Infrastructure and Transportation Update - April 2023

California

New electric vehicles (EVs) sold in California would have to be equipped to provide battery power to the grid under a state Senate proposal…

A privately funded project to operate a nightly first-class passenger train between San Francisco and Los Angeles is underway…

Transit agencies across California are grappling with a “fiscal cliff” — a decline in revenue and the end of federal funding that has been a lifeline for the last three years…

As part of a budget proposal being unveiled in the state Senate, transit agency officials and their supporters in the Legislature are seeking “bridge funding” for transit systems throughout the state, some of whom are struggling to recover ridership after the pandemic…

Kyle Vogt, CEO and founder of GM-owned autonomous vehicle company Cruise, announced that the company’s robotaxis are now running around the clock in San Francisco…

The Air Resources Board this week is expected to approve regulations that over the next two decades would phase out gas-powered engines in school buses, trains, delivery vans, farm vehicles and the trucks that move cargo around ports…

Congress

Updates to national aviation and pipeline safety policies will dominate the upcoming schedule for the transportation panel in the U.S. House of Representatives…

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) announced they're reintroducing the Freedom to Move Act, which would create fare-free public transportation not only in Massachusetts, but across the country. Both Sen. Markey and Rep. Pressley say free fares lead to better access to jobs, education and health care, especially in minority and low-income communities…

Republicans made several changes to its plan to increase the debt ceiling, H.R. 2811, early Wednesday morning, 4/26, ahead of potential consideration on the House floor…

President and Administration

The Biden administration on Wednesday, 4/12, announced what it called the most ambitious auto pollution rules in history, with the aim of accelerating automakers’ shift to electric vehicles…

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is asking railroads to examine how they configure freight trains, including length and car makeup, saying it has noticed similarities in recent derailments that suggest some trains aren't being built properly…

As part of its annual support to transit systems nationwide, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) today published details about the formula funding that helps communities maintain and operate the trains, buses, and ferries that provide more than half a million transit trips every month…

First News had a chance to get Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s views on President Joe Biden’s budget proposal…

Weekly Update 4/24/23

California

California launched the CalAIM initiative in early 2022 , which is a five-year, $12 billion social experiment that Governor Gavin Newsom is betting will eventually cut soaring health care spending in Medi-Cal…

California has spent billions of dollars on homelessness in recent years and a bipartisan group of California legislators is calling for a first-of-its kind, large-scale audit of the state’s homelessness spending…

The latest push for education savings accounts – a type of school choice voucher that would give parents money to finance their children’s non-public schooling – was defeated in a 5-2 vote in California’s senate education committee earlier this week…

Congress

According to Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), House Republicans are taking the first step forward in the appropriations process and will likely deem a top-line spending number of $1.47 trillion, which is in line with the cap outlined in the Republican debt-limit bill…

House Republicans plan to pass their proposal to raise the debt ceiling this week…

On Thursday, 4/20, House Republicans passed a bill that would amend a landmark federal civil rights law to bar transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports…

House lawmakers backed by a wide array of industries think they have a solution to Medicare’s approaching insolvency: moving more care from the hospital to the home…

On Thursday, 4/20,  Emergent BioSolutions said that it planned to charge “less than $50” for a two-pack of the nonprescription version of its opioid overdose reversal nasal spray…

President and Administration

On Thursday, 4/20, residential solar company Sunnova Energy International said the U.S. government would provide a partial loan guarantee of up to $3 billion to back financing for its rooftop solar systems…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisers chided the Federal Drug Administration’s (FDA) new bivalent-only plan for vaccinating children against COVID-19, saying that the schedule for kids five and under is too complicated and leaves some immunocompromised groups without coverage…

Education

Obama-era guidance from 2014 warned districts that racial gaps in suspension rates could indicate discrimination, but the Trump administration rescinded the document in 2018 amid fears of school shootings…

Missouri is one of 19 remaining states that legally allow the physical disciplinary method…

According to a new poll, Black parents say they play a much more active role in their children’s education than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic…

Weekly Update 4/17/23

California

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that the state will get the largest portion of a multistate settlement with Juul, an e-cigarette company that will pay out $462 million to seven jurisdictions for “deceptive and misleading marketing”…

Rep. Young Kim (R-CA) says she is trying to be a bridge builder between South Korea and the U.S., but as one of only two Korean American Republicans in Congress, she also is facing challenges educating her own party…

