With adjournment edging ever closer next Thursday, legislators are continuing to push through bills to beat the deadline. On Thursday: Gun tax: After years of failed efforts, the Legislature sent Gov. Gavin Newsom a measure to tax firearms and ammunition to fund gun violence prevention in California, CalMatters’ Alexei Koseff reports. Assembly Bill 28 by […]
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Help Paying Water Bills May Be Coming for Low-Income Californians
María Dolores Díaz sighs when she opens her water bill every month because she knows what she’ll see: another bill that she’ll struggle to pay. Diaz looks at the envelope and doesn’t want to open it because she wonders: How much, this time? “Ya nomás miro la carta y ‘aí ya no lo quiero abrir!’ […]
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Suspense File: Which Bills did California Lawmakers Kill?
On most days, California lawmakers deliberate, debate and decide bills out in public for every Californian to see. Aug. 11 was not one of those days. In simultaneous marathon hearings, the appropriations committees in the Assembly and Senate rattled through hundreds of bills in a single discharge of rapid-fire legislating. Many proposals lived to see […]
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The Great Culling: Which California Bills did Legislators Kill?
California lawmakers won’t be creating a state Election Day holiday this year. Nor will they be providing grants to local governments to convert public golf courses into affordable housing, or forcing health insurers to cover fertility treatments. All of these proposals were victims of the seasonal culling of bills known as the suspense file. This […]
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770 New Laws Coming to California
You’d be forgiven for not knowing Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the largest expansion of California’s college financial aid system in a generation — he did so during the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants’ first playoff game Friday night. Hours later, it was all over: Newsom signed his final bills on Saturday, a day […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
‘I’m Indoors’
This is a new beginning after a story that has been long, slow, painful and ever so drawn out. I am (finally) back indoors, in an actual apartment! Not some long-term, extended stay motel nor the local Rescue Mission nor a cold and lonely tent in the middle of nowhere. A real apartment. It’s a […]