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Assemblyman Rocky Chavez has a big fight on his hands: the race to become California’s next senator.
But he still had some time this week to scrap with local legislators.
In an op-ed for us, Chavez explains his objection to a bill written by another San Diego legislator, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber. The bill, which requires police departments to share data on who gets pulled over during traffic stops, barely passed the Assembly over the objections of Chavez and others.
Chavez argues that public safety issues should be left to local leaders like city officials, Little League coaches and pastors:
When local leaders identify the unique challenges in their communities, appropriate and meaningful solutions can be found. However, when policy-makers dictate a process that is skewed by politics (members from racial, ethnic and LGBT caucuses) to oversee 39 million citizens and hundreds of communities in California, solutions will not be found and developed and divisions will be amplified.
Chavez also spoke out forcefully this week against the bill that’s still making big waves in Sacramento – a measure requiring school children to get vaccines, co-written by San Diego Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez.
“Truly this bill is not about vaccines,” Chavez said in a committee hearing, according to California Healthline. “It’s about freedom.”
Gonzalez had a not-so-thinly-veiled response: “I don’t want my constituents to be misled. Personal liberty doesn’t include harming others.”
Monday, Monday, Monday!
The Legislature is set to vote on its version of the state budget on Monday.
The Budget Conference Committee released a summary of what’s in the budget bill on Friday. After tussling with UC officials all session about costs, the budget proposal “an additional $25 million contingent on increasing California resident enrollment by 5,000 students, holding resident tuition flat in 2015-16 and 2016-17 and redirecting non-resident institutional aid to support resident students.” Translation: Stop giving away so much aid money to out-of-staters.
Another notable item in the budget bill: It would eliminate the CalWORKS Maximum Family Grant rule, a provision “meant to discourage low-income women, often people of color, from having children by denying them public assistance,” according to RH Reality Check. Last year, Slate called the rule “the most discriminatory law in the land.”
Another State-to-County Move?
Inewsource calls out Assemblyman Brian Maienschein as a top candidate to jump in the race for county supervisor if embattled Supervisor Dave Roberts ultimately resigns.
Maienschein has a lot working in his favor, inewsource writes, like name recognition and lots of cash in what will be a pricey race. He is, according to the site, “the big kahuna of fundraising.” Sweet title, or sweetest title ever?
Lance Witmondt, Maienschein’s chief of staff, told inewsource the assemblyman was “definitely still deciding” whether to mount a challenge.
“He’s receiving a ton of calls from people encouraging him to run,” Witmondt said.
If Maienschein does go the Board of Supes route, he’d join state Sen. Joel Anderson, who’s already vying to take out County Supervisor Dianne Jacob.
As Goes Colorado …
Secretary of State Alex Padilla unveiled a plan this week that he hopes will massively boost voter turnout throughout the state. It’s modeled after Colorado’s new system, and turnout there has been climbing.
The plan would “deliver vote-by-mail ballots to all registered voters, eliminate many neighborhood polling places and replace them with larger voting centers that allow early voting,” according to the Union-Tribune.
The program would be new for the state, but less new for San Diego, which is the site of a five-year pilot program voted in last year, in which officials send mail-in ballots to all voters for special elections.
Democrats backing Padilla’s program tout it as a cost-saving measure. But that was the pitch for the San Diego pilot program, too, and it didn’t help win Republican support.
Golden State News
• Speaker Toni Atkins talked about getting the budget over the finish line with KUSI, and sidestepped offering any opinions on the explosive vaccine bill. And over at the Huffington Post, Atkins talks up a bill that would force so-called crisis pregnancy centers, which often tell women lies in order to deter them from choosing an abortion, to “offer factual information about all options available to pregnant women.”
• Two Democratic senators want to overhaul Prop. 13, the landmark state law restricting property taxes, writes the L.A. Times. Republicans, of course, say they won’t let that happen. San Diego-area Sen. Joel Anderson told Breitbart News: “The votes are not there to place a measure before voters that would significantly weaken the taxpayer protections of Prop. 13.”
• La Mesa ferret activist Pat Wright is back with another effort to legalize the animals.
• Gov. Jerry Brown gets a little poetic about water and the drought. (L.A. Times)
• YOUR MOVE, BRAZIL. California’s economy has climbed back up to No. 7 in the world, ahead of some large countries. (AP)