made it to the final days of the legislative session, it failed to pass. Some legislators saw the bill as an “overreach” that undermined parental decisions.

Read between the lines of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Monday veto of a controversial bill that would have allowed San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles to launch trial supervised drug injection sites in a bid to curb California’s epidemic of fatal overdoses, and you might catch a glimpse of the political tightrope he’s walking. Although the […]

Gov. Gavin Newsom has a big decision to make — one that could have equally big implications for his national profile. Heading to Newsom’s desk is a controversial bill that would allow Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles to launch trial supervised drug injection sites through Jan. 1, 2028. The sites — which are currently […]

Red tape, red tape, red tape. That was the refrain that popped up repeatedly on Tuesday, when California lawmakers convened for two separate hearings on the two viruses for which Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a public health state of emergency: COVID-19 and monkeypox. The key takeaway from the two hearings — which, ironically, took […]