This November, California voters will make choices on a variety of candidates and ballot propositions that could shape the state for years to come. Our election guide is designed to help Californians make informed decisions by providing an overview of the statewide propositions, the arguments surrounding them, and California Policy Center’s take on the choices...
Every once in a while, Sacramento delivers a surprise. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed AB 1383 this week, stopping a high-profile effort by public safety unions to roll back key provisions of California’s 2012 Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act (PEPRA) that could have radically increased pension costs for state and local governments. The veto was anything...
The California governor embraces the tech’s possibilities with one hand, imposes a mountain of regulations with the other. On a single day last week, Gavin Newsom showed that he remains one of the nation’s great political athletes, executing a Summer Olympics–grade threading of the artificial intelligence needle. All on September 9, the California governor attempted...
On September 21, Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency due to the “strong and likely historic El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean.” The timing of the announcement is in response to the latest predictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, estimating a 90 percent chance of a “very strong event during...
Whether artificial intelligence should be regulated, and if so, how, has almost overnight become one of the biggest political issues of our time. And with AI comes a surge in construction of massive data centers, for which we should minimize impact on the surrounding communities. But to the question of how we will find enough...
Teacher union activists are like dogs that chase cars—they wouldn’t know what to do if they caught one. Take the recent case of Darshan Smaaladen, a teacher union ally in the Orange Unified School District in Orange County. Trying to protect union-friendly board incumbents in the heat of a political campaign that ends November 3,...
SAN BERNARDINO — In a convoluted ruling from the bench Tuesday, the San Bernardino County Superior Court granted in part and denied in part Chino Valley Unified School District’s motion to dissolve the 2024 injunction blocking the district’s original parental notification policy following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta. Judge Michael Sachs...
The Town of Apple Valley’s mission promises “a better way of life through local control of public safety, development, services and amenities.” This leaves unanswered what the town should leave to someone else. That omission can become expensive for the residents, even in the absence of corruption or spectacular incompetence. In three decades in municipal...
The August 2026 final draft of the State Water Resources Control Board’s (SWRCB) “Water Quality Control Plan for the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Watershed” has been released. Written comments will be accepted through September 18, and the board will also take oral comments at the October 28-29, 2026 meeting where the SWRCB may formally adopt the plan. Anyone...
In a display of power that ought to be used for public benefit, California’s public servants have instead prioritized their personal financial interests. Unions representing the state’s police and firefighters pushed a bill through the state legislature that will increase their pension benefits, despite the state’s pension systems barely achieving solvency thanks to critical reforms passed in 2012 combined...
A former aide who served and defended two disastrous DAs now offers advice on urban governance. Alex Bastian has lived and worked in California’s two most important cities, and he has advice for Los Angeles: Be more like San Francisco. San Francisco “is my hometown,” he wrote recently in The Hill, while Los Angeles “has been my...
This year’s California county voter information guides will once again display a serious inequity. Arguments in favor of bond and tax measures will usually be well written and signed by several local luminaries. Arguments against will often be less professionally written, have fewer signers, and may even be completely missing. In San Bernardino County, for...
Whenever a natural disaster occurs anywhere in the world that can be connected in some way with the alleged climate crisis, out come the professionals to make that connection. From the federally funded NPR, “A melting glacier contributed to the deadly Nepal floods. We can expect more like this.” From CBC, “Scientists fear Nepal’s disaster is...
Finding quality, consolidated information on energy use in California is surprisingly difficult. The California Department of Energy provides detailed information on electricity production, and a variety of reports on, for example, refinery inputs and production. But there is no report available from official state sources that puts it all together. This is unfortunate, because as a state...