With just under two years still left in his first Senate term, state Sen. John Laird announced last week that he plans to seek reelection in 2024.
In the News
About 1,200 acres of nearly pristine San Luis Obispo County land is now protected from development permanently. The newly protected land sits around the iconic Point San Luis Lighthouse near Avila Beach and stretches northward and inland.
PG&E and its subsidiary, Eureka Energy Company, completed and recorded a deed restriction on the land in late August, according to the utility company. It had been in the works since 2006.
Watsonville Community Hospital has been up and running under its new leadership—the Pajaro Valley Healthcare District (PVHD)—since Sept. 1.
It has been business as usual since then.
On Monday, however, a group of state and local elected officials, along with the PVHD board and a sizable contingent of nurses and doctors, gathered in the hospital’s parking lot for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to ring in the new era of South County health care.
A financial gap in the Pajaro River Flood Risk Management Project will likely soon get filled after Gov. Gavin Newsom authorized funding assistance from the state that would help bring flood protections to South Santa Cruz County at long last.
Newsom recently signed off on Senate Bill 489, clearing the way for the Department of Water Resources to advance gap financing to the $400 million project that seeks to overhaul the Pajaro River levee system that has repeatedly provided inadequate protection for local residents.
As Tuesday’s Regional Water Forum before the Monterey County Board of Supervisors nears and in the third year of the current California drought, the challenge of sustainable, permanent water for Monterey County remains daunting. Recent developments offer an opportunity to ground-truth various perspectives and provide new incentive to bring everyone to the table.
For the short-term, I am pleased to have helped get specific drought items in the state budget for Monterey County water agencies:
Faviola Del Real’s eyes could not hide the pain as she spoke.
The partner of Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s officer tragically gunned down by Steven Carrillo in June 2020, sobbed while reading her gut-wrenching statement before Carrillo and a packed courtroom attending his sentencing last week.
Having a mastery for how state government functions after three terms in the Assembly, and working in former governor Jerry Brown's administration as his natural resources secretary, served gay state Senator John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) well during his first year in the Legislature's upper chamber. Spending much of 2021 working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic wasn't as much of a shock for Laird as it was for his colleagues in their freshmen terms and completely new to the Statehouse.
With the ink barely dry on a vote in the state Senate, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed SB 418, according to a release from the office of Sen. John Laird.
SB 418, authored by Laird, creates the Pajaro Valley Health Care District. The district is first in line to purchase the financially troubled Watsonville Community Hospital.