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National Blood Crisis May Put Patients at Risk

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National Blood Crisis May Put Patients at Risk

LOS ANGELES — The American Red Cross is facing a national blood crisis – its worst blood shortage in more than a decade. Dangerously low blood supply levels are posing a concerning risk to patient care and forcing doctors to make difficult decisions about who receives blood transfusions and who will need to wait until more products become available.

Blood and platelet donations are critically needed to help prevent further delays in vital medical treatments, and donors of all blood types – especially type O − are urged to make an appointment now to give in the weeks ahead.

In recent weeks, the Red Cross has had less than a one-day supply of critical blood types and has had to limit blood product distributions to hospitals. At times, as much as one-quarter of hospital blood needs are not being met.

Another challenge the Red Cross is facing is staffing shortages. To meet the critical need for blood, The Red Cross needs to hire additional staff.

Pandemic challenges

The Red Cross continues to confront relentless challenges due to COVID-19, including about a 10% overall decline in the number of people donating blood as well as ongoing blood drive cancellations and staffing limitations. Additionally, the pandemic has contributed to a 62% drop in blood drives at schools and colleges.

Over the next month, about 72% of donation appointments remain unfilled in the Los Angeles Red Cross Region. Make an appointment to give blood or platelets as soon as possible by using the Red Cross Blood Donor App, visiting RedCrossBlood.org or calling 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767).

Volunteers needed

In addition to blood donors, the Red Cross also needs the help of volunteers to support critical blood collections across the country. Blood transportation specialists – another volunteer opportunity − provide a critical link between blood donors and blood recipients by delivering blood to hospitals in communities across the country. To volunteer, visit redcross.org/volunteertoday.

Blood drive safety

Each Red Cross blood drive and donation center follows the highest standards of safety and infection control, andadditional precautions– including face masks for donors and staff, regardless of vaccination status – have been implemented to help protect the health of all those in attendance. Donors are asked to schedule an appointment prior to arriving at the drive.

Save time during donation

Donors can also save up to 15 minutes at the blood drive by completing a RapidPass®. With RapidPass®, donors complete the pre-donation reading and health history questionnaire online, on the day of donation, from a mobile device or computer. To complete a RapidPass®, follow the instructions at RedCrossBlood.org/RapidPass or use the Red Cross Blood Donor App.

Gov. Newsom Highlights Plan to Confront Homelessness Crisis

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Gov. Newsom Highlights Plan to Confront Homelessness Crisis

SACRAMENTO – Governor Gavin Newsom Jan. 11, visited a homeless encampment in San Diego to highlight his proposed additional $2 billion package – for a total of $14 billion – to the state’s multi-year plan to confront the homelessness crisis, which will create 55,000 new housing units and treatment slots when fully implemented.

Under Gov. Newsom’s Project Roomkey and Homekey programs, California has provided temporary shelter for 50,000 Californians and helped another 8,000 secure more permanent housing through the state’s purchase of motels, hotels and other buildings. In 2021, Gov. Newsom invested a historic $12 billion to help get the most vulnerable people off the streets and into the mental and behavioral health services they need. The California Blueprint will bolster last year’s investments with an additional $1.5 billion for behavioral health bridge housing to get people off the street and into treatment, and $500 million toward encampment resolution grants for local jurisdictions to implement short- and long-term rehousing strategies for people experiencing homelessness in encampments around the state.

The California Blueprint also expands Gov. Newsom’s Returning Home Well program, a pandemic response to provide transitional housing and mental health services to people exiting incarceration. Further, the Blueprint calls for expanding Medi-Cal benefits to include mobile crisis response. For the first time ever, California will support mobile crisis response as a covered benefit under Medi-Cal for everyone eligible – investing $1.4 billion over five years so that people experiencing homelessness will receive better, more timely behavioral health care, especially in times of crisis.

