• U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) announced that his Ventura County district office is officially open for in-person appointments, according to an Aug. 2 statement. “If you are having trouble with a federal agency, have thoughts on a federal issue, or have concerns that you want to share with my team, I encourage you to set up an appointment with my team in our new space in Ventura City Hall,” Carbajal said in the statement. “As someone who spent part of his childhood in Ventura County, it is my privilege and honor to now be representing portions of it in Congress—including both Ventura and Ojai.” The office can help residents of Ventura, Ojai, and other parts of California’s 24th Congressional District who are having difficulty with a federal agency—including federal health and Social Security benefits, the Internal Revenue Service, and U.S. Postal Service, emergency passport and visa renewals, and others. The new office will be open Monday through Friday during business hours and is located in Ventura City Hall at 505 Poli St., suite 201.
• U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein (both D-California) introduced a resolution calling for the release of Eyvin Hernandez, a Los Angeles County public defender and UCLA School of Law alumnus who was “wrongfully detained” in Venezuela on March 31, 2022, according to an Aug. 2 statement from Padilla’s office. The State Department’s Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs (SPEHA) has been working to secure his release. Padilla recently met with Hernadez’s father, Pedro Martinez, to discuss his son’s imprisonment. It has been more than 15 months since Martinez has seen his son and, in the statement, he asked President Joe Biden to meet with him and Hernandez’s friends while they were in Washington, D.C. “I have made this request to the president many times before, but there has been no offer of a meeting with him,” Hernandez said. “It makes me sad and mad.” Padilla is also in regular communication with SPEHA. “As a public defender, Eyvin Hernandez has dedicated his life to helping those in need in his community and beyond,” Padilla said in a statement. “His ongoing wrongful detainment has devastated his loved ones, and we owe it to Eyvin to do everything in our power to bring him home. Today’s resolution demonstrates our unified condemnation of the Venezuelan regime’s unacceptable imprisonment of Eyvin and calls on senior U.S. officials to continue working to secure his immediate release.”
• Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the appointment of Tai Milder as the first director of the Division of Petroleum Market Oversight within the California Energy Commission, a milestone in the state’s efforts to hold Big Oil accountable following last year’s record gas price spikes, according to an Aug. 1 statement. Milder is a seasoned antitrust prosecutor who most recently served the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division as counsel to the assistant attorney general. He has successfully investigated and prosecuted companies and individuals for price-fixing, bid-rigging, and bribery. Milder also worked at California’s Department of Justice enforcing state antitrust laws against oil and gas companies. The new office is a part of Newsom’s gas price gouging law, which was approved during a special session of the Legislature earlier this year and took effect in June. The division will closely monitor the industry on a daily basis to identify irregular or illegal behavior, and will refer any violation of law—including industry misconduct or market manipulation—to the attorney general for prosecution. “California is serious about holding Big Oil accountable,” Newsom said in the statement. “Tai Milder has an impressive record of going after companies that rip off consumers, and that’s exactly what he’ll be doing—serving as a watchdog over the oil and gas industry and protecting Californians.”
This article appears in Aug 10-20, 2023.