Just Published: Read the new PRI book Saving California

With California voters set to cast a ballot in the recall election on September 14, the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute has published Saving California – a new book offering a framework for effective policymaking that can inspire elected officials at every level of government.

The book is available for purchase at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and your favorite online bookseller.

Saving California highlights the state’s core challenges – business climate, housing, homelessness, infrastructure, water policy, education, crime, budgets and debt, wildfires, and health care. It goes beyond documenting the once-Golden State’s many problems by offering many good-government policies that politicians from either party could easily embrace and achieve bipartisan consensus on a governing agenda.

The book is edited by Steven Greenhut, longtime California journalist and political observer, and R Street Institute western region director. He is most recently the author of the PRI book on California’s water crisis, Winning the Water Wars.

Greenhut says, “Saving California focuses on policy changes to help restore some of California’s lost luster – regardless of what politician runs our massive government apparatus. Although the book includes a fair share of criticism of current policy directions, it offers many realistic reforms to push the state onto a better track – reforms that advance the stated goals of even the most progressive legislators, such as bettering the environment and helping the poor.”

Saving California’s authors are current or former Californians, people with deep experience in their respective policy areas:

Chapman University fellow Joel Kotkin on getting California back to business through tax and regulatory reform
Demographia principal Wendell Cox on California’s housing crisis
PRI senior fellow and No Way Home co-author Wayne Winegarden on homelessness
Reason foundation vice president Dr. Adrian Moore on decongesting California’s roads and freeways
Steven Greenhut on dealing with California’s drought
Lance Izumi, senior director of PRI’s Center for Education on returning to educational excellence
Former Assemblyman turned criminal justice reform advocate Pat Nolan on arresting California’s crime problem
Capitol veteran and tax and budget expert Richard Mersereau on building a sustainable state budget
The Hon. Daniel Kolkey, PRI board member, attorney and former California Court of Appeals associate justice on wildfires and climate change
Sally Pipes, PRI President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy on reforms to build a healthier California

Saving California is not a call to political action, nor is it in any way partisan. It is about identifying the state’s problems and offering a path toward better solutions.