Ports Briefs: Sec. Buttigieg Tours POLB; CA Invests $2.3 Billion in Ports; Container Dwell Fee’s Continue to Hold

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Ports Briefs: Sec. Buttigieg Tours POLB; CA Invests $2.3 Billion in Ports; Container Dwell Fee’s Continue to Hold

Transportation Secretary Buttigieg Tours POLB

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Jan. 11, toured the nation’s largest port complex, including the Port of Long Beach, meeting with local officials while seeing firsthand efforts to deliver goods during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The tour came as America’s maritime ports are set to receive an infusion of critical infrastructure funding, with $17 billion allocated for ports and waterways in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Secretary Pete Buttigieg praised the efforts of supply chain workers and the creativity coming out of the partnerships between the ports and the administration. He added good progress is being made as shown by the numbers on cargo movement, goods on shelves, and deliveries on time. Secretary Buttigieg said there is still more to do, and the $52 million grant for the POLB Pier B On-Dock Rail Facility will allow the port to move more goods, more quickly.

Tuesday’s visit included a boat tour followed by a press conference on the helipad at the port’s Joint Command and Control Center.

POLA Applauds Gov. Newsom’s Plan to Invest $2.3 Billion In California Ports

SAN PEDRO — Gov. Galvin Newsom Jan. 10, unveiled his 2022-23 state budget proposal, known as “The California Blueprint.” The proposed budget includes a planned record investment of $2.3 billion for California ports.

The Governor’s $2.3 billion plan for ports includes:

Port Infrastructure and Goods Movement: $1.2 billion for port-related projects that increase goods movement capacity on rail and roadways serving ports and at port terminals, including railyard expansions, new bridges, and zero-emission modernization projects.

Zero-Emission Equipment and Infrastructure: $875 million for zero-emission port equipment, short-haul (drayage) trucks, and infrastructure.

Workforce Training: $110 million for a training campus to support workforce resilience in the face of supply chain disruption and accelerate the deployment of zero emission equipment and technologies.

Commercial Driver’s Licenses: $40 million to enhance California’s capacity to issue Commercial Driver’s Licenses.

Operational and Process Improvements: $30 million for the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development to provide funding for operational and process improvements at the ports. This could include enhancing the movement of goods and improving data interconnectivity between the ports to enable efficient cargo movement, reduce congestion, and create opportunities to increase cargo volume by promoting and building supply chain efficiency

Details: www.ebudget.ca.gov/FullBudgetSummary.pdf

Container Dwell Fee’ On Hold Until Jan. 17

The Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles announced Jan 10, that consideration of the “Container Dwell Fee” will be held off another week, until Jan. 17.

The two ports have seen a combined decline of 45% in aging cargo on the docks since the program was announced on Oct. 25.

The executive directors of both ports will reassess fee implementation after monitoring data over the next week. Fee implementation has been postponed by both ports since the start of the program.

Under the temporary policy approved Oct. 29 by the Harbor Commissions of both ports, ocean carriers can be charged for each import container that falls into one of two categories: In the case of containers scheduled to move by truck, ocean carriers could be charged for every container dwelling nine days or more. For containers moving by rail, ocean carriers could be charged if a container has dwelled for six days or more. Currently, no date has been set to start the count with respect to container dwell time.

What Do You Call a Failed Insurrection? PRACTICE

Greg Palast
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What Do You Call a Failed Insurrection? PRACTICE

By Greg Palast

[Washington, January 6, 2025] Take a Red Pill and join me in the future for the reading of the electoral vote. The year is 2025. It’s 1pm on January 6 and Vice-President Kamala Harris has begun opening the envelopes with the electoral vote from each state, alphabetically.

When she reaches Georgia, its new Republican Senator Herschel Walker objects to accepting Harris’ choice of the slate of Electors pledged to Joe Biden, the slate submitted by Georgia’s Governor Stacey Abrams. Instead, Sen. Walker demands Harris count the vote of the slate submitted by Georgia’s GOP-controlled legislature with Electors committed to Donald Trump.

Republicans, holding the majority in the House since the 2022 mid-terms, have rejected Biden’s Electors from Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan. Vice-President Harris is therefore compelled to invoke the Constitution’s procedure for disputed elections outlined in the Twelfth Amendment.

Under this little-known Constitutional process, each state receives but a single vote. Republicans control the Congressional delegations of 27 states. Though that represents just a tiny portion of America’s voters, Donald Trump wins “re-election” with a vote of 27 to 23. Trump will be inaugurated, for a second time, on January 20, 2025.

Yes, it CAN happen here

You’re thinking,“Palast, do you really believe this could happen?”

