Photo illustration of California justice showing a gavel in a courtroom. (Image: sirtravelalot, via Shutterstock)A spate of smash-and-grab robberies and a rising crime rate may have dampened their hopes early on, but criminal justice reformers say the recently ended legislative session brought a raft of significant improvements to the way California treats people caught up in the system.
CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: Political data-cruncher, and frequent Capitol Weekly Podcast guest, Paul Mitchell joins us to read the political tea leaves, 30 days out from the 2022 election.
An array of solar panels capture sunlight in the Mojave Desert of southern California. (Photo: Andrei Orlov, via Shutterstock)With record heat waves and stubborn droughts, the state needs electricity. A partial solution? California’s first project to cover a major canal with solar panels. The Turlock Irrigation District (TID), the state Department of Water Resources, the water and energy project developer Solar AquaGrid, Marin County and UC Merced have partnered up on the project.
(Photo: Solitary confinement cells along a corridor in San Quentin Prison.)The Mandela Act, or AB 2632, would have reformed the practice of solitary confinement, which places people, convicted and awaiting trial, in isolation for up to 24 hours a day in jails, prisons and detention facilities.
The California state Capitol in Sacramento. (Photo: Karin Hildebrand Lau, via Shutterstock)ANALYSIS: Are there ways to improve the lawmaking process in the California Legislature? I believe there are. I believe the fundamental problem is that there are too many bills each year. There just is not enough bandwidth for all persons involved in the legislative process to sufficiently review and analyze the volume of bills.
Prop. 28 author - and bassist - Austin Beutner in high schoolCAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: Today we look at Proposition 28, an Initiative on the November 8 Ballot that would guarantee substantial annual funding (+/- $1 billion per year) for Arts and Music programs in California schools, without raising taxes. If that sounds like it should be a popular idea, it is: Proponents say that the measure is polling above 70%. Perhaps most telling is the official opposition: There is none.
A worker makes repairs to an electric rotor turbine unit at a geothermal plant. (Photo: VG Photo, via Shutterstock)One month does not equal a trend, but can be a cause for concern. For instance, employers in California added 19,900 nonfarm payroll jobs in August after registering 84,800 new hires in July. Meanwhile, the Golden State’s unemployment rate rose to 4.1% in August from July’s 3.9%, according to the state Employment Development Department.
Inmate firefighters head to the Colleen Fire in the Santa Teresa Foothills near San Jose. (Photo: Jaden Schaul, via Shutterstock)The law that offers wildfire-fighting inmates a chance to clean up their records in hopes of civilian careers got off to a slow start last year as administrators crafted rules for the procedure, but now, with those rules in place, the prison-to-profession pipeline is starting to take shape.
An old gas station along Route 66 with a 1957 Corvette parked in front. (Photo: Andrey Bayda, via Shutterstock)In March 2021, Petaluma became the first community in America to permanently ban the construction of new gas stations. For a nation that has been ruled by automobiles for the last century, banning gas stations seems a bold, if self-destructive, move on the surface.
Tom Morello performing on the west steps of the capitol, September 21, 2022. Photo by Tim FosterCAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: Tom Morello, the fiery, activist leader of the rock band Rage Against the Machine, brought his guitar to Sacramento last week to lend support to the United Farm Workers and their effort to pass AB 2183, what UFW spokesman Marc Grossman calls “The Farm Worker Voting Rights Act.”