The city of El Monte sponsors a walking club and is working with local convenience stores to stock more healthy alternatives to junk food and alcohol. The efforts are part of the Healthy El Monte initiative, which seeks to combat high rates of obesity and diabetes in a city of 125,000 sandwiched between major freeways and industrial sites. Margaret Simpson has the story.
Democratic lawmakers and advocates for the poor harshly criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over the weekend after he vetoed nearly $1 billion from the state budget, much of it from programs intended to aid low-income families. Schwarzenegger sliced $962 million from the spending plan sent to him by the Legislature 100 days after the start of the fiscal year July 1.
Seven years after he first proposed it, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week finally achieved his goal of rolling back most state worker pensions to levels that existed before lawmakers, relying on the fruits of a booming 1990s stock market, boosted benefits with a bill they passed in 1999. The change has been one of Schwarzenegger’s goals since the day he took office.
California’s top air quality regulator and the head of a major construction industry trade group announced Thursday that they have reached agreement on a plan to reduce diesel emissions from construction equipment. The agreement, if approved by the full Air Resources Board in December, would end years of dispute between the board and the Associated General Contractors of America, which has fought California’s diesel emission regulations for construction equipment since they were adopted in 2007.
Parents across the country can put their 20-something kids back on their private health insurance thanks to health reform laws that rolled out last month But thousands of young adults will not have that opportunity: foster children who were raised in the care and custody of the state.