You betcha.

Forget the whack-jobs who invaded the Capitol one year ago today. These “insurrectionists” were schmucks with no chance of overturning the election. (I don’t dismiss the gravity of their actions–they crushed the skull of a policeman and threatened other murders in the hall of the people.)

But truly, the real danger was in the Oval Office when, two days earlier, Trump peddled a memo by attorney John Eastman.Eastman’s memo laid out, in detail, the dark scenario I described above, in which Republicans use the Twelfth Amendment to overturn the choice of the voters.

And if you think the US Supreme Court will block this coup d’état,fuhgeddaboudit.

Count on the Supreme Court to cite Article II of the Constitution, the one that says the electors to the Electoral College will be chosen by state legislatures, not voters. That’s right. In fact, there’s not one damn word in the Constitution granting citizens the right to vote–and certainly not the right to vote for President.

The Supremes have already relied on Article II to bless a coup against democracy: In 2000, the Court adopted the Florida Legislature’s certification of the Electors for George W. Bushbefore the ballot count was completed. Sec. of State Katherine Harris stopped count when Bush was ahead by a teensy 537 votes–yet 178,000 ballots had not been tallied, ballots concentrated in Jacksonville and other African-American majority towns. The GOP-controlled legislature chose the Bush electors.

How to Stop a Coup

As a journalist, it’s not my job to tell you whether Biden or Trump should be President. How about we let the voters make that choice? But that’s not easy.

Whether we have a democracy in 2024 depends on whether we can preserve democracy in 2022.
And once again, it will come down to Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin–where voting is about to get a lot harder for people of color as we’ve uncovered in ourlatest investigation.

This year, vigilante “vote fraud” hunters have challenged the right of 360,000 Georgians to cast their ballots. If they succeed in this mass voter purge, combined with other vote suppression trickery in the new law SB 202, Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock’s re-election is in real danger, no matter the will of the voters.

The following scenario is then more than possible in January 2025: Warnock loses, throwing US Senate control to the GOP; the House goes Republican as well. In 2024, the Democratic presidential candidate wins Georgia, as in 2020, by just 12,000 votes.

But then, the Georgia legislature, citing alleged vote fraud by Democrats, certifies a slate of Electors committed to Trump. Gov. Stacey Abrams, who gets elected despite vote suppression headwinds, sends a competing slate of Electors to Congress.

The Twelfth Amendment (and the empowerment of state legislatures in Article II) gives the new Republican Congress the power to choose the Trump slates. And this time, the GOP Senators and Reps, watching what has happened to the careers of anti-Trump Republicans, fall in line and let the Twelfth Amendment take its dark course.

Then it’sHail to the Thief.

Can we stop this coup? Yes, but only before it happens: by protecting the vote in Georgia and other swing states. If we wait until 2024, it will be too late. The work begins this midterm year.

Right now.

And while we’re at it, repeal the Constitution

Did our Founding Fathers make an unintended error in designating state legislators, not voters, the power to choose our President?

Nope. Historians like to say the Declaration of Independence gave America its democracy, and the Constitution took it away. John Adams, our second President, was thrilled that Thomas Jefferson was excluded from writing the Constitution, and Jefferson’s furious objection to it mostly ignored. Adams warned against creating this dangerous thing democracy which he termed the instrument of, “the firewomen,badauds, the stage players, the atheists, the deists, the scribblers for any cause at three livres a day, the Jews,” and other such undesirables who would, “destroy all nobles.”

So, our founding nobility chose the nobles of each state, the legislators, all then landed gentry, to choose the Electors who would in turn, choose the President.

Indeed, if you are a fan of democracy, it’s hard to find a clause in the Constitution worth defending. What kind of “democracy” gives two Senate seats to West Virginia, an equal number to California, and none to Washington DC? Let us give thanks for the Bill of Rights which put some limits on this Constitutional monstrosity.

So, should we junk the Constitution? Well, that’s a discussion for another day, probably another century.

In the meantime, let’s start, today, with protecting the fragile little shards of democracy still left to us.

