Posts Tagged: legislators

News

It’s a wrap: Nuke power, care for the mentally ill, abortion rights

Lobbyists crowd around video screen to watch the floor votes on the last night of the Legislature's session. (Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, AP)

The final curtain fell early Thursday on a legislative session that coursed through a pandemic, bolstered reproductive rights, saw a speaker nearly dispatched by his own caucus and drew the national spotlight to a governor who had survived an effort to recall him from office.

News

Letters of intent: A bill’s author gets short shrift from the courts

The state Capitol in Sacramento. (Photo: Kit Leong, via Shutterstock)

ANALYSIS: One of the long-running points of contention when California courts examine what’s known as  “legislative intent” is the judiciary’s general disdain for statements made by the authors of legislation. Those clear-language statements accompanying bills, common in the Capitol, seek to offer guidance and state the purpose and intention of an author’s legislation.

News

Urgency or special? That is the question

The Assembly chamber at the state Capitol in Sacramento. (Photo: Felix Lipov, via Shutterstock)

California courts are occasionally faced with scrutinizing the lawmakers’ decisions to label some bills as urgency statutes and others as special statutes. It may sound unexciting, but the reality is this: The courts’ rulings can affect millions of Californians.

Opinion

Insurers need transparency, standardization in step therapy

An illustration of an array of prescription medications. (Photo: Adul10, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: Due to cost-cutting policies, health insurers often become a barrier to access for medicines that providers prescribe to patients. One such practice is referred to as step therapy. Step therapy forces patients to try several medications before approving the medication originally prescribed by the doctor.

Opinion

Rare-disease patients seek lawmakers’ support

A medical technician prepares to draw blood from a patient. (Photo: Ruchuda Boonplien, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: The worry of a mother for her child never ends. I am the sole caretaker of my adult daughter who suffers from multiple rare diseases. Her conditions hold her from living independently. During her 35 years of life and her 12 years of living with her chronic conditions, I cannot remember the many times that she almost died.

Opinion

Lawmakers must view all bills’ impact on poor, people of color

The corner of San Pedro Street in a low-income portion of downtown Los Angeles. (Photo: Hayk Sahlunts, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: Did you know that Los Angeles once had a thriving, affluent Black community called Sugar Hill that was obliterated when Interstate 10 was built right through it in the early 1960s? Or that historically Black West Oakland was economically strangled when Interstate 980 cut it off from the downtown commercial district?

Opinion

Capitol annex project: A textbook example of a boondoggle

A view of the east side of the state Capitol in Sacramento. (Photo: ZikG, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: As legislators reconvened this month, they returned to a relatively empty Capitol building. Why, then, are they pursuing a $1.3 billion Capitol Annex “renovation” project? Cognitive dissonance is the most charitable explanation I can conjure for this costly boondoggle proceeding amidst the COVID-induced economic disaster that’s destroying the lives of Californians and plunging countless in the state into poverty

News

Inside the Capitol: Letters to the Journal

The state Capitol in Sacramento, home of the Senate and Assembly. (Photo: Kit Leong, via Shutterstock)

One way to help figure out the legislative intent behind a particular measure is a letter written by the bill’s author that is published in the Assembly Daily Journal or the Senate Daily Journal.

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