Assembly Bill 84: Yet Another Attack on California Charter Schools
Ever since charter school supporter Gov. Jerry Brown left office in 2019, charter schools have been under attack in Sacramento. The latest attack is Assembly Bill 84 (Muratsuchi), which would – if enacted – would impose huge new restrictions that could hinder – if not decimate – the state’s non-classroom based charter schools. Hundreds of thousands of students statewide could be affected.
As Lance Izumi, senior director of PRI’s Center for Education, wrote about the controversy, “a more moderate bill (Senate Bill 414) focused narrowly on financial management is being pushed by Senator Angelique Ashby (D-Sacramento).”
“Which bill wins out in the end,” Izumi writes, “will determine the survival of an entire segment of the charter school sector and the educational future of hundreds of thousands of children who have been failed by the regular public school system.
Addressing California’s Falling Oil Production and Rising Gas Prices
Legislators have been catching heat from angry constituents upset at paying so much for electricity and gas compared to the rest of the country.
As PRI’s research has shown, misguided government policy has dramatically increased the energy burdens of Californians. State government is full steam ahead in implementing costly and unworkable green mandates, such as the looming 100 percent electric vehicle mandate and the 100 percent renewable energy requirements. As PRI’s recent studyhas shown, the cost of going green will cost Californians upwards of $20,000 from now until 2050.
An immediate concern is the shutdown of two major oil refineries next year that will drop gasoline supply significantly and raise prices to as much as $8.25 per gallon according to a USC study. Lawmakers and the Newsom administration are scrambling to produce a solution by the end of session.
As PRI’s Kerry Jackson recently asked in a Right by the Bay post, “What did California officials think was going to happen when they decided it was a dazzlingly brilliant idea to hound the oil industry out of the state?”
The priority appears to be more taxpayer funded giveaways, as evidenced by the recent Air Resources Board plan for California taxpayers to pay for electric vehicle tax credits scrapped by the Trump administration. As PRI’s Dr. Wayne Winegarden told the San Diego Union Tribune, “We don’t have the resources to make up for the cuts from the federal government, and trying to do so is really going to fiscally destroy the state.”
After Palisades Fire, What Will Sacramento Do on Insurance, Water and Prevention?
As the just-published Free Cities Center booklet by Steven Greenhut reminds us, January’s destructive Southern California wildfires were made worse by government incompetence and policy mistakes.
The booklet recommends reforms to improve brush clearance, address water infrastructure failures in the Palisades area, enact long-overdue reforms to fix the state’s broken property insurance market, and facilitate the quick rebuilding of fire-ravaged communities.
On a recent episode of Next Round, I asked Greenhut whether he thought policymakers would do the right thing now that we’ve seen how bad policy can make fighting wildfires and the recovery process worse. He told me that he wasn’t optimistic at all that state government has learned their lesson, so don’t hold your breath that lawmakers will enact any meaningful reforms before the end of session.
Tim Anaya is the Pacific Research Institute’s vice president of marketing and communications and co-author of The California Left Coast Survivor’s Guide.