LA County Surpasses 2 Million Total Cases; Hospitalizations Continue to Rise Amid Omicron

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LA County Surpasses 2 Million Total Cases; Hospitalizations Continue to Rise Amid Omicron

Public Health Jan. 10, reports another grim milestone as Los Angeles County has now confirmed more than 2 million total cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. The current surge of COVID-19 infections also continues to drive up hospitalizations, as today the number of COVID-positive patients in Los Angeles County hospitals has topped 3,400, the highest level since Feb. 11, 2021.

The good news is that while hospitalizations continue to climb, Public Health data shows that many positive cases are admitted for reasons other than COVID but are identified with COVID when tested for COVID upon hospital admission. These are referred to as incidental COVID hospitalizations. For the week ending Dec. 26, an estimated 55% of COVID-positive hospitalized patients fell into this category of incidental COVID hospitalizations.

Currently 14% of the COVID-positive hospitalized patients are in the ICU, and 7% are on a ventilator. Additionally, 23% of ICU beds are currently being occupied by COVID-positive cases, an increase of 9% from last week. Between Dec. 15 and Dec. 28, the ICU admission rate for unvaccinated individuals was 21 times higher than the rate among fully vaccinated individuals.

The proportion of hospitalizations among children has not changed from the prior week. While the total number of children hospitalized remains low and the proportion of hospitalizations among children remains stable, the number of children in each age group that were admitted to the hospital significantly increased over the past month. The largest rise was seen among children 0-4 years old, increasing from four hospital admissions for the week ending Dec. 4 to 58 hospital admissions for the week ending Jan. Increases were also seen for the 12-to-17-year-old age group, from 1 hospital admission to 16 hospital admissions, and for the 5-to-11-year-old age group, from two hospital admissions to five hospital admissions, comparing the week ending Dec. 4 to the week ending Jan. 1.

Public Health has identified a total 2,010,964 positive cases of COVID-19 across all areas of L.A. County. The Jan. 10 positivity rate is 21.4%.

There are 3,472 people with COVID-19 hospitalized. Testing results are available for more than 10,113,300 individuals, with 16% of people testing positive.

To keep workplaces and schools open, residents and workers are asked to:

Get tested to help reduce the spread, especially if you traveled for the holidays, have had a possible exposure, or have symptoms, or are gathering with people not in your household

Adhere to masking requirements when indoors or at crowded outdoor spaces, regardless of vaccination status

Residents are legally required to be isolated if they have a positive COVID test result and vaccinated close contacts with symptoms and unvaccinated close contacts need to be quarantined.

For updated isolation and quarantine guidance, please visit www.publichealth.lacounty.gov

For information on where you can get tested, please visit www.covid19.lacounty.gov/testing/

 

COVID-19 Briefs: Hahn Calls To Meet COVID Testing Demands and Quarantine Updates For Long Beach

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COVID-19 Briefs: Hahn Calls To Meet COVID Testing Demands and Quarantine Updates For Long Beach

Hahn Calls for Using County Facilities and Disaster Service Workers to Meet COVID Testing Demands

Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn Jan. 10, called for Los Angeles County to deploy disaster service workers and use existing County facilities, such as libraries and health clinics, to stand up new COVID-19 testing facilities to meet unprecedented testing demand created by the omicron variant.

“It is unacceptable how long our residents have had to wait or how far they have had to drive just to get tested for COVID-19 these past few weeks. LA County needs to treat this demand for testing with urgency. I am urging the County to deploy our Disaster Service Workers and calling on our Department of Health Services to set up testing sites at LA County Libraries and health clinics.”

City of Long Beach Issues Updated Isolation and Quarantine Orders, Health Order

LONG BEACH — The Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services has issued updated Isolation and Quarantine Orders and an updated Health Order, all of which took effect on Jan. 4, 2022. These orders align with the Centers for Disease Control and California Department of Public Health guidance for community-related exposure to COVID-19. Click below to get important information on what to do if you test positive for COVID-19 or are exposed to someone who has tested positive.

Details: www.longbeach.gov/updated-isolation-and-quarantine-orders-health-order

Funeral, Protest of Police Killing of Valentina Orellana Peralta,

Mark Friedman
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Funeral, Protest of Police Killing of Valentina Orellana Peralta,

Civil rights leader, Rev., Al Sharpton, delivered the eulogy at the funeral for 14-year-old Valentina Orellana Peralta, who was killed by a Los Angeles police officer Dec. 23 while shopping at a North Hollywood store. Attorney Ben Crump, who also handled the high-profile cases of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, also spoke at the funeral and press conference held January 10 at the City of Refuge church in Gardena.

