By Megan McGlamery

March 8, 2012 (San Diego)—“Our biggest challenge is to stabilize climate change,” Mike Bullock, chairman of the Transportation Committee for Sierra Club’s San Diego chapter, told attendees at the Forging a Sustainable Future Conference hosted by UnitedGREEN at San Diego State University last weekend. 

To accomplish that, the state has set ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions--and mandated that counties reduce driving and encourage public transportation. 

But the San Diego Association of Government (SANDAG) failed to meet those goals in a Regional Transportation Plan(RTP) that it approved last fall. Now, California Attorney General Kamala Harris has joined with the Sierra Club, the Cleveland National Forest Foundation, and other environmental groups to sue SANDAG. 

Fire parcel fee, redevelopment cuts, tuition hikes, freeze on teacher lay-offs, and "crippling" cuts in border crimes enforcement among the budget impacts on our region

By Miriam Raftery
 

June 30, 2011 (Sacramento) –Governor Jerry Brown and Democrats in the state Legislature have approved a majority-vote budget without a single Republican vote. The move ends a months-long impasse in which Republicans held out for an all-cuts budget, while Democrats sought revenue increases to prevent slashing programs ranging from healthcare to law enforcement. The budget includes $7.9 billion in cuts which aim to reduce the state’s $26 billion deficit to $5 billion.

By Emily Anderson