{"id":208884,"date":"2026-03-07T10:55:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T10:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/208884\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T10:55:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T10:55:22","slug":"watch-california-weekly-recap-lawmakers-discuss-voter-id-wildfire-bills-environmental-budget-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/208884\/","title":{"rendered":"WATCH: California Weekly Recap: Lawmakers discuss voter ID, wildfire bills, environmental budget | California"},"content":{"rendered":"

(The Center Square) \u2013 This week in California, lawmakers announced that more than 1 million signatures had been collected for a voter identification ballot measure<\/a> that is now one step closer to the November 2026 ballot.<\/p>\n

If the ballot measure passes, it would require voters in the Golden State to present identification at the polls when they vote. Those who vote by mail would have to write the last four digits of their identification number on their ballot from a government-issued form of identification, the measure\u2019s advocates said this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll this does is it says that you need to be a U.S. citizen in order to register to vote and that you need to show a form of ID,\u201d Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, told The Center Square in an exclusive interview before the press conference Tuesday outside the Capitol in Sacramento. \u201cThis is very simplistic. Thirty-six states have it. Every state that has implemented this has actually had higher voter participation.\u201d<\/p>\n

But opponents said the measure would add one more barrier to voting, especially for non-white voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe number of people who don\u2019t have current ID goes significantly up for voters of color,” Brittany Stonesifer, senior program manager for Common Cause California, told The Center Square outside the Capitol. “The studies consistently show that states with strict voter ID requirements have much lower turnout, and the gap between white voters and non-white voters goes up significantly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Center Square’s Madeline Shannon recaps this week’s biggest stories from the Golden State.<\/p>\n

Also on Tuesday, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, talked\u00a0about legislation<\/a>\u00a0he introduced this year, Senate Bill 875<\/a>, which would allow cities across the state to withdraw from Pacific Gas & Electric, one of California\u2019s largest investor-owned utility providers. Wiener said San Francisco has wanted to \u201cbreak up\u201d with PG&E for a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of problems with PG&E,\u201d Wiener told The Center Square. \u201cIt\u2019s too big. It\u2019s two-thirds of the state, and it\u2019s had so many problems with all the wildfires and all the other issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

PG&E officials responded to the bill, writing in an email to The Center Square that making utility service public would not lower bills for California\u2019s ratepayers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe California Public Utilities Commission has been clear that the City and County of San Francisco would have to pay far more than the value of the assets, which means a takeover will drive up customer rates, not lower them,\u201d wrote Lynsey Paulo, marketing and communications director for PG&E.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, members of the state Assembly\u2019s Budget Subcommittee on Climate Crisis, Resources, Energy and Transportation heard from state agency officials about the governor\u2019s January budget proposal and impacts on funding to environmental programs. Staff from the Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office testified during the hearing that difficult trade-offs have to be considered, as the state faces year-on-year structural budget deficits that could rise to as much as $30 billion a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe blanket under all of the comments is the state budget condition,\u201d Rachel Ehlers, deputy legislative analyst for the Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office, testified on Wednesday. \u201cWe as a state want to be able to use the tools that we have like our aircraft when there are fires, and not have them grounded because we didn\u2019t provide funding to be able to utilize them. That, to us, is the kind of example of something where it\u2019s pressing, it\u2019s immediate, and if it\u2019s not funded this year, then there\u2019s a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wednesday afternoon, Democratic lawmakers introduced a package of bills that aim to help increase the state\u2019s wildfire readiness efforts<\/a> and help Californians affected by wildfires respond and recover effectively. That package included bills that provide money to homeowners to help \u201chome hardening\u201d efforts and help increase county-level programs for wildfire response, among other objectives.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose programs are bringing in more in federal dollars for these communities than the state is spending in getting the programs going,\u201d Eric Horne, California director for nonprofit organization Megafire Action, said during a news conference announcing the legislation. \u201cWith technology in particular, we\u2019re seeing high ROI [return on investment] investments that amplify every single dollar that the state spends on wildfire mitigation and suppression. That is really what I think motivates the package.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the top officials from the state\u2019s two public university systems, the University of California and the California State University, testified in front of a Senate budget subcommittee about the financial challenges both university systems face<\/a> in the wake of federal budget cuts. Both the UC and the CSU experienced millions of dollars worth of cuts to grant funding, which affect research at some of the top universities in the world, as well as cuts or eliminations of teacher training programs, they testified.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past year, we\u2019ve had 1,600 grants that have been affected by the federal withdrawals of support,\u201d James Milliken, the president of the University of California system, told the subcommittee. \u201cTwelve hundred of those have been temporarily reinstated; that is about $830 million worth. But they are currently under appeal. So that leaves about 400 grants that are either suspended or terminated, about $170 million research activity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(The Center Square) \u2013 This week in California, lawmakers announced that more than 1 million signatures had been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8436,15743,16476,7,9,8,5529,989,15511,6774,643,756,2306,3001,50171,56873,3604,13438,2012,54524,68622,96250,3000],"class_list":{"0":"post-208884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-utilities","9":"tag-budget-cuts","10":"tag-budget-deficit","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-california-headlines","13":"tag-california-news","14":"tag-california-state-university","15":"tag-elections","16":"tag-electricity","17":"tag-energy","18":"tag-environment","19":"tag-gas","20":"tag-higher-education","21":"tag-legislation","22":"tag-natural-resources","23":"tag-pacific-gas-electric","24":"tag-pge","25":"tag-state-budget","26":"tag-university-of-california","27":"tag-voter-id","28":"tag-voter-identification","29":"tag-voter-rights","30":"tag-wildfire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}