My thoughts on how to preserve California’s natural world do not fit tidily within an orthodoxy, but I was grateful for a recent local recognition. What matters now is to debate environmentalism. #cawater #caleg

The threats to California salmon are actually bipartisan, but first, a look at the Trump effect. #cawater #CAleg

In recent years, not all of California's salmon management mistakes are equal in their impact, there's just been too many of them. Part 2. #cawater #caleg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

I'm writing about California's struggling salmon this fall because the demise speaks to our changing politics and priorities and our outdated way of approaching increasingly complicated environmental problems. Here's the intro. #cawater #caleg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Isn't the best of a bad set of options to let California voters themselves decide on redistricting? #california #CAleg

Good for the Sacramento City Council for defending its balanced preservation/growth approach to Natomas and opposing a project too close to the river that county supervisors will consider next week. #sacramento

In California, can a huge project without a water supply actually get approved? Welcome to Sacramento County #cawater #CAleg #sacramento

Could the California Legislature screw up the electricity market, again? The mistake happened in less than a Sacramento minute. #CAleg

How many years should it take for government process to ponder a water tunnel? The choice is basically one decade or two #cawater #CAleg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

The water-efficient device is California's HUGE friend. No president should mess with any of them. #cawater #CALeg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

The Sacramento Democrats' attempt to stick it to Big Oil, without causing pain at the pump for consumers, experiences another setback. #CALeg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Scoopy the Sacramento Bee will forever be on the wall at Northwestern's J School. #Sacramento www.medill.northwestern.edu/news/2025/ni...

About a quarter of a general fund dollars for Medi-Cal health care goes to covering our undocumented residents. Something's about to give here in Sac on the state budget. Where will Newsom and the Dems cut? #CALeg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

A controversial Sacramento expansion proposal went before the city council in June of 2021 and was tabled for a month amid opposition. The staff decided it didn't need council approval and went ahead anyways. But did staff comply with the City Charter? #Sacramento www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

The story behind Howard Chan's fake return to Sacramento City Hall. He basically made it up. #Sacramento #CALeg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

For CapRadio to lose its tower land, several flukes had to happen over more than a decade. But it happened. Big cameo roles by CSU auditors and KVIE public television leadership. #sacramento www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

This is probably a new low for Sacramento political theater, an important virtual hearing by the water board getting hijacked, the webcast beaming images of pornography and an audio of hate. Everyone who cares about this issue lost on Monday. #cawater #CALeg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

California likely faces higher electricity costs if we don't partner more with our neighbors, but that is not our custom and we aren't exactly popular anyways. So this will be interesting. #CALeg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Nothing like a huge win and beam on a blustery night #sacramentokings #sacramento

Slashing the staff of the federal Bureau of Reclamation in the West is a form of water/flood control suicide. So short-sighted. And to what end? #cawater #CALeg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

There are two families in Ukraine's Kharkiv I have gotten to know since the beginning of the war. They aren't as optimistic as they once were, but they're not giving up. And neither should the United States. www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Newsom is fast emerging as the 2028 Republican challenger to JD Vance. #SACleg

The governor has ordered state workers back to their offices, but not himself, as he bromances with the far right on a podcast from his Marin home. Come on Gavin! Lead by example? Sacramento awaits. #CALeg #Sacramento www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

I got to hand it to the legislative Republicans, left out of policy making and budget setting by the supermajority Democrats, for getting under the leadership's skin by making some points, sometimes quite deftly, sometimes rather loudly. #CALeg #Sacarmento www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Here is the McClatchy think tank take on deciphering Trump's speech tonight. Started with culture wars, doubled down on tariffs, blamed Biden, painted a bright new American dawn. There ya go. www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Ten years ago, if Sacramento's state workers were told they only had to work in the office four days a week, there would be dancing in the streets. The governor's new back-to-work order will likely be met with some local amnesia. #CALeg #sacramento www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

California high-speed rail is now a slow-motion train wreck because Newsom and Biden blew their one chance to fully fund the first leg. Now we enter the land of budget cuts. #CALeg #sacramento www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

For whatever it's worth, as an opinion writer, while I'm incensed at how the owners are ruining their opinion voices, I subscribe to the @washingtonpost.com and the @latimes.com because their newsrooms are kicking ass. Defunding imperfect journalism in these imperfect times comes at risks.

