With the hyperpartisan politics surrounding healthcare stirred up by efforts to repeal Obamacare and calls for a single-payer system, both Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa are claiming the mantle of healthcare visionary.

On the campaign trail the two Democratic candidates for governor are touting their signature healthcare accomplishments from earlier in their political careers as their bona fides.

For Newsom, it’s about Healthy San Francisco, the nation’s first municipal universal healthcare program, approved while he was mayor; and for Villaraigosa, it’s Healthy Families, which provided healthcare coverage to the children of California’s working poor, legislation he authored as a California assemblyman.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday signed legislation to ensure farm labor contractors train employees on how to prevent and report sexual assault, a response to a 2013 PBS Frontline investigation that found sexual violence against women was a pervasive problem in California fields.

Senate Bill 295 by Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel) makes sexual harassment training mandatory at all businesses that supervise farm employees or provide them with lodging, transportation or other services.

The training has to be conducted or interpreted in a language that employees can understand, the law stipulates, and farm labor contractors will have to provide proof of all of their materials and resources to the Farm Labor Commission as part of the license renewal process.

The political dominoes from U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer's retirement are almost done falling. 

Her decision two years ago to forgo reelection led to a reshuffling that eventually left vacant a state Assembly seat in Los Angeles. 

There are 13 candidates running in the special election, and the primary is Tuesday.

For months, lawmakers in Sacramento said that their effort to pass a package of bills aimed at California's housing woes was only the beginning.

They repeated that pledge on Friday, even after acknowledging the heavy political lift it took just to pass the simple steps signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown.

On this week's podcast episode, we discuss the political and practical impact of the new housing laws, as well as what might be in store for 2018.

At a signing ceremony in San Francisco on Friday morning, Gov. Jerry Brown signed 15 bills aimed at addressing the state's mounting housing problems. 

"It is a big challenge," Brown said. "We have risen to it this year."

The bills could add nearly $1 billion in new funding for low-income housing developments in the near term as well as lessen regulations that slow growth.

Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers are gathered in San Francisco for the signing into law of a package of proposals designed to tackle some of the most pressing parts of California's housing crisis.

California will require online businesses that offer free trials to tell customers exactly how much an automatic renewal will cost under a law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday. 

The law's author, Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys), thinks the bill, known as SB 313, will make it easier for customers to cancel service.

“Consumers need to know what they are signing up for and that they can just as easily cancel any service or subscription online as when they started it online," Hertzberg said in a statement. 

California candidate for governor Antonio Villaraigosa wants the state to bring back an urban renewal program to fund low-income housing.

"Solving our state's growing housing crisis will take a sustained commitment and creative thinking," Villaraigosa wrote in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. "But when it comes to giving local governments the tools they need, we don't need to reinvent the wheel."

Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers eliminated a state redevelopment program in 2011 as a cost-cutting move aimed at saving nearly $2 billion during the state's budget crisis. The program allowed cities to target run-down neighborhoods for investment and use a share of property tax dollars generated by development to fund improvements, including financing low-income housing. But doing so required the state to spend more to support public schools, and Brown derided the agencies as being rife with abuses of taxpayer dollars.

One-third of Californian taxpayers could be forced to pay thousands more in federal taxes from the repeal of one deduction under a GOP proposal released Wednesday, setting up another political dilemma for California Republicans facing tough reelection battles next year as Democrats work to win back the House of Representatives.

The potential repeal of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which allows taxpayers to write off those taxes on their federal returns, would hit especially hard in wealthier areas, some of which are on the exact turf Democrats are trying to win over in Southern California.

Details of the overall tax reform plan have yet to be worked out, but so far, vulnerable California Republicans are not joining GOP colleagues in other states who have said they won’t accept the repeal of the deduction, and some of them seem willing to negotiate.

Today we answer questions.

Woo-hoo! Now that Gov. Jerry Brown has signed the bill, it looks like California is moving up its 2020 presidential primary. Finally!

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