President and Administration

On Thursday, 4/13, President Biden announced efforts to expand federal health care to immigrants who came to the United States as children but do not qualify for government insurance plans…

House Republicans are working on a plan to suspend the debt ceiling…

According to the Education Department, schools can hire more cops and install more security systems on campus using federal money distributed after last year’s attack at Robb Elementary…

Education

The question of whether Oklahoma will approve the nation’s first explicitly religious charter school will continue to remain open for now…

The business of selling and buying undergraduate educations is a tricky one, and college shoppers are increasingly seeking more price predictability and granular data to assess the offers students get…

Public Safety and Justice Update: 4/14/23

On Monday, 4/7, just one week after six were killed in a Nashville school shooting, a 23-year-old bank employee shot and killed five colleagues and wounded nine at his workplace in Louisville, all while livestreaming the attack on social media, police said…

The police have not yet determined a motive in last month’s shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville that killed six, including three children…

Gun violence has touched most American households, including two Governors from two recent mass shootings in Nashville and Louisville…

There were 131 incidents classified as mass shootings in the first three months of the year, according to the Gun Violence Archive…

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation Thursday aimed at preventing gun violence in Michigan by expanding background checks and establishing penalties for those who fail to keep firearms out of the hands of children…

A California bill to regulate law enforcement's use of facial recognition technology cleared its first policy committee hearing Tuesday — but with heavy backlash…

National Public Safety Telecommunications Week is a chance to recognize the important work of people on the other side of a 911 call…

Confidential reports that provided the basis for the firing of Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong were internally inconsistent and relied on thin evidence to unfairly tarnish his reputation…

Contra Costa County Judge Clare Maier released the names of 17 city police officers that allegedly used racial slurs,jokes, and memes in text messages this week…

San Jose Police Chief Anthony Mata made his first public statement following the arrest and firing of the San Jose Police Officers Association’s (SJPOA) Executive Director Joanne Marian Segovia…

At least 80 people, including police officers, allege they were shot by their SIG Sauer P320 pistols…

Thousands of protesters marched toward the State Capitol in the days after the shooting…

Weekly Update 4/10/23

California

According to a report released by the California Budget & Policy Center, most homeless people in California are childless adults that disproportionately come from marginalized communities…

Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing for major reform of California’s mental health system, this time by overhauling the way counties spend mental health dollars and placing a bond measure before voters to build more psychiatric beds…

President Biden declared that a major disaster exists in the State of California and ordered Federal aid to supplement State, tribal, and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by severe winter storms, straight-line winds, flooding, landslides, and mudslides beginning on February 21, 2023, and continuing…

California public school enrollment continued to decline this year even as full-time in-person instruction had returned and as preschool expansion offset losses…

Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday, 4/5, that Emeryville, Fresno, Needles, Rancho Cordova, Redwood City, Riverside, Salinas, Stockton, and Ukiah, and the counties of San Diego and Yuba have been named “prohousing” communities, a designation that makes them eligible for additional state funds to fast track housing developments…

President and Administration

The Supreme Court hasn’t ruled yet on whether President Biden can move forward with his student debt relief plan…

The Biden administration this week will hold three public listening sessions to discuss its next round of higher education rulemaking slated for this fall…

Under draft rules released by the U.S. Department of Education on Thursday, 4/6, school districts that ban transgender athletes in school sports risk losing millions of dollars in federal education funds…

Groundbreaking new research is showing that, during the two decades prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a steep and steady reduction in serious forms of violence, including bullying and weapon-related behaviors, across California’s middle and high school campuses…

America’s pandemic response may be winding down, but the number of children being treated for mental health disorders isn’t slowing…

Education

According to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, college transfer enrollment declined by 7.5 percentage points in fall 2022 and 14.5 percentage points since fall 2020 — the equivalent of 37,600 and 78,500 students respectively…

Lawmakers across the country are moving to make it easier to kick disruptive students out of school, a get-tough turn toward stricter discipline that reflects mounting fears about school violence and disorder…

Research has shown that a surprisingly large number of parents are aware of and considering social-emotional factors when it comes to making school choices…

According to a new report, community college baccalaureate programs in California can help more Black and Latino students earn bachelor’s degrees in a state that badly needs a more educated workforce…