Leading up to Election Day, advocacy groups were predicting — or at least hoping — that California voters would elect record numbers of women and LGBTQ people to the Legislature. Based on the results so far, it appears that history will be made — and that the state Assembly and Senate will look more like […]
Sacramento
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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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California to Limit Slavery Reparations After Key Vote
After more than six hours of debate Tuesday, California’s reparations task force voted that only Black Californians who can prove a direct lineage to enslaved ancestors will be eligible for the statewide — and first-in-the nation — initiative to address the harms and enduring legacy of slavery. The nine-member task force voted 5-4 in favor […]
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Is ‘Right to Housing’ a Solution to California Homelessness?
The law says that every student is entitled to a free public education. What if it said the same about housing? That’s what Darrell Steinberg, the mayor of Sacramento, believes to be the key to addressing California’s homelessness. He recently proposed an ordinance that would require the city to provide at least two housing or […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
California Cannabis Enters the Blast Zone
This Trump-Ukraine scandal has tendrils stretching all over the place. You may have missed it — what, with the president not only openly admitting on television to soliciting foreign help, in his re-election campaign but then doubling down by asking again for said help, and near daily revelations from the House impeachment inquiry that there […]
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Charter Schools, Unions Call a Truce in an Epic Battle as Newsom Brokers a Deal
Gov. Gavin Newsom brokered an agreement Wednesday on a high-profile charter-school regulation proposal at the center of this year’s contentious battle between teachers unions and charter advocates, removing a key hurdle for its passage this session. The compromise on Assembly Bill 1505 comes after months of lobbying by the state’s two most influential education interest […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Gubernatorial Advice
Fresh off a report that legal recreational marijuana sales reached $1.3 billion in his state last year, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper dropped by Sacramento to advise California lawmakers on the state’s rollout of recreational regulation. Speaking before a Senate Governance and Finance Committee hearing chaired by North Coast state Sen. Mike McGuire, Hickenlooper said he […]
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McGuire Proposes Comprehensive Medical Marijuana Bill
Pot’s on a lot of minds in Sacramento these days. Our own state senator, Mike McGuire, announced on 4/20 that his proposed medical marijuana bill was approved unanimously by the Senate Business and Professions Committee. The bill would create a Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation under the state’s consumer affairs department, which would “license and […]