If state revenues are climbing next year, why does California face an $18 billion budget shortfall? For a couple of reasons: mainly the need to retire this year’s deficit and cope with costs that are programmed to rise automatically in the year ahead.
An East Oakland center for young people is an oasis of hope in a community in crisis. It provides counseling, job training, recreation, health care and more. Soon it will host a series of meetings between Oakland police officers and local youth to try to reduce tension between law enforcement and the community.
California advocates for women and children are making a major push for breastfeeding and laying the groundwork for proposals in the Legislature that could require hospitals that deliver babies to reduce the number of newborns fed with bottled formula.
It will be years before the new health insurance exchange at the heart of the federal health reform passed in March rolls out in California. But decisions being made now could shape how that exchange looks and works, the health benefits it makes available to consumers, how much Californians pay for their coverage and the roles played by the government and the private insurance industry.
A computer model that the Air Resources Board used to justify historic restrictions on diesel emissions from off-road construction equipment may have attributed twice as much pollution to those heavy trucks as they actually produce, according to interviews with ARB staff.
Bill Monning is the new chairman of the state Assembly’s Health Committee. His wife, Dr. Dana Kent, is a doctor in Monterey County who has spent her life serving the poor. Dr. Kent is careful to point out that she does not advise Monning on health policy. But as Monning ponders the federal health reform that will roll out soon with a major assist from the state and his committee, the lawmaker says he will naturally call upon all he has learned through their 32-year partnership.
The federal health reform bill that President Barack Obama signed into law last week will expand access to health insurance for millions of Americans. But the bill will also pour billions of dollars into programs intended to keep those people from ever needing the kind of care for which they will now be eligible. The bill includes new mandates on public and private insurers to provide more check-ups and screenings without co-pays. But the most intriguing provision creates a grant program to transform communities in ways designed to improve the health of their residents.
Angela Glover Blackwell, CEO of PolicyLink, believes California should be doing far more to match its people and vocational training with the kind of jobs that will be available in the years ahead.
After years of being urged to “eat fresh, eat local,” residents of the Sacramento region are responding. From neighborhood dinner tables to big institutional kitchens, locally grown foods are in high demand. But every spring, locally grown produce is rotting in the fields of the small family-run farms around the region. Between that abundant supply and the strong demand, the market has broken down. There is no good way to get those crops from the farms to the people who want them at a price consumers are willing to pay.
Democrats in the Legislature threw a fiscal lifeline to public transit last week, bolstering financing for buses and trains at a time when the state is cutting just about everything else. But leaders of the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission saw the moment as a lost opportunity for fundamental change in the way California pays for public transit. They want a local sales tax on fuel.