A weekly update on the goings-on in Sacramento
For the week ending October 27, 2007
Key bills and issues we've been following during the
Past week and beyond
Last week we highlighted bills dealing with healthcare, consumer rights and environmental issues. Again, keeping in mind that a legislative session is comprised of two calendar years, there are many bills that will re-emerge in January if they were not resolved during this portion of the legislative session. We will follow those bills when the session reconvenes in January.
This week we'll look at what happened to a variety of bills dealing with working families, public safety and civil rights. Generally speaking, labor issues and particularly bills dealing with fixing the heavily skewed workers compensation mess faired very poorly. Attempts to improve conditions for workers also faired badly as did efforts to provide reforms for the criminal justice system.
But before going into detail on some of these measures, it is only fitting that we comment on the devastating fires that so impacted our state and our communities over the past week. The impacts of these fires caused a staggering toll on our state. Just to provide some context for those who were fortunate enough to be out of harms way, consider that the fires:
Were responsible for the deaths of 15 or more people
Destroyed more than 650 square miles, an area two times the size of New York City
Caused over $1 Billion in damage
Destroyed or seriously damaged over 2500 homes
Forced 22,000 people into temporary shelters
Forced the evacuation of over 1 million people---the largest peacetime movement of American citizens since the Civil War
Cost the state over $90 million to fight (and still counting)
At the same time this massive devastation was taking place, the brave firefighters of this state (and the western U.S. who were called into service) demonstrated a level of courage and professionalism that must be commended and acknowledged.
Although there are those who believe more could have been done, there is no question that the response and effort of our firefighters was extraordinary. We all owe these brave people a debt of gratitude and thanks. While California has suffered numerous natural disasters and fires, nothing of this magnitude has occurred in the state before. The response by our Government's public safety branches---and particularly our firefighters, was exemplary.
Was it perfect? Probably not, but these are lessons that will be learned so that should we be faced with another emergency of this proportion, we will be even better prepared. In the meantime, major kudos to the firefighters who demonstrated, yet again, their bravery, tenacity and expertise is fighting back the awesome power of nature's devastation.
We hope that with the changing weather, we've seen the last of this devastating fire season. We need to continue perfecting our responses to emergencies, both from a government perspective and as individuals and communities. We will continue to learn from the natural disasters- fire, flood and earthquake- we experience in this state on a fairly regular basis.
We clearly need to ramp up our discussion of climate change that has caused such dangerous weather conditions and most seriously address how to reverse the perilous trends that are making our planet more susceptible to these kinds of devastating events.
We here at Speak Out California hope to be able to keep you up-to-date on all of this and any signings or vetoes by the Governor in the weeks and months ahead, so
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And now for the continuation of our analysis of the legislative year completed earlier this month:
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