News

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Making it safe to vote during a pandemic shouldn’t be a partisan issue. But Republicans, including and especially the president, are turning it into one.

This week, the state and national Republican Party organizations filed a lawsuit challenging Gov. Gavin Newsom's executive order mandating that every registered voter receive a vote-by-mail ballot as a hedge against the likelihood that the coronavirus will still be circulating in November (though in-person vote centers will still be available). No one should have to risk the fate of the many Wisconsin residents who had to cast ballots in the April primary in person. Fifty-two people who participated were later found to have contracted COVID-19.

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Monday, May 25, 2020

On Monday, the U.S. Census Bureau will reopen several Bay Area field offices it shuttered amid the coronavirus pandemic, which also put a stop to most census outreach and forced a months-long delay for the 2020 count.

Starting on Memorial Day, field offices covering most of Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties will reopen to allow census staff to drop off a questionnaire at any home that doesn’t have a traditional mailing address — that’s mostly in rural areas and places that rely on P.O. boxes.

“We leave it somewhere visible on the property, it’s usually in a weatherproof bag,” said Joshua Green, a media specialist with the bureau. “We want people to get that physical packet so they know they can still be counted.”

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Friday, May 15, 2020

Local lawmakers awed at the depth of the severe spending cuts proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in the revised California budget racked by COVID-19, while echoing calls for federal support to help the state weather the economic storm.

Assemblymen Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, and Marc Berman, D-Palo Alto, along with state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, acknowledged the painful decisions ahead of the July budget deadline.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Mullin, regarding the immediate reversal of fortune in a state which recently expected a $6 billion surplus. Newsom’s most revised budget proposed a $54 billion deficit.

Berman shared a similarly bleak perspective.

“We are facing a situation that none of us could have imagined in our worst dreams just three months ago,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hill framed the hard choices ahead for lawmakers.

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Monday, April 13, 2020

San Mateo County’s elected leaders, including those from local, state and federal offices are standing with the API Caucus in San Mateo County against racism and xenophobia. 

Those pledging to support actions against hate crime and assaults on Asians include U.S. representatives Jackie Speier and Anna Eshoo, state Sen. Jerry Hill and assemblymen Kevin Mullin, Marc Berman and Phil Ting. According to U.S. Census 2018 and 2019 estimates, some 30% of San Mateo County’s 766,570 residents are of Asian heritage, compared with 15.3% for all of California, according to a press release. 

The Stop-AAPI-Hate center has gathered more than 1,000 reports of anti-Asian discrimination in just over a week’s time. Created by San Francisco State University’s Asian American Studies program, Chinese for Affirmative Action and the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council, the center continues to receive about 100 reports a day, according to the release.

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Friday, April 10, 2020

Assemblyman Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) is proposing that every California voter get a ballot in the mail, in case the coronavirus outbreak requires physical distancing during the November election.

"It's critically important that we create a system that provides maximum safety and reliability for voters and for the people who volunteer at the polls," Berman said.

Under the proposal, which Berman plans to introduce as Assembly Bill 860, limited in-person voting would still be available.

More than three-quarters of California voters already receive a ballot in the mail. But only fifteen counties automatically send voters a ballot, as part of their participation in the state's Voters Choice Act.

 

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Tuesday, April 7, 2020

By Marc Berman

What if I told you that, in exchange for just a few minutes of your time, you could personally generate from the comfort of your home thousands of dollars for your community? And, if you have a spouse and two kids, that the amount would increase to tens of thousands of dollars? Sounds like a pretty good deal, right?

It is — and all you have to do is answer nine questions. That is the power of the national once-a-decade population count known as the Census.

Last year California received roughly $78 billion from the federal government distributed based on the results of the Census. These dollars fund programs that are critical to the strength of your community, including, for example, education, housing and transportation. These are programs that you, your loved ones and your neighbors rely on like Head Start, affordable housing grants, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

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Thursday, April 2, 2020

Special to CalMatters

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