Welcome to our weekly discussion of all
things current in California politics.
I'm Walt Gray this week joined
by reporter Emily Hoeven,
political columnist with
the San Francisco Chronicle.
Emily, we have a state budget.
Is it 100% done?
What's the status of this?
It's a lot closer to being donen
it than it was before, You know.
The governor and state lawmakers
were tussling over a number of
various things in the budget.
They were trying to figure out s
to close a $31.5 billion defici,
and they reached agreement thisk
on a variety of contentious iss,
including some climate,
some child care payment rates.
But one of the biggest hang ups
that was delaying them from reag
this deal for so long was the
governor's infrastructure packa,
and he introduced this rather at the last.
And it included a variety of
provisions that would have limid
the environmental review procesr
certain infrastructure projects.
And one of the ones that they
actually took out of the deal and are
continuing to work on because is
so controversial is the governos
proposal to build a single Delta
tunnel that would channel waterm
the Sacramento San Joaquin DeltS
for about 750,000 households and
and millions of acres of farmla.
And he wanted to speed up the
environmental review.
A lot of lawmakers,
a lot of environmentalists,
were angry about that.
And so they finally decided to take it out.
And they're still kind of figurg
out what that's gonna look like.
I always talk about oil prices,
gas prices in California,
the state gas tax going up
three cents on Saturday.
But it's now become law, right?
That we're able to regulate
or keep an eye on what oil
companies are charging us?
This week the the new proposal o
that the governor introduced tht
would increase the state's watcg
capacity over oil companies whi.
That he wanted to do after thers
a there was a massive spike in l
prices last year went into effe.
And so now there is a new state
watchdog that has been formed wn
the state agencies and it will
be able to have a little bit moe
information about how oil refins
are making profits with the size
of those profits are when they'e
going to be taking some of thei.
Their facilities offline for
maintenance to hopefully be ablo
avoid or to mitigate price spik.
They're going to be looking at y
reports with the with you know production
and and profit and things like .
And so we'll see if it makes a
difference because as you noted
that the gas tax just went up a.
And so I think that you know tht
is something that lawmakers have
been very reluctant to to change
that would result in would have
resulted most likely in immediae
relief at the pump for Californ.
You have a column in the Chronicle talking
about the state's foster care system.
Is the state can they do better?
What's the latest on that? I think the
definite consensus is that they
can do better. And as you know,
we've been talking about this,
you know, over the past couple
of months at the Chronicle,
I've been doing a series of reps
on how the state has basically n
dismantling various systems that it sees as,
you know, having a lot of severe problems,
whether that was the state
mental hospital system,
the state prison system and also
the state's foster care system.
And so the state for for many years had
a system of group homes they were called,
where kids that had severe needs
and had nowhere else to go.
Ended up staying,
and there was a lot of rampant abuse and
neglect and violence at these facilities.
So in 2015, the state began,
you know, getting rid of those d
requiring new facilities with stricter
requirements to go into place.
The problem is,
when all is said and done,
is that many of the kids with the most severe
needs still don't have anywhere to go.
And in many cases,
they've been housed in unlicensd
facilities like detention centers and
office buildings and things of that nature.
And there's a lot of alarm
from lawmakers and the general.
Point of the piece is that, you know,
it's fine for the state to wanto
dismantle systems that have iss,
but it can't do that unless it replaces
it with something that's improved and better.
And when it just reduces capaciy
and there's nothing to replace,
it oftentimes ends up seeing the
very problem it wants to solve.
Yeah,
how true. And so many things.
Emily Hoeven, Thank you.
If you'd like to reach out
to Emily, you can do so at
emily.hoeven@sfchronicle.com.