Over the past 40 years, California has not completed a major water storage project of statewide significance despite the state’s population nearly doubling. Without substantial new investments and commitments to capture, store and move water throughout the state, whole communities will be subject to water scarcity and farmers will...
What Are Next Steps in Fresno’s Effort to Reduce Homelessness?
The city of Fresno has added hundreds of shelter beds to provide emergency and temporary shelter, as well as transitional housing, to unhoused residents amid the pandemic, according to local leaders. It also provided homelessness services to thousands of people between July 2019 and December 2021, they said. But...
Farmworker Union Membership is Statistically Zero: UC Merced Researchers
When the nation’s high court effectively forbade union representatives from accessing fields and orchards to recruit workers last June, the United Farm Workers union turned to Sacramento for help. The union found a lawmaker from a coastal agricultural district willing to carry a bill that would allow California farmworkers to vote for a...
This Water Proposal Is Good for All of California: Opinion
Silicon Valley is known for its startup culture where so-called angel investors provide financing to launch companies that aspire to change the world. Innovations spawned in Silicon Valley have indeed changed the world, and in the process, made the San Francisco Bay Area home to thousands of near-billionaires and...
Should State Negotiate Wages, Hours, for CA Fast Food Workers?
By Jackie Botts and Jesse Bedayn Amid growing awareness of inequality and jobs that don’t pay enough to cover child care and housing, California is considering a radical proposal: Allow the state to negotiate wages, hours, and work conditions for an entire industry. Proponents in the state Legislature say one solution...
Dem and GOP Lawmakers Draw a Bull’s-eye on Prop 47
Little did California voters know, when they approved a 2014 ballot measure that reduced penalties for certain theft offenses, that their decision would still be making headlines in 2022. On Tuesday, Democratic Assemblymember Rudy Salas of Bakersfield introduced a bill that, if passed by state lawmakers and a majority of voters, would reverse...
Danger in Droughtsville: CA’s Urban Water Is at Risk
Droughtsville, California, is in trouble. Its water supply is endangered as multiple crises intensify: worsening droughts, competition for scarce supplies, sea-level rise, groundwater contamination, earthquakes, wildfires, and extreme weather. All of these factors, and more, threaten Droughtville’s ability to provide clean water to its residents. The city is fictional,...
California Leaders Must Keep Word on Public Health Funding
When Cultiva La Salud partnered with Saint Agnes Medical Center to deliver vaccines to farm laborers in rural Fresno County – where essential workers were placing their lives on the line to feed us despite growing infections and deaths – no one told them a nonprofit shouldn’t be promoting health...
How $900K Fresno Nursing Home Fine Was Buried From Sight
The inspection report painted a bleak picture of life inside Northpointe Healthcare Centre in Fresno. Residents grimaced in pain from bedsores. Staff told inspectors they were stretched so thin they sometimes skipped treatments and failed to distribute medications. One resident was hospitalized with sepsis after missing four doses of an antibiotic, the report stated. After...
When Will California Finally Protect Small Businesses from Lawsuit Abuse?
California’s atrocious legal environment coupled with the Legislature’s relentless pursuit of liability expanding principles has earned the Golden State the dubious honor of being named the “Top Everlasting Judicial Hellhole” in the nation, by the American Tort Reform Foundation. We have received this unfortunate honor, not once, but 16 times over...