[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Sara S. Nichols

Listening to an extensive series of interviews yesterday on the Forum show on KQED (Northern California public radio, avaiilable live on the net and which also has archived shows) about the big oil spill in San Francisco bay, I was struck by how strongly crises affect public policy in California, and elsewhere. Crises seem to have become a necessary ingredient for social change to occur.

From this vantage point, using only anecdote and my limited memory, it seems that clear, obvious, well-documented systemic problems are not sufficient to capture the attention of the public or their legislators. Well, I overstate the case. Problems such as millions of uninsured people, indisputable global warming, and widely weakened bridges do reach the attention of the public and their legislators, but for the most part, those systemic problems are not sufficient to result in policy changes.

Instead, we need Hurricane Katrina, dramatic bridge collapses, and killing sprees in high schools to force legislators to pass legislation and appropriate money to address such matters.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

Don Perata, the President pro Tem of the California State Senate, articulated at a packed press conference yesterday why his approach, as outlined in Senate Bill 2 in the special session on water is the right approach from both a political and good public policy standpoint and why it is better than the Republican alternative being proposed.. He also explained why, in his opinion, if an agreement is not reached in the next week or so, it will probably need to go on the ballot, why it will win, and why trying to pass a legislative solution next year is fraught with peril. You can read this text of what he had to say or view the entire press conference on the California Channel archives. Perata was masterful at the press conference, speaking without notes and then answering reporters' questions.

Here is what he had to say:

"First of all, let me point out that this is a historic meeting, not because we're working on an Italian holiday, although in my district it's called Indigenous People's Day--it's kind of new values.