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Frank Lanterman won an assembly seat in 1950 with one goal: securing a steady water supply for his family’s land holdings and subdivisions in the Verdugo hills community of La Cañada outside Los Angeles, a task he completed in his first year in office. In the years to come, his influence would expand far beyond his hometown and he would become one of the most consequential legislators of his time by leading the effort to transform how California cares for people with severe mental illness.
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If there was any single event that sped the emptying of state asylums in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was the publication of a 204-page report entitled, “The Dilemma of Mental Commitments in California.” The report was an exposé, a philosophical treatise, and a policy prescription.
Rising Stars
Not every policy expert successfully identifies a gap within legislation and pioneers their way through our bureaucracy to solve it. 27-year-old Hannah-Orbach Mandel, policy analyst at the California Budget and Policy Center, has done just that.
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A new California law allows cities and counties across California to create local ordinances creating “entertainment zones” where local bars and restaurants can sell alcohol to-go in designated areas.
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In a sign of the times, Capitol Weekly’s annual health care conference on Thursday focused broadly on expenses and efficiency, befitting for an American health care system that has become one of the most expensive in the world.
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With the legislature on the verge of gender parity and the Capitol’s own #MeToo reckoning just a few years ago, Sacramento is rapidly becoming less of an old boys’ club. Another area where women are making gains: among the ranks of the lobbying corps, where they’re largely driving the rise in the number of lobbyists working the Capitol.
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An arcane but crucial subdivision of California’s foster care system may be teetering on the edge of failure because of what appears to be the actions of one vital insurance carrier that took a gamble on a child abuse case and lost big time.
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The deadline for California Gov. Gavin Newsom to address the hundreds of bills lawmakers sent him last month is on Monday. As always, the bigger measures draw most of the attention, and rightly so. But here are some of those measures the governor has signed or vetoed that are less “above the fold.”
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Sutter Health is teaming with Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, or CDU, a historically black medical program in Los Angeles, to fund the largest scholarship program in the school’s history.
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California’s Fourth Senate District covers 25,000 square miles, basically 1/6th of the state. It stretches from Death Valley in the South to Truckee in the North and juts out West to grab Modesto, the district’s largest metropolitan area. Now the region’s representation in the Senate over the next legislative cycle could severely compromised because the decision by its senator, Marie Alvarado-Gil, to jump political parties.
Photo via Lanterman House
