News Clips

A new report out Wednesday from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found continuing voting problems for people of color and people with disabilities. The report took a national view, but some of these challenges have been playing out in California.

No Cambodian-American serves as an elected official in Long Beach. Residents and activists for the Cambodian community there — the largest in the nation — want to change that. They're pushing the city to draw up new council districts that could effectively give them their own representative.

A controversial proposal to allow state legislative leaders to accept bigger campaign checks for their favored candidates was sidelined by lawmakers for the year on Monday after it failed to garner sufficient support in the state Senate.

Rarely are power grabs as transparent as Assembly Bill 84. Introduced by Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, the bill would allow legislative leaders to raise and spend much more campaign money than currently allowed. We urge the state Senate to vote it down.

“AB 84 would be the biggest rollback of California’s campaign finance law in at least a decade,” Nicolas Heidorn of California Common Cause told the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee before it voted to approve the measure last week.

The bill’s supporters are touting AB 84 as a transparency and accountability measure because it would require more frequent disclosures by campaign committees. While we would like to see more frequent campaign disclosures, we are not fooled. Transparency is nothing more than the sweet coating to disguise the bitter taste of a power grab.