LAUREL ROSENTHAL
CalMatters
Facing a trifecta of extraordinary circumstances â the waning COVID-19 pandemic, a looming recall election and an insanely flush state budget â Gov. Gavin Newsom barnstormed the state, dropping good news by the billions.
He wants to spend $12 billion to house the homeless, the governor announced in the lobby of a San Diego motel converted into a shelter; $3.4 billion to expand preschool to all 4-year-olds, he said on the playground of an elementary school in Monterey County; $1.5 billion cleaning up blight, he said as TV news crews filmed him hoisting an old mattress off the side of a Los Angeles freeway.
Four years after the Legislature boosted the gas tax in order to fix California s crumbling roads and bridges, the state has spent billions and made some progress in repairs, but officials now say the funding is sufficient only to complete less than half of the work needed.
The gas tax has been a political hot potato since it was passed in 2017, resulting in the recall of a Democratic state senator who voted for the legislation and an unsuccessful attempt by Republicans in 2018 to ask voters to repeal the higher charges.
Now, with the gas tax set to increase again July 1, the campaign to fix roads and bridges is again stirring contention, drawing criticism from some lawmakers who say repairs have been too slow and the effort has lagged behind other states in maintaining and improving transportation systems.
SACRAMENTO
A month after taking over as California attorney general, Rob Bonta has put the Department of Justice on a hard pivot, launching a series of initiatives to refocus the agency on problems inside the state after it spent four years fighting the Trump administration on national issues.
In the last few weeks, Bonta has announced the creation of a Racial Justice Bureau to combat hate crimes and biased policing, financial help to local law enforcement agencies struggling with a backlog of untested rape evidence kits and expanded the Bureau of Environmental Justice to better target polluters.
Bonta has also taken action to make the department more transparent, reversing a prior policy that had withheld some records on police officer misconduct, and he set aside a Justice Department proposal to withhold gun enforcement data from researchers. The new attorney general also says he is working on the creation of a new unit to investigate fatal police shootings of unarmed civili
Road Repairs in California Still Sluggish Even as State Gas Tax Increases
The state’s gas tax will increase again on July 1 to bring even greater revenue for road and highway maintenance projects. But the repairs have been slow, often lagging behind other states.
May 24, 2021 • (TNS) Four years after the Legislature boosted the gas tax in order to fix California s crumbling roads and bridges, the state has spent billions and made some progress in repairs, but officials now say the funding is sufficient only to complete less than half of the work needed.
The gas tax has been a political hot potato since it was passed in 2017, resulting in the recall of a Democratic state senator who voted for the legislation and an unsuccessful attempt by Republicans in 2018 to ask voters to repeal the higher charges.