Nurse practitioner Surani Hayre-Kwan sees long-time patients and first-timers. She manages chronic illnesses, diagnoses kids with colds and refers people to specialists. She goes it alone or works with another nurse practitioner at the Russian River Health Clinic in Sonoma County. Sometimes a supervising physician is on-site, but often is...
Will This Be the Year California Tackles Its Waste Crisis?
Even the special interests that helped kill a California Senate bill aimed at reforming beverage bottle recycling say the state needs to fix its broken system. And one lawmaker who voted no on the bill says he might just introduce his own. Authored by Democratic state Sen. Bob Wieckowski of Fremont, the Beverage...
What Happens If California Takes Over PG&E?
Calling the bankruptcy of California’s largest investor-owned utility a “godsend,” Gov. Gavin Newsom has threatened a public takeover of Pacific Gas & Electric unless it can transform into a provider of affordable, reliable, clean and — above all — safe energy. That means no more ferocious wildfires sparked by PG&E...
Bay Area Has Highest Income Inequality in California
It’s official: The gap between the Bay Area’s haves and have-nots is wider than anywhere else in the state. Top income earners in the Bay Area make 12.2 times as much as those at the bottom of the economic ladder, according to new research from the Public Policy Institute of...
The Achievement Gap: California’s Disparities in Education Explained
Few goals in education have been as frustrating and urgent as the effort to fix the deep, generational disparity in achievement between the haves and the have-nots in California schools. It is an article of faith in the K-12 school system that every student — regardless of race, creed, wealth or color...
Here’s a Way to Cut California’s College Costs and Help Students Succeed
The Varsity Blues scandal, in which wealthy parents paid bribes to get their kids into elite universities, laid bare a hard truth about college admissions in California: Opportunity is not equal. Public educators and policymakers should take Varsity Blues as a challenge to level the playing field for students who...
Mitt Romney’s Vote to Remove President Trump Made This Californian Especially Proud
After 30 years in the business of politics, you find yourself to be alumni of several different campaigns. I’ve always been proud to be a Mitt Romney alum, as the California director of his 2008 presidential campaign. I had decided over a year beforehand that I wanted to work to...
California Just Finished Its Homeless Count. It's Sure to Be Inaccurate, and Politically Weaponized
By Manuela Tobias, The Fresno Bee and Matt Levin, CalMatters With yellow vests and flashlights, over 200 volunteers fanned out across Fresno to count homeless people on Tuesday night. Along the railway, one group walked by a freight container with a mattress and shoes inside, and past a dirt cot...
You’ve Been Named California’s Homelessness Czar. What’s Your First Move?
Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken grief for failing to fulfill what seems like a pretty achievable campaign promise: appointing a homelessness “czar” to help the 150,000 Californians living in shelters and on the streets. Newsom’s quest, which at various points had the mayor of Sacramento, the state secretary of health and human services and...
Opinion: California Must End the Plague of Human Trafficking. This Proposal Can Help.
Ending the plague of human trafficking is one of my top legislative priorities. Sadly, California is prime hunting ground for pimps and gangs to exploit human trafficking. There are a number of reasons for this including: The state’s growing under-18 population. The state’s network of highways providing quick access to...