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Claire Haas and her husband are at a health insurance crossroads. If they were single, each would qualify for a federal tax credit to help reduce the cost of their health insurance premiums. As a married couple, they get zip. “We talk about getting divorced every time we get our health care bills,” said Haas, 34, of Oakland. She has been married to her husband, Andrew Snyder, 33, for two years.
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California’s “First Partner” Jennifer Siebel Newsom is smart, articulate, idealistic — and cautious. Well, most of the time she’s cautious. In a recent appearance before a capacity crowd at the Sacramento Press Club, Newsom, a film-maker with an MBA from Stanford, acidly dismissed President Trump as the “the embodiment of toxic masculinity.”
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Amateurism’s last stronghold in California, intercollegiate student athletics, may be coming to an end. Up before lawmakers are two bills – SB 206 and AB 1518 – that tackle an age-old characterization of student athletes as amateurs. As amateurs, they cannot receive compensation beyond a scholarship or enlist the help of a sports agent.
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As California’s population growth flattens out, the state could lose a congressional seat for the first time in its history. The state’s most recent demographic report shows that California added only 186,807 residents last year, showing a growth rate of .47 percent, the slowest ever.
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California is experiencing a lack of qualified teachers even as enrollment rates in preparation programs rise. “Growth in teacher demand as the economy has improved has collided with steep declines in the supply of new teachers, leading to significant increases in the hiring of underprepared teachers, especially in districts serving high-need students,” the Learning Policy Institute reported last year.
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Once again, the stage is being set for a multi-pronged battle in California between environmentalists and the Trump administration. On May 9, the federal government announced plans to open 725,500 acres of public lands on California’s Central Coast and the Bay Area to new oil and gas drilling.
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School districts would get more pension cost relief under a revised state budget proposed last week by Gov. Newsom. The governor’s $700 million plan to lower scheool pension costs during the last two years of a seven-year CalSTRS rate increase would get an additional $150 million, if approved by the Legislature.
Podcast
Capitol Weekly’s Journalism Internship Program has been established for more than a decade, and in that time we’ve hosted dozens of interns from a variety of schools across the state — and even a few from outside the state!
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The man regarded as the father of the $3 billion California stem cell agency is thinking about changes in the program to help win voter approval of another $5 billion for the research program. They include a stronger requirement to make state-backed, stem cell therapies more affordable and accessible and to provide more cash for creating a greater stem cell work force in the Golden State.
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One of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first actions after taking office was to appoint Wade Crowfoot as Natural Resources Agency secretary. Then, within weeks, the governor laid out an ambitious water agenda that Crowfoot, 45, is now charged with executing. That agenda includes the governor’s desire for a “fresh approach” on water, scaling back the conveyance plan in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and calling for more water recycling, expanded floodplains in the Central Valley and more groundwater recharge.
An illustration of medical insurance covering a family. (Image: Andrey_Popov, via Shutterstock)
