Streetsblog Los Angeles

It was the California State Assembly's turn to review the recent State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI) report on Caltrans at a Transportation Committee hearing Monday.

The deadline to introduce new bills to the California legislature was Friday, so a slew of new legislation is currently being assigned to committees for hearing. Some of them are so-called “spot” bills, as in “hold a spot in line for me, bub,” containing a bare minimum of information, with the plan being to shape them in legislative discussion. All of them are likely to be amended before reaching a vote, and they must go through two voting processes (one in each house) before being passed on to the governor to be signed. Meanwhile, they give some clues about what our lawmakers are thinking about.

CA Senator Darrell Steinberg proposed a change yesterday to California's nascent cap-and-trade program that would replace next year's cap on fuel emissions with a per-gallon carbon tax. Steinberg called it a “broader, more stable, and more flexible” way to reduce emissions from fuels than cap-and-trade.

Streetsblog SF and Los Angeles have a new hire starting on February 1 that will dramatically expand our coverage. I am pleased to announce that Melanie Curry will be as full-time writer covering news out of the California capitol and across the state.

CA Assemblyman Mike Gatto introduced legislation Tuesday mandating that any driver who commits a hit and run offense, even if the victim is not seriously injured, forfeit their driver's license for six months. Gatto's legislation is his second effort to criminalize hit and run crashes following last year's Assembly Bill 184 which extended the statute of limitations for hit and run drivers.

Every state has its "third rail" that politicians are afraid to touch. When I began my advocacy career in New Jersey in 2004, politicians were deathly afraid of raising any tax after Democratic Governor Jim Florio was ousted in the solidly blue state because of tax increases he pushed through. Florio had been defeated over a decade earlier in 1993.

(Streetsblog LA editor's note: The debate over how to spend the state's cap-and-trade funding source was already hot last year. This year, it could become one of the largest transportation stories in the state, competing even with High Speed Rail. As such, Streetsblog LA welcomes op-ed pieces on how to best use those funds. Email ideas to damien@streetsblog.org - DN)

Last week, the media reported, once again, that the California High-Speed Rail project is in its death throes.

Streetsblog is happy to announce the opening of a new, full-time Sacramento-based reporting position to cover livable streets news from around California and the state capitol beginning in early 2014.