Posts Tagged: option

Needed: Affordable insurance in fire-prone areas

Homeowners watch the billowing smoke of the 2018 Woolsey Fire in Southern California. (Photo: BrittanyNY, via Shutterstock)

by BOB TESHIMA posted 08.03.2020

OPINION: As currently amended —after months of compromise and negotiations— this bill would create a new Insurance Market Action Plan, or IMAP, designed to increase home insurance availability with better coverage and lower rates, and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire damage through home hardening and community mitigation. For many homeowners in high-risk areas, the FAIR Plan is currently the only option for fire insurance.

The path to carbon-free electricity

Electrical power transmitted to a large urban area. (Photo: urbans, via Shutterstock)

by ERICA MARTINEZ posted 09.07.2017

OPINION: Powering our state with entirely clean energy is not a pipe dream. At a time when the Trump administration is making harmful and backward decisions on our climate and energy future, Senate Bill 100 presents a golden opportunity for California to lead the nation. California already sources over a quarter of our electricity from wind and solar sources, empowering us to reach 50 percent renewable energy well before 2030.

Looking ahead: Solar energy for all

Solar PV panels used to power agricultural equipment in the Central Valley. (Photo: Shippee, via Shutterstock)

by Susannah Churchill and Miya Yoshitani posted 04.25.2017

This first Earth Day under the Trump administration, we’re reminded that environmental and clean energy progress at the local level – in our states and our communities – is more important than ever.

Disabled face high hurdles for health care

A man in a wheelchair prepares for his daily constitutional. (Photo: Vadim Ratnikov)

by JESSICA PORTNER posted 09.18.2015

Yvette Baptiste’s son Andrew was born with Klippel-Feil syndrome, a bone disorder where the neck vertebrae are fused, causing pain and limiting movement. But even though Baptiste, as the Executive Director of Eastern Los Angeles Family Resource Center, was a seasoned health advocate, it still took more than a year to find a new doctor to treat her adult son.

Calpensions: An accounting board best known for requiring the calculation and reporting of the debt owed for retiree health care promised government workers, which often turned out to be shockingly large, is having another moment. This month the Governmental Accounting Standards Board applied new rules for reporting pension debt to retiree heath care.

OPINION: There are more than 80,000 franchised enterprises in California, employing nearly a million people. Increasingly franchise owners are seeing our rights slip away as lopsided franchise agreements protect the interests of multi-national franchisors rather than small business owners.

Regulations implementing a new California law aimed at reducing the number of unvaccinated youngsters attending school may do just the opposite. A 2012 bill, which took effect Jan. 1, requires parents seeking an exemption from vaccinations against diseases like measles and whooping cough, to first talk with a health care provider about the risks and benefits of vaccines.

In California, Election Day really is Election Month

U.S. Senate election, 2012

by SUMMER PARKERPERRY posted 01.02.2014

In little more than a decade, mail-in or “absentee” voting for statewide elections quadrupled, from 4.4 percent in 1978 to 18.4 percent in 1990, reflecting in part legal changes making it easier to vote absentee. Since the 1990s, mail-in ballots have increased exponentially. In the 2008 primary, 58 percent of the voters cast mail-in ballots, the first time in a California statewide election that mail-in ballots represented more than half the vote. In primaries since then, mail-in voting has risen steadily to a remarkable 65 percent in 2012. In the November 2012 general election, mail-in ballots accounted for about 51 percent. (Above: 2012 U.S. Senate election map/Kurykh, Wikimedia))

But a series of state court rulings are widely believed to mean that the pension offered current workers on the date of hire becomes a vested right, protected by contract law, that can only be cut if offset by a new benefit of comparable value. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Patricia Lucas said in her ruling the question before her court is “one of law, not of policy,” referring to a state Supreme Court response to city and county briefs on an Orange County attempt to cut retirement costs.