Access to safe clean drinking water is a right, not a privilege. I worked for years as an environmental justice community organizer and I’ll keep up that fight in the State Capitol. We need to expand water quality testing, especially in South County, to prevent children’s exposure to lead.  At the same time, we need to invest in water infrastructure like water recycling. I will fight to expand funding so cities that are leading in water conservation have more resources to keep those programs running such as the pure water project in the City of San Diego. Lastly we have an opportunity to support more water conservation programs especially in communities of concern and increase support for agricultural farms that are actively incorporating water conservation in their farming practices. 

  If we take action now, we can keep the cost of water low, the quality of water high and avoid drastic drought response measures like we saw a decade ago.

With skyrocketing housing costs crushing working families, I’ll take action.  As City Council President, I wrote the law to require developers to build more housing for working families, not just the wealthy. In the Assembly, I’ll keep fighting for our families by keeping the focus on housing that’s actually affordable, expanding first-time homebuyer programs and holding big banks accountable for displacing vulnerable families.

As the daughter of working class immigrants, education made all the difference for me. I’m passionate about ensuring every generation has the same opportunities to succeed.  As your Assemblywoman, I’ll fight to reduce class sizes so kids get the individualized instruction they need, especially vulnerable students who have fallen behind.  I’ll work to bring back more vocational education so that students who aren’t going to four year university get prepared to compete for good paying careers that don’t require a college degree. 

I will fight to expand access to free community college for all Califonians regardless of immigration status or zip code. Our public education needs a lot of help and I am committed to increasing funding to  better support our educators and classified staff as well as increasing mental health professionals on site to help students unpack trauma caused by social pressures, lack of safe housing and food insecurities.

We can tackle dangerous pollution and sky-high utility rates with clean energy.  As a community organizer I led the charge to keep polluting industries out of family neighborhoods - and we won.  As City Council President, I worked to make 100% renewable energy a reality in San Diego - and we made incredible progress.  In the Assembly, I’ll stand up to the corporate polluters and oil companies trying to stop progress on renewable energy.  Because every Californian should reap the benefits of cleaner air, lower utility rates and, with today’s crazy gas prices, less pain at the pump.

The Governor’s pleas for Californians to reduce water consumption is another demonstration of the incompetence of Democratic state officials.  The fact is that the Democratic controlled legislature has failed to adequately plan for the water needs of the state.  During the last 50 years that Democrats have held the Assembly, they neglected to fund water infrastructure to meet the ever-growing demand.  The state should invest in local solutions like expanding the Sweetwater desalination facility adding new wells and increasing capacity; or creating additional desalination facilities like the one in Carlsbad plant that they claim generates 50 million gallons of potable water a day “from a drought-proof source – the ocean”; or exploring new uses for recycled water. It is shameful of the Governor to put the blame for water shortages on Californians when the state has not created new water infrastructure since the ’70 and allows most of our water to evaporate. The legislature needs to make water infrastructure a priority over expensive pet projects like the over budget, overdue high-speed rail for which there is no consumer demand. Californians are hurting because of the corrupt, inept policies of Sacramento elites.

The solution to the state’s housing crisis is too complex to be addressed by just one solution, but given the constraint of the question, the priority must be focused on reducing the cost of new housing construction.  The overbearing Democrat controlled legislature needs to restrain intervening in the market and allow local authorities to decide where and what kind of housing is needed.  Over the long-term the state can do this by (a) creating goals and incentives for local communities to review constraints on the available land, zoning regulations and fee structures; (b) encourage builders look at cheaper prefabricated construction to off-set the rising cost of raw materials; and (c) promote vocational training in construction relates jobs to increase the number of skilled workers available.  As people move into new homes, they leave behind dwellings for new occupants.

To address the overall failure of the Great Depression era and later New Deal War on Poverty the state needs to return to a promotion of the nuclear family as the bulwark against systemic poverty and homelessness. The surest way to fend off poverty and homelessness is to raise children in families with their biological mother and father. The rise in the homeless population has many causes that each need to be addressed to achieve any significant reduction: increasing cost  and scarcity of available housing; mental health disorders enabled by state handout without proper treatments; and proliferation of drug and alcohol addiction and crime. The state needs to explore new approaches to solving these age-old problems. For example, regarding mental health and addiction, it is time to look at alternatives to moral/criminal approaches to addressing this cause and get our neighbors off the streets and into treatment.  The sheer neglect of the homeless by the Democrat controlled legislature is another example of why we cannot just send the same advocates of vacant policies back to Sacramento.  Real change is needed to empower local communities to address this issue.  A full audit of all state funds must be done to account for the astronomical expense that to date has failed to remedy the problem.  The inhumane conditions of tent communities from San Francisco to San Ysidro are evidence of the neglect of the controlling party like slumlords who profit off the misery of others.

The change I would make to improve California’s K-12 public school systems is to have parents treated as customers. Rich and poor alike, parents must be recognized as the primary and principal educators of their children as they create stable homes and foster an atmosphere for well-rounded personal and social development.  This means that school districts and sites need to rethink the options they make available.  Parents should have the right to pick and choose between various schools without regard to boundaries, provide feedback on teachers’ performance, and be welcomed at school board meetings.  Parents are the primary educators of their children and have the right to know what is being taught and how their son or daughter is being treated in school.  Parents entrust their children to professional educators who work at the privilege of the families they serve and deserve to be treated as partners in the education of their children.  Schools, on their part, should offer a variety of programs and emphasis to meet the diverse needs, values, and traditions of the families they serve.

My mother emigrated from central Mexico, married my father and became a proud US citizen. She taught my siblings and me to speak Spanish; fostered traditional values and costumes that she learned and insisted that we assimilate into American culture.  We were expected to learn English at school to ensure our success in our homeland.  This example has developed in me a great regard for cultural diversity while remaining grounded in the great achievements of our common heritage.  Western civilization finds its culmination in the free markets and limited government that is the United States of America. 

To stop the corruption in the State Capitol, Assembly Democrats must stop taking money from criminally negligent Big Power companies.  The influence of big money in Sacramento ensures that there is not challenge to the dominance of PG&E and the like.  Once we address the corruption then we can look to new solutions like widely expanding rooftop solar or exploring recent advances in safe nuclear energy.  For forty years, France uses safe nuclear energy to meet electricity demand throughout the country.  Fear is no longer an excuse to reject safe, non-polluting energy production.  When state authorities bail out the criminally negligent PG&E and make the victims, their customers, pay for it the elite betray a revulsion for the very people who elected them.

 While global climate change is real and human activity may factor in, there are more immediate causes of the increase in the number and severity of wildfires.  These are more likely attributed to criminal negligence of power companies who are aided and abetted by greedy, corrupt legislators and the incompetent lack of proper stewardship of forests by state agencies.  The state should grant local agencies more control of their environment to set sound brush management policies and emergency response preparedness like San Diego County did when they purchased helicopters following the devastating 2003 Cedar fire. Another consideration is to rapidly expand the use of rooftop solar to mitigate the need for huge transmission of electricity from out of state. Unfortunately, Democrat legislators won’t be willing to bite the hand that feeds them.