Californians head to the polls today to choose the next Democratic nominee for President of the United States. Bay Area voters will also decide on important propositions ranging from commercial vacancy taxes, office development caps, and transit measures.
Last night I hosted a City Visions radio show with experts dissecting the ballot and discussing where the presidential candidates stand on the issues that matter the most to California.
Listen to the broadcast to hear our guests:
- Nick Josefowitz, Director of Policy at SPUR,anon-profit research, education, and advocacy organization focused on issues of planning and governance in the bay area.
- Cory Cook, Professor and political scientist as well as Vice Provost of academic programs at St Mary’s College.
City Visions airs every Monday at 7pm on KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco. Don’t forget to vote today!
Tonight on City Visions at 7pm, we’ll discuss the new Prop. 13, a $15 billion bond measure on the March ballot in California, which could change the landscape for public education funding.
In the 1970s, California ranked 7th out of all states in per pupil funding. Now it’s 41st in the nation, according to Governor Gavin Newsom. The education budget line is robust, but most Californians think it is not enough. How does the state pay for public education, K through college? In addition to the new Prop 13 on the ballot, what about efforts to reform the old Prop 13, which restricted property taxes that were used to pay for schools?
To discuss these issues, we’ll be joined by:
- Ricardo Cano, Education Reporter, Cal Matters;
- Ted Lempert, President, Children Now and former founding CEO of EdVoice; and
- Sean Walsh, Principal, Wilson Walsh George Ross Consulting.
Tune in and ask your questions at 866-798-TALK! We’ll be streaming live at 7pm and you can access on 91.7 FM KALW in San Francisco.
On this morning’s 10am edition of Your Call’s Media Roundtable, I’ll interview Ben Ehrenreich, a columnist at The Nation magazine, about the coverage of the just-concluded UN climate conference in Madrid. The high-profile failure of the event was punctuated by thousands of young activists protesting the lack of action by big polluters.
Then, later in the program, we will talk about the Trump impeachment vote in the U.S. House of Representatives and what comes next. I’ll interview:
- Michael Winship, a senior Writing Fellow at the website Common Dreams and longtime Bill Moyers writing partner; and
- Dan Froomkin, founder of Press Watch, a media project that monitors political reporting and encourages more responsible, informed and informative campaign and government coverage.
You can stream it live at 10am today or listen to 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area. Call 866-798-TALK with questions or comments!
Tonight at 7pm on City Visions, I’m interviewing sujatha baliga, director of the Restorative Justice Project at Oakland-based Impact Justice.
sujatha is one of this year’s recipients of the MacArthur “genius” grants and joins City Visions to discuss her work expanding access to survivor-centered restorative justice strategies. How might this alternative to our punitive criminal justice system impact mass incarceration, recidivism and violence in California and beyond?
Tune in at 7pm at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live. Call 866-798-TALK (8255) with questions or email us at cityvisions@kalw.org.
How has the city of San Francisco changed in the last decade, and what will it look like in the future? On tonight’s City Vision, I’ll host John Rahaim, Planning Director for the City and County of San Francisco, to discuss these questions.
In his 12 years leading the Planning Department, John has tackled issues ranging from the housing shortage to sea level rise. How have politics and environmental regulations impacted urban development in San Francisco? And how is the city managing growth while addressing climate change, transportation infrastructure, and racial equity?
Tune in at 7pm tonight or stream live. You can join the conversation by calling 866-798-TALK or e-mail or text us at cityvisions@kalw.org. You can also reach us by tweeting us at @cityvisionskalw.
On this morning’s 10am edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, we’ll mark Indigenous People’s Day by discussing how Native American traditional knowledge can help find solutions to our modern climate crisis.
We’ll discuss the Yurok Tribe’s decision to grant personhood to the troubled Klamath River in Northern California. The river and its salmon runs near the Oregon border have been greatly affected by climate change and adverse policy decisions, leading to a mass salmon die-off.
We’ll also discuss the Karuk Tribe’s use of traditional land management practices to help California fight mega fires during these times of ever-drier forests and less reliable rainfall.
Joining me to discuss these issues are:
- Lisa Hilman, a Karuk tribal member and program director for the Píkyav Field Institute, a unit of the Karuk Tribe’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) dedicated to environmental education and protection; and
- Amy Cordalis, general counsel for the Yurok Tribe and a tribal member, life-long fisher and ceremonial practitioner.
You can stream it live at 10am today or listen to 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area. Call 866-798-TALK with questions or comments!
On this morning’s 10am edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, we’ll discuss electric vehicles (EVs), a critical clean technology for addressing climate change — but one that has yet to see mass adoption.
What progress is being made on EVs? What challenges remain? What can be done for people who don’t have a dedicated parking spot for charging access? How clean and sustainable is the battery supply chain and disposal process?
Joining me to discuss these questions and more will be:
- David Reichmuth, senior engineer in the Clean Vehicles program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Dr. Reichmuth has testified at hearings before the US House of Representatives, the California State Legislature, and the California Air Resources Board, and he is an expert on California’s Zero Emission Vehicles regulation.
