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California’s $12 billion stem cell and gene therapy program could be treading water for the next 12 months in the view of at least one of its leaders as it searches for a new president of the 19-year-old enterprise. Past presidential searches have been burdened by a legal, dual executive arrangement that has been described by a former board member as a “dog’s breakfast.”
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In the weeks and months leading up to the election, Sacramento-area Democrats phone banked, fundraised and sent postcards in support of two Democrats running for the Virginia state legislature, helping Dems secure majorities in both houses of the state legislature and sending a sharp rebuke to Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who had been gunning for GOP control to enact his agenda (and maybe to raise his national profile for a last-minute presidential run).
Rising Stars
For Cynthia Alvarez, chief of staff to Sen. Lena Gonzalez, has had an affinity for helping people since her childhood growing up in Inglewood.
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Special interests paid firms more than $77 million to lobby California state government in the third quarter of 2023, according to a Capitol Weekly analysis of lobbying firm reports, representing roughly a 4 percent increase in spending over the second quarter of 2023 and a 9 percent increase over the first quarter.
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The chief executive officer of California’s $12 billion stem cell and gene therapy program, Maria T. Millan, resigned abruptly this week, leaving what is the largest such state research effort in the nation without even an interim leader. Millan’s departure comes as the agency faces major challenges. They include expansion of an embryonic effort to assure the affordability of CIRM’s potential treatments that could cost millions of dollars. Some of the directors are also behind a move to sharpen its focus and reset its priorities.
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Ever since Ronald Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act in 1967 granting people with severe mental illness greater rights and speeding the emptying of state asylums, governors have been sidestepping the issue, until now. Unlike governors before him in this state or perhaps any other, Newsom is confronting the issue of untreated mental illness.
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Monika Lee’s story showcases many of the possible avenues for creating meaningful change in Sacramento. In her five years in the community, Lee has moved up the ranks in three different organizations and worked with a variety of issue areas, letting her passion for equity guide her along the way.
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Phil Isenberg, a former Sacramento mayor and one of the most influential Democratic members of the Assembly in the 1980s and 1990s, died Thursday after a short illness. He was 84.
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Earlier this year Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 447, which among several things overturns California’s travel ban to states with anti-LGBTQ+ laws and replaces it with the Bridge Project, short for Building and Reinforcing Inclusive, Diverse, Gender-Supportive Equality Project.
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By any accounting, SEIU California had a very good year. Some might say a monster year. And much of the credit goes to executive director Tia Orr, who rose to the job amidst turmoil and then led labor to some of its biggest wins in years.
The Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research building at University of California Irvine, a CIRM major facility. Photo courtesy of CIRM
