Newsom’s comment isn’t quite the perfect fit. The wildfires are real and the public is alarmed enough without a politician unspooling a diatribe about how dangerous and destructive they are. But it nevertheless applies. The governor is trying to scare the populace to forward a political, rather than practical, agenda. One, he wants the bureaucracy to speed up the state’s plunge into an all-renewables energy regime. 

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When I mentioned to our editorial committee that I was going to work on a blog on good bills out of California’s recent legislative session, Kerry Jackson joked that I needed fewer than 100 words to cover that topic. After a few hours of hunting and a little help from friends, I did manage to turn up a few good ones:

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The budget for the new fiscal year froze funding for schools at their 2019-20 level, preventing additional state funding for growing schools with increased numbers of students in the fall. This provision contradicted court decisions and state-education-funding reforms that had required funding to follow children to the regular public or public charter schools they planned to attend in the new school year.

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“I have nothing against the technology,” Winegarden said. “There are better ways to support innovation, which is what the state should be doing, especially in light of the budget crisis we’re already facing, the homelessness crisis, the wildfires. It’s the state playing the role of venture capitalist.” . . .

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