- Max Baumhefner, Senior Attorney with the Climate and Clean Energy Program at NRDC, based in San Francisco. He focuses on electrifying the transportation sector in a manner that also accelerates the transition to a smarter, more affordable electric grid powered by renewable resources.
You can stream it live at 10am today or listen to 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area. Call 866-798-TALK with questions or comments!
On this morning’s 10am edition of Your Call’s Media Roundtable, I’ll interview Emmy-winning correspondent and 25-year producer for PBS’ Frontline Martin Smith about his new PBS documentary “The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.”
The film coincides with the one-year anniversary of the brutal murder of the Washington Post’s Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. It examines the rise of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to power, as well as his ties to the murder, handling of dissent, and relationship with the Trump administration. You can watch the two-hour documentary on PBS.
I’ll also discuss this Tuesday’s D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision which reaffirmed the Trump administration’s repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules. These rules were meant to ensure we can all access content and applications on the web regardless of the source. Joining me will be April Glaser, a Slate technology writer and co-hosts the podcast “If Then” who will help unpack the ruling and how it will affect the internet going forward.
You can stream it live at 10am today or listen to 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area. Call 866-798-TALK with questions or comments!
The future of California’s high speed rail system has arguably never been as perilous as now. Otherwise-supportive legislators are now openly mulling raiding high speed rail funds meant to complete the first leg in the Central Valley for rail improvements in the more densely populated parts of California, namely the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles to Anaheim, as the Los Angeles Times recently reported. Governor Newsom also expressed a lack of confidence in the system during his “State of the State” speech, in which he offered an abrupt scaling back of the state’s vision for its signature infrastructure project.
Following that February speech, the governor appointed Lenny Mendonca as the new California High Speed Rail Authority chair, whom I’ll interview tonight on City Visions on NPR affiliate 91.7 FM KALW radio in San Francisco, from 7-8pm. (For those out of the area, you can stream it or listen to the archived broadcast after the show here.) Mendonca has since laid out a vision for a down-sized “building block” segment from the Central Valley cities of Merced to Bakersfield, which could temporarily serve diesel-powered Amtrak trains until funding materializes for a segment from Merced to the Bay Area — and one day through the Tehachapi Mountains to Los Angeles.
This scaled-back plan is in some ways a simple nod to fiscal reality. There aren’t enough funds right now to complete the project beyond this initial phase in the Central Valley. Voters approved roughly $10 billion in bond funding in 2008, the 2009 federal “stimulus” bill offered another $3.5 billion ($1 billion of which the Trump Administration is now trying to cancel), and former Governor Jerry Brown and the legislature dedicated about 25% of the state’s cap-and-trade auction proceeds to continue building the system. But that’s not enough money to connect the Central Valley portion through the Pacheco Pass into San Jose, where it could then connect to the soon-to-be-electrified Caltrain into San Francisco. And it’s nowhere near the multiple billions of dollars needed to tunnel through the Tehachapis to connect to Southern California.
Despite cost overruns and some controversial decision-making by some state leaders, the key stumbling block has mostly been the federal government. Republicans in control of Congress from 2011 to 2019 were unwilling to match the state’s investment with federal dollars. If California had received at least a 50% match in federal funds (the typical match rate for urban rail transit projects), the rail system would have the money today to connect to the Bay Area, while at least making critical rail improvements in the Southern California section, if not starting the tunneling effort to Los Angeles.
So will high speed rail supporters ultimately need a change in leadership in Congress and the White House to get the necessary funds to complete the project? Will the California Legislature abandon the project and use the remaining dollars on local rail improvements instead? How useful will the scaled-back “building block” segment in the Central Valley be, absent further rail connections?
I’ll ask Chair Mendonca for his thoughts on these questions tonight, as well as for an update on the current status of the project. Listeners can call in at 866-798-TALK or email question as well. With the future of the nation’s only high speed rail project under construction now in the balance, and a new governor and leadership team at the helm, this project is truly at a major crossroads.
On this morning’s 10am edition of Your Call’s Media Roundtable, I’ll be hosting a discussion of the coverage of Hurricane Dorian, which has left a path of destruction in its wake in the Bahamas and is now lashing the East Coast of the United States.
We’ll also talk about AB 5 (Gonzalez), a California measure that would extend labor protections and benefits to workers labeled as independent
contractors. The bill will have major implications for “gig economy” contractors and companies like Uber and Lyft, among others. Guests include:
- Bob Berwyn, freelance environmental reporter who writes
for publications including InsideClimate News and
Deutsche Welle and is an international correspondent for Santa
Barbara-based Pacific Standard magazine - Henry Fountain, reporter and editor at the New York Times and the
author of The Great Quake: How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed our Understanding of the Planet - Lauren Gurley, staff writer at Vice News’ Motherboard,
covering the labor movement in the tech sector
You can stream it live at 10am today or listen to 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area. Call 866-798-TALK with questions or comments!
