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At a recent appearance before the Sacramento Press Club, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra defined his job in simple terms: “Anywhere I have jurisdiction to advance or protect the interests of the people of the state of California, you’ll see me there.” Judging by his activities this year, protecting the rights of Californians entails staunch resistance to the federal government.
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Of all the committees and offices available in the California Assembly, few give a better perspective on the daily operations of the house than that of Assembly Speaker pro Tem. Sally Lieber, who served as Speaker pro Tem from 2006 to 2008, describes it as a combination of the location and the limitation that the role places on the officeholder.
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Los Angeles is close to becoming the largest U.S. city to achieve a “no kill” policy for healthy animals placed in municipal shelters. When the trial program launched in 2012, the “save rate” — a measurement that reflects the percentage of cats and dogs not euthanized — at L.A. city shelters was 57.7 percent. Through the first quarter of 2017, the save rate rose to 89.4 percent.
Podcast
A decade ago, better than nine out of 10 California households with telephones relied on land lines for their service — a scant 5 percent used cell phones for their home connection. This year, nearly half of all households rely on cell phones. So Capitol Weekly’s John Howard and Tim Foster dialed up our favorite numbers cruncher, Political Data analyst Paul Mitchell, to talk about the seismic shift from to cell phones to land lines and how that will play out in the 2018 election cycle.
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There are ways to communicate successfully with elected officials that constituents, interest groups and even experienced lobbyists should keep in mind. So we offer a few basic tips for getting your message through, whether by writing (paper letter or email), telephoning or making a personal visit to the lawmaker’s state Capitol or district office.
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For decades, polling relied on a strong pool of easily reached voters with a traditional land-line telephone. Before caller-ID became prevalent, nearly every call was answered as long as someone was home. But now more voters are untethered from traditional phones (I haven’t had a land line since 1998), and those who do still have them complain that most incoming calls are from telemarketers.
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Twenty-eight states currently offer “Choose Life” license plates, but California may be the first state in the country offering solely pro-choice plates. The plate would join 14 other special-interest license plates that raise money for a number of agencies, including the California Department of Food and Agriculture, California Arts Council, California Coastal Commission and Lake Tahoe and Yosemite Conservancy.
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It was a classic Coastal Commission moment – cheers, jeers and white-hot media scrutiny. When the Commission denied a controversial development in Newport Beach last September, the crowd shrieked and clapped. A two decades-long fight to build 895 homes, a 75-room resort and 45,000 square feet of retail space was over – at least for the moment.
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California’s courts impose hundreds of millions of dollars of “excessive and disproportionate” fines each year for common infractions, then use much of the money to support their own operations. A blue-ribbon panel examining the system said the fines should be collected by the executive branch — not the courts themselves — to avoid conflicts.
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C. Randal Mills, the 45-year-old CEO of California’s $3 billion stem cell research program, is a man who loves his milestones. A private pilot, he charts his course in the air from one specific point to the next. Three years ago, Mills brought that same sort of navigation to the state stem cell agency.
A demonstrator pauses to take a selfie at an anti-Trump demonstration in L.A. last month. (Photo: mikeledray, via Shutterstock)
