(The Center Square) – This week in California, lawmakers announced that more than 1 million signatures had been collected for a voter identification ballot measure that is now one step closer to the November 2026 ballot.
If the ballot measure passes, it would require voters in the Golden State to present identification at the polls when they vote. Those who vote by mail would have to write the last four digits of their identification number on their ballot from a government-issued form of identification, the measure’s advocates said this week.
“All this does is it says that you need to be a U.S. citizen in order to register to vote and that you need to show a form of ID,” Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, told The Center Square in an exclusive interview before the press conference Tuesday outside the Capitol in Sacramento. “This is very simplistic. Thirty-six states have it. Every state that has implemented this has actually had higher voter participation.”
But opponents said the measure would add one more barrier to voting, especially for non-white voters.
“The number of people who don’t have current ID goes significantly up for voters of color,” Brittany Stonesifer, senior program manager for Common Cause California, told The Center Square outside the Capitol. “The studies consistently show that states with strict voter ID requirements have much lower turnout, and the gap between white voters and non-white voters goes up significantly.”
Also on Tuesday, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, talked about legislation he introduced this year, Senate Bill 875, which would allow cities across the state to withdraw from Pacific Gas & Electric, one of California’s largest investor-owned utility providers. Wiener said San Francisco has wanted to “break up” with PG&E for a long time.
“We’ve had a lot of problems with PG&E,” Wiener told The Center Square. “It’s too big. It’s two-thirds of the state, and it’s had so many problems with all the wildfires and all the other issues.”
PG&E officials responded to the bill, writing in an email to The Center Square that making utility service public would not lower bills for California’s ratepayers.
“The California Public Utilities Commission has been clear that the City and County of San Francisco would have to pay far more than the value of the assets, which means a takeover will drive up customer rates, not lower them,” wrote Lynsey Paulo, marketing and communications director for PG&E.
On Wednesday, members of the state Assembly’s Budget Subcommittee on Climate Crisis, Resources, Energy and Transportation heard from state agency officials about the governor’s January budget proposal and impacts on funding to environmental programs. Staff from the Legislative Analyst’s Office testified during the hearing that difficult trade-offs have to be considered, as the state faces year-on-year structural budget deficits that could rise to as much as $30 billion a year.
“The blanket under all of the comments is the state budget condition,” Rachel Ehlers, deputy legislative analyst for the Legislative Analyst’s Office, testified on Wednesday. “We as a state want to be able to use the tools that we have like our aircraft when there are fires, and not have them grounded because we didn’t provide funding to be able to utilize them. That, to us, is the kind of example of something where it’s pressing, it’s immediate, and if it’s not funded this year, then there’s a problem.”
Wednesday afternoon, Democratic lawmakers introduced a package of bills that aim to help increase the state’s wildfire readiness efforts and help Californians affected by wildfires respond and recover effectively. That package included bills that provide money to homeowners to help “home hardening” efforts and help increase county-level programs for wildfire response, among other objectives.
“Those programs are bringing in more in federal dollars for these communities than the state is spending in getting the programs going,” Eric Horne, California director for nonprofit organization Megafire Action, said during a news conference announcing the legislation. “With technology in particular, we’re seeing high ROI [return on investment] investments that amplify every single dollar that the state spends on wildfire mitigation and suppression. That is really what I think motivates the package.”
On Thursday, the top officials from the state’s two public university systems, the University of California and the California State University, testified in front of a Senate budget subcommittee about the financial challenges both university systems face in the wake of federal budget cuts. Both the UC and the CSU experienced millions of dollars worth of cuts to grant funding, which affect research at some of the top universities in the world, as well as cuts or eliminations of teacher training programs, they testified.
“In the past year, we’ve had 1,600 grants that have been affected by the federal withdrawals of support,” James Milliken, the president of the University of California system, told the subcommittee. “Twelve hundred of those have been temporarily reinstated; that is about $830 million worth. But they are currently under appeal. So that leaves about 400 grants that are either suspended or terminated, about $170 million research activity.”