The press conference and funeral were attended by several hundred people, including members of the media, Peralta’s family, anti-police brutality activists and clergy. This is the highest profile case of a Latino/a killed by cops nationally.

A statement distributed by the LA Hands Off Cuba Committee, entitled, “Why there are no George Floyd’s or Valentina Orellana’s in Cuba,” was well received.

Valentina and her mother, Soledad Peralta, were shopping for dresses in the changing room of a Burlington store when one of three rounds fired by Officer William Dorsey Jones Jr.penetrated the wall and struck Valentina, who died in her mother’s arms.

LAPD officer Jones was firing at an unarmed man, later identified as Daniel Elena-Lopez, who assaulted a customer with a bicycle lock. In released body camera footage, other officers where shouting to Jones to slow down as he moved to the front with his AR15 assault rifle ready to shoot.

Standing in front of nearly 100 members of local and national media, Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network, condemned the cop and the Los Angeles Police Department for the use of excessive force.” Despite the fact that this is a not a white officer, it is a bad shooting. It is reckless behavior that resulted in the death of a 14-year-old girl. We would be less than civil rights leaders if we were not to stand with the family. Valentina could have been my daughter. So, we are not here to displace activists but to support them.”

Before the funeral proceedings, Sharpton and Crump demanded police accountability in the shooting death of Peralta.

“We march for justice for George Floyd and now for Valentina,” Crump said.

Sharpton and Crump called for a full investigation, noting that “the eyes of the nation and the world are watching as we did in Minneapolis in Brunswick, Georgia,” referencing the cities in which Floyd and Arbery were killed.

“We are asking the mayor and the California’s attorney general to treat this case is if it was your daughter,” Sharpton said.

“What more innocent life can there be other than Valentina’s?” Sharpton said. “The value of a life was not considered here. Justice must be justice no matter who it is and who is involved. I’m not going to feel better if a Black officer shoots me.”

In reply to a question of whether there’s been any positive police reforms in the wake of high profile cop killings across the country, Crump said, “Since the killing of George Floyd 400 cities have instituted regulations against police chokeholds. Since the murder of Breanna Taylor 100 cities have abolished no knock warrants.”

But little seems to have changed in LA where police killings occur weekly, “investigations” held, and cops exonerated.”

At the funeral, Crump began his remarks:

We came to make a plea for justice. Justice represents protection of the innocent. Who is more innocent than 14-year-old Valentina Orellana? Her innocent blood has the attention of those in LA, Chile and all across America. We say no peace without justice. The blood of Valentina will not come off the hands of the LAPD who have justified this unjustifiable action.

Crump then led the crowd in a chant: Valentina is innocent.

During the funeral service, the father, Juan Pablo Orellana, assured that he will not rest until there is justice for his daughter.

“We will never get over it,” he continued. “They have destroyed us as a family and as parents we wish with all our heart that no father or mother in the world lives this sadness that will last our whole lives.”

The funeral was followed by a caravan to Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office in downtown Los Angeles.

LAHSA Announces the Dates for the 2022 Homeless Count

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LAHSA Announces the Dates for the 2022 Homeless Count

The 2022 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count will take place Jan. 25 to 27, 2022.

Last year, the Count’s main component – the unsheltered street count – could not be conducted because the thousands of volunteers needed to cover Los Angeles County could not be gathered safely. While the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority is taking measures to ensure volunteers can count safely with minimal contact.

Since 2016, the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, overseen by LAHSA, has conducted an unsheltered street count annually in order to better understand homelessness across the county. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires that a count be conducted every other year. Given the size of Los Angeles County, volunteers will spend three nights counting in different parts of the region:

Jan. 25: San Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys

Jan. 26: West Los Angeles, Southeast Los Angeles, & the South Bay

Jan. 27: Antelope Valley, Metro Los Angeles, and South Los Angeles

The 2021 Housing Inventory Count and Shelter Count, two portions of this year’s count that could be conducted safely, found that the LA region’s shelter capacity on any given night was 24,616 beds, a 57% increase over the last three years. LAHSA also reported 33,592 permanent housing options, an increase of 16% over the same time period.

