Dick Spotswood: Marin’s state reps need to offer real-world solutions to major dilemmas

California faces major problems which negatively impact the quality of life of everyone who calls the Golden State home. Under our system of representative government, addressing those issues is the role of our state Legislature and the governor.

For decades, there’s been little meaningful reform regarding any of those topics from the state capitol in Sacramento. The issues include chronic homelessness; proliferation of the drug fentanyl; the lack of housing for low-income workers and those staffing retail stores, restaurants, garages and teachers. Don’t forget inadequate water supplies; declining education standards accompanied by an underfunded state university system; and failing to prepare for “the big one,” a flood, wildfire, earthquake or a 9/11-type terrorist attack.

Despite spending about $24 billion annually, the number of those living in filthy street tents, under freeway overcrossings and in hovels on fire-prone hillsides continues to increase. Most state legislators don’t have a clue about how to address chronic homelessness, defined as those with a double diagnosis of mental illness and substance.

In most major cities the murder rate is down. The threat of violent crimes in suburbia, including in Marin, is exaggerated. What’s not a myth and much on people’s minds are proliferating auto break-ins, organized retail theft, home robberies and street assaults.

Most legislators brag about the number of bills they introduce, pass the Legislature and are signed into law. They need to concentrate on quality, not volume.

Too many of them are uncontroversial, so-called “Mother’s Day bills.” Those are the feel-good bills that please special interests, make few enemies and have little impact on the real world. Slightly better is legislation that, at most, will make only marginal improvements in boosting our quality of life.

This useless virtue-sharing is designed to give the impression that the legislator is doing something in Sacramento other than being wined and dined by special interests.

Typical is Senate Bill 1053 introduced by Democratic state Sen. Catherine Blakespear of Encinitas (San Diego County). It bans plastic shopping bags.

The Associated Press reports, “California already bans thin plastic shopping bags at grocery stores and other shops, but shoppers at checkout can purchase bags made with a thicker plastic that purportedly makes them reusable and recyclable.” This is classic small-bore legislation which has little impact on average Californians.

Blakespear contends that since few plastic bags are recycled, they should all be eliminated in the name of remedying climate change. Other than grocers and shoppers, most folks nod favorably when hearing efforts to address climate change regardless of the legislation’s trivial impact remedying a global-caused crisis.

It’s reminiscent of Assembly Bill 1884. Introduced in 2022 by San Gabriel Valley Democrat Assemblymember Ian Calderon, it bans full-service bars and restaurants from automatically distributing plastic straws to customers. To make the green-sounding measure politically palatable, AB 1884 doesn’t even apply to fast-food establishments, coffee shops, delis and restaurants serving takeout.

Credit North Bay/North Coast senator and state Senate President Pro-Tem Mike McGuire for boosting the “Safer California Plan.” It’s a “bipartisan effort to address the fentanyl crisis and combat retail theft and community-based crime.”

Those are serious issues. Resolving them is the Legislature’s top assignment

The Sonoma County Democrat is wisely using his limited tenure as the state Senate’s leader to tackle the big stuff. McGuire has introduced his share of “Mother’s Day resolutions.” If he’s now moved forward by offering real-world solutions to major dilemmas, McGuire is doing the job he was sent to the Capitol to accomplish.

We need more of that in Sacramento. Legislators are limited by their terms. The ideal method to maximize their short tenure and craft their legacy is by focusing on the major issues that impact nearly 40 million Californians.

Columnist Dick Spotswood of Mill Valley writes on local issues Sundays and Wednesdays. Email him at spotswood@comcast.net.