The political timing of liberal Los Angeles catching on fire, just as Republicans were about to take control of Washington, couldn’t have been worse. California is no so vulnerable to the whims of DC politics, needing tens of billions of dollars to rebuild. www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Thanks @yousefbaig.bsky.social ! #CALeg #Sacramento

California Democrats have managed to let state Republicans become the champions of drug treatment as opposed to incarceration. Stubbornness can make for bad politics and policy. #CAleg www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-e...

Big changes could be coming to how Sacramento leaders oversee their (inadequate) affordable housing efforts. The way things work now, the city council and supervisors never actually meet in the same room at the same time. Nuts. #CAleg #Sacramento www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Lester Snow has a state and federal resume in California on all things water that likely will never be repeated in today's highly partisan age. Today in the Bee, he has words of wisdom. #cawater #CAleg #sacramento www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-e...

In this new Trump era, some Dems have clearly lost their voice. Gavin is sidelined indefinitely. Ro Khanna is finding his voice, and in a big way. And he's not ranting. A collaboration this morning with the great Marcos Breton. #CAleg #Sacramento www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Ah, Sacramento. I do love it here. Plenty of stories. Today, a public agency who doesn't think it's the public's business how it is challenging the distribution of local public dollars for transportation. #CAleg #Sacramento www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

There is no "affordability" agenda in Sacramento this year. Lawmakers must brace to potentially face an Edison crisis, an insurance crisis and a state budget crisis. Happy Monday! #sacramento #CAleg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

When government wastes the water of California farmers, and they do not rise up in unison, loudly and repeatedly, to denounce it, something has changed in our world. And not for the better. They need all the water they can get. #cawater @CAleg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Creeks and rivers flood to different rhythms, creeks vulnerable more to peak downpours, rivers to cumulative effects. In Sonoma, my favorite creek has likely seen its drama and was half the elevation of a true flood stage. #cawater #sonoma

Sacramento distributed $200 m in COVID relief money and has no list of where it went to. Nineteen contracts went to a statewide chamber that then gave the City Manager an award and supported his contract extension. Was this support earned or bought? #CAleg #Sacramento www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Hey, who is your Sacramento County supervisor? (Hint, it's not Darrell Steinberg.) Don't worry, if you don't know, you're in a lot of company. That our most powerful leaders govern in the shadows, however, isn't healthy for local democracy. #Sacramento #CAleg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Did the military just try to deliver more “beautiful” California water as promised by Trump and get shot down by farmers? Great scoop by @sjvn.bsky.social #cawater #CAleg sjvwater.org/decision-to-...

Trump has said some wild stuff about California water and the valve/faucet, the military, Canada. I've asked some smart folks what he's up to and I get shrugged shoulders. So here are three possibilities looking at this through political game theory. #cawater #CAleg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Ah, the water meter. Once banned in my Sacramento, meters are now blessed for dramatically lowering water use. This is a century-long story (I played a cameo role now and 20 years ago!). See one of the last ones going into the ground. #cawater #CAleg #sacramento www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Here in Sac, no outward signs of movements by our own armed forces. Or changes in water operations. The Kings did win though! Earth to Trump. Come in please. #cawater #CAleg #Sacramento

The president's latest executive order has a longshot chance of slightly increasing water supplies from a federal project that doesn't even reach Los Angeles. But it creates an unhelpful cloud of uncertainty over the Delta in particular. Sigh. #cawater #CAleg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

I doubt the courts will uphold an emergency order for Los Angeles that reoperates a water project that does not serve them. #cawater #CAleg www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Federal aid for fire-ravaged Los Angeles shouldn't be conditioned on changing water management. Ransom-based disaster relief is a really bad precedent. #cawater #CAleg www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

Sacramento's City Council has had eight scheduled closed session discussions so far this year regarding the city manager position. If the new mayor quickly pivots to bringing the public into this discussion, he would be serving the city's interests. #sacramento www.sacbee.com/opinion/arti...

With LeBron Hill of the SacBee. Great win! #sacramento #sacramentokings #lightthebeam