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By Miriam Raftery
March 21, 2018 (San Diego) – San Diego State Senator Toni Atkins this week became the first woman to lead California’s State Senate, as well as the first gay or lesbian person to hold the legislature’s highest office. Atkins previously served as Speaker of the Assembly.
The daughter of a coal miner in Appalachia, Atkins was raised in poverty in a home with no indoor plumbing. In the Legislature, she has championed affordable housing and a new tax credit for the working poor.
She’s previously authored a bill to create a single-payer healthcare system in California, fought to protect women’s healthcare access and opposed tuition hikes for students at the University of California, and enacted legislation to protect and restore the San Diego River as well as create an earned income tax credit.
She entered politics as an aide to Christine Kehoe on the City Council where, she says, she saw firsthand the importance of a healthcare safety net for people who are uninsured. Although she acknowledges that passing a single-payer bill may be impossible in the current political and economic climate, she says she will work hard for any healthcare reforms that are achievable, CapNet radio reports.
As a legislator, she’s been effective --- 12 bills that she authored were signed into law in 2016 alone.
This legislative session, she’s introduced bills that would expand access to breast and cervical cancer treatment for low income patients, require hotels and motels to train workers on how to spot and report human trafficking, help domestic violence survivors pay for relocating their pets as well as themselves, extend the time for family of a public safety officer who dies of a job-related illness to claim benefits, improve coverage for mental healthcare, and help protect watersheds of the Sweetwater, Otay and Tijuana Rivers in San Diego County.
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