In 2020, the last time the count could safely be conducted, 66,436 people were found to be living on the street in tents, makeshift dwellings, and vehicles.

LAHSA continues to seek volunteers to count in January. Those interested can visit

Theycountwillyou.org for more information and to register.

Homeless count deployment sites will utilize different COVID-19 precautions, including outdoor distribution of materials, requiring all volunteers and staff to wear masks, directing participants to maintain social distance, and making personal protective equipment or PPE accessible to all participants.

While volunteers are encouraged to register as teams to avoid unnecessary exposure to one another, LAHSA is also encouraging volunteers to be vaccinated and/or show negative test results in case they do intend to work with other volunteers outside their respective bubbles.

Details: For updates on safety guidelines, visit www.theycountwillyou.org

Prop. 19: Why the Delay?

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Prop. 19: Why the Delay?

Assessor Prang has reported received increasing emails and phone calls from frustrated property owners asking about the delays in the processing of property transfers, specifically, senior citizen “base year transfers” and “parent to child transfers.” Because California is now subject to a new law governing some of these transfers, known as Proposition 19, Assessor Prang explains below why these delays are occurring.

Prop. 19, approved by the voters last November, is still posing challenges for California assessors who are responsible for administering the new law. The measure is very complex and requires significant technological and administrative changes that have been difficult for the 58 county assessors to implement and that has led to processing delays and raising the ire of property owners and assessors alike.

Prop. 19 is a Constitutional amendment to Proposition 13 that allows seniors and the disabled to sell their home and buy a new one without experiencing an increase in property taxes. However, Prop. 19 also changed the property tax benefits for parents who plan to leave their homes to their children (and in some cases grandchildren), reducing many of the family inheritance benefits that were in place pre-Prop 19.

This change may sound easy, but as with most legislation by the ballot box, there were enormous operational issues that have resulted in delays and scores of frustrated taxpayers wondering why everything is taking so long to implement.

Here’s why:

First, Prop. 19, as adopted, was practically unenforceable. The amendment’s ballot language contained numerous ambiguities, contradictions and other deficiencies. It took my office and other assessors’ statewide weeks to analyze the impacts and requirements needed to implement the measure. We subsequently drafted proposed legislation to fix the many administrative deficiencies.

Next, Prop. 19 only provided assessors 3 to 4 months to implement the measure. Given the fundamental changes that are required to our operations and technology, and the establishment of new statewide logistics and protocols, assessors conservatively needed at least 18 months to fully implement the measure.

The timeline mandated for implementing the measure was not possible to meet. Assessors had to, and continue to, dedicate significant resources to try and quickly implement the measure, however, much more work remains to be done to fully comply with the Prop. 19 requirements.

As is often the case with ballot measures, this one needed legislative clarification to help assessors untangle many of the ambiguities in the law. Legislation was written and introduced, Senate Bill 539, that addressed many of the deficiencies that assessors required to administer the measure. The Legislation was introduced to the Governor Sept. 13 and passed and signed into law by the Governor on Sept. 30, meaning that assessors worked for months with little clarification and guidance on how to administer the measure.

While I greatly regret the inconvenience that property owners are experiencing with Prop. 19, we are doing all we can considering the many challenges we’ve had to overcome. It is a laborious and time-consuming process.

I must emphasize the implementation of Prop. 19 will continue to be a significant challenge resulting in confusion and uncertainty for both the public and administrators for many more months.

My Office has undertaken enormous efforts to provide comprehensive outreach and public education, while internally developing new systems, protocols, and guidelines to streamline the Prop. 19 claims. Additionally, we developed a dynamic landing page on our website dedicated to Prop. 19 that offers valuable resources and information, assessor.lacounty.gov/prop19. It also includes tools that will help you estimate your new property tax basis when the law requires an adjustment to your assessment.

