Edward Ring reports for the California Policy Center on CA’s Reparations Task Force, which proposes to pay local descendants of enslaved people for “snowballed” generational trauma. Instead, Ring suggests, lawmakers should focus on improving educational opportunities for low-income and minority students — whose zip code schools are often inadequate.

Frequent commentator and housing provider Dean Hotop shares his tongue-in-cheek “wish” for the SJCC to pass COPA in the new year — highlighting how the initiative will weaken the free market, drive up housing stock costs, and disempower local homebuyers. An Opp Now exclusive installment in the Local Gov't Hopes & Fears series.

Analyzing SB 1100 (which lets legislative bodies remove members of the public from meetings if deemed “disruptive”), Joe Mathews suggests it will only flame local politician–community member conflicts. Rather than avoiding communications with residents, who may feel frustrated already, lawmakers should consistently adopt more open relations.

Pat Waite, president of SJ-based Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility (CFR), launches an Opp Now exclusive series on 2023 Local Gov't Hopes & Fears. Waite’s biggest wish and apprehension for this year’s City Council (respectively: budgetary oversight and combative “permanent campaigning”) below.

Conventionally tech-reliant Bay Area cities like San Francisco should consider drastic budgetary cuts going forward, says CATO Institute’s Marc Joffe. With office vacancies soaring—most recently by tech layoffs and remote work trends—SF no longer can rely on early Internet development for the city’s fiscal stability.

Wolf Street’s Wolf Richter analyzes Bay Area Rapid Transit’s (BART) recent reversion in rider numbers—post-Covid progress eroding slowly but surely—which Richter attributes to prolific tech industry layoffs. BART’s expenses being mostly fixed, it’s unclear how the continually-expanded system can support itself moving forward.

Writing for the Washington Examiner, Black Minds Matter founder Denisha Merriweather critiques claims that affording families more robust options re: their kids’ schooling is—yup, you guessed it—racist. Countering these ideas, Merriweather unpacks why initiatives that champion parents and communities are “anything but racist.”

Newsom wants to award state-funded “sorry money” to Black descendants of enslaved people. In the California Globe, Evan Symon breaks down the folly of slavery reparations: They’re objected to by most CA’ns, legally challenging to establish, and partially disregard past suffering of other minoritized races/ethnicities.

Breaking down the West Contra Costa School District’s controversial bond measure of 2020, the California Globe’s Edward Ring highlights how CA’n school admins are egregiously overpaid. If the $281k and $235k salaries SJUSD’s Albarran/Mahon currently earn were delegated to the classroom, what a difference that could make. Even our state governor sits at $224k/yr. — are superintendents more important?