If the recent candidacy announcements for the Central Coast’s new Assembly districts are any indication of the areas that will feel unrepresented in the future, Santa Maria will be left out.
So far, in new Assembly District 37—which together with the 30th District is replacing the district that Republican Assemblymember Jordan “I’m Not Running Again” Cunningham currently represents—three Democrats from in and around Santa Barbara are running.
Thanks to the redistricting process, Cunningham probably can’t win again, and even if he did win again, he would no longer be Santa Maria’s rep! Sad. And with him goes northern Santa Barbara County conservative hopes and dreams for political influence at the state level.
Current 2nd District Supervisor Gregg Hart thinks he has a good chance of winning the 37th District and is taking that chance!
Health care for everyone, Hart declared! Just as Cunningham took a stand against legislation in the Assembly trying to do just that: “Make no mistake, this bill would create the most expensive state bureaucracy in history, funded by the largest set of tax increases in history, and take away our constituents’ Medicare or private insurance.”
State analysis from 2017 said a single-payer health care plan would cost the state $400 billion per year. Not that a single-payer health care system is what Hart is recommending. He simply believes everyone should have affordable health care, which isn’t crazy, right?
But any mention of health care for all sends conservatives into fits: Socialists! How much is that going to cost taxpayers?
Don’t worry, you probably get to keep your broken unaffordable health care system for a few more years. Just. Calm. Down.
Speaking of calm down, Mayor Alice Patino needs to chill out about trash. She took a stand against the state’s new waste management regulations and is all aflutter over state versus local control: “This is the [state] government overreaching again with a one-size-fits-all [plan],” she said. “The cost to the city of Santa Maria is going to be great, and who pays it? The taxpayers. And yet they have no say in what the state does in ordinances.”
Well, technically they do have a say. It’s called voting. But Santa Maria’s “say” just got a lot smaller than it already was. Sorry!
I guess some Buellton City Council members probably need to calm down, too. They’re having heart palpitations about all-electric housing developments, as in some members of the council want to ban them. Wait, what?
“It’s a matter of freedom,” Councilmember John Sanchez said without a trace of irony.
In an effort to give consumers the freedom to choose gas or electric in new housing developments, he wants to regulate developers and force them to build new residences that include both! Which is the opposite of laissez-faire capitalism.
It’s consumers that drive demand. If consumers want all-electric housing, that’s what they’ll buy! And if they want both gas and electric, there’s a market for that, too.
Seems like Mayor Holly Sierra gets that, while Sanchez doesn’t. She said City Council shouldn’t tell people “they have to use one or the other.”
“People who don’t want to buy electric homes will buy a home that has gas in it,” she said.
Now, that’s freedom!
The canary understands the difference between freedom and freedumb. Send thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 20-27, 2022.