Details: assessor.lacounty.gov and leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistory

California Blueprint Takes on the State’s Greatest Existential Threats, Builds on Historic Progress

Reporters Desk
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California Blueprint Takes on the State’s Greatest Existential Threats, Builds on Historic Progress

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom Jan. 10, unveiled his 2022-23 state budget proposal – the California Blueprint, a plan building on the state’s ongoing work to confront California’s greatest existential threats, bolster strong economic growth and make historic investments in California’s future. The Blueprint proposes billions more to support the state’s robust response to COVID-19 and nation-leading efforts to fight climate change – including worsening wildfires and drought, tackle persistent inequality and homelessness and keep California’s streets safe.

The California Blueprint provides a model for the entire country of how the US can continue providing short-term relief while investing in longer-term solutions that will benefit workers, businesses and families for years to come. The Governor’s plan builds on last year’s California Comeback Plan – the largest recovery package in the nation.

With a $45.7 billion surplus, the California Blueprint is built on a strong fiscal foundation that includes $34.6 billion in reserves and continues to pay down long-term retirement debts. It also appropriately prioritizes one-time spending over ongoing, allocating 86% of discretionary general funds to one-time spending.

California Blueprint outlines major investments in the following five areas of focus:

Fighting Covid-19 with Science

Gov. Newsom’s plan will focus on keeping schools open and the economy moving, protect frontline workers, battle misinformation, and ensure the healthcare system is prepared to handle whatever curves COVID-19 may throw in 2022. The Blueprint includes an additional $2.7 billion to ramp up vaccines, boosters, statewide testing, and increase medical personnel to meet potential surges.

Combating the Climate Crisis

California continues to face extreme weather conditions amid a changing climate. Gov. Newsom’s plan tackles the increasing threat of climate change including by:

  • Fighting Wildfires: The Blueprint provides $648 million to support firefighters, and more helicopters and dozers, along with an additional $1.2 billion – building on last year’s $1.5 billion investment – to step-up forest management and other practices that save lives.
  • Tackling the Drought: On top of last year’s $5.2 billion water package, the Blueprint makes an additional $750 million investment for immediate drought response to aid residents, farmers, and wildlife as California continues to grapple with a historic drought.
  • Forging an Oil-Free Future: The plan will decrease California’s reliance on fossil fuels while preparing our economy and workforce for a clean energy future. California will write the playbook for how America confronts the impacts of climate change – investing billions in climate tech research & development, clean cars, preparing Californians for career opportunities, and further readying our infrastructure to withstand extreme weather.

Confronting Homelessness

The Governor’s Blueprint ensures vulnerable people have the necessary help to get off our streets and get the mental health treatment they need. The plan adds $2 billion for mental health housing and services and clearing encampments. These new investments expand on last year’s $12 billion package – all told, creating 55,000 new housing units and treatment slots for people exiting homelessness.

Tackling the Cost of Living

Too many Californians find themselves crushed by the rising costs of the most basic expenses like healthcare, housing, child care and keeping the doors of a small business open. To bring down the costs of those everyday expenses, the Governor’s Blueprint will:

  • Create Universal Access to Healthcare Coverage: Governor Newsom’s Blueprint will make California the first state in the nation to offer universal access to healthcare coverage for all state residents, regardless of immigration status.
  • Confront the cost of child care and education: The plan invests more than ever before in our students by doubling down on achieving free universal pre-K, adding thousands of child care slots and increasing access to before, after, and summer school programs.
  • Building More Housing: The Blueprint will create more housing California desperately needs with $2 billion in new grants and tax credits.
  • Growing Small Businesses: Invest even more in small businesses – cutting red tape, waiving fees and providing hundreds of millions in grants and tax breaks to small businesses suffering from the pandemic.

Keeping Streets Safe

Gov. Newsom’s Real Public Safety Plan focuses on three key areas to fight and prevent crime:

  • Bolstering law enforcement and local response to stop and apprehend criminals, including $255 million in grants to local law enforcement and creating a new Smash and Grab Enforcement Unit to combat organized retail crime and grants for impacted small businesses.
  • More prosecutors to hold perpetrators accountable, ensuring District Attorneys are effectively and efficiently prosecuting criminals, and creating a new statewide team of investigators and prosecutors to go after perpetrators.
  • Getting guns and drugs off of streets – creating a new statewide gun buyback program, holding the gun industry accountable with nation-leading legislation, and intercepting drugs at the border.

Details: www.ebudget.ca.gov

 

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