For too long, rich and powerful polluters have gotten their way. Lisa Calderon will go after the polluters who make our air toxic and our water unsafe to drink. She’ll pass tough new laws mandating clean-up of contamination and make the polluters pay. That means reducing air pollution and cleaning up our drinking water, which mainly comes from groundwater supplies in this region.

Voters have passed taxes to pay for it, the Legislature and Governor added $1 billion this year in the state budget. There’s money, experts who know how to help, and voter support for fixing the problem. Why are so many communities struggling with growing numbers of homeless people. What is missing? Leadership and oversight. Lisa will bring both. She will work every day with the city, county and state to forge solutions and make progress. She’ll demand that drug treatment, new housing, and mental health services providers work together on this crisis or lose their funding. No excuses, no passing the buck.

Insurance companies are getting rich while people receive skimpy coverage and bills they can’t pay. We can do better. It’s time we expand the Affordable Care Act and Covered California, protect coverage of preexisting conditions, bring down costs, and require insurers to pass on the savings to patients, not pocket the money. Similarly, Lisa will support the Governor’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices.

California’s state budget has record amounts of money. We need to invest in our schools, specifically by increasing the money targeted at low performing schools so that we give every child a fair shot at a better life. Recruit more and better teachers, support more training for them so they keep up with the latest advances. And we need to reduce state university costs so every family member who earns entry can afford to go.

We need to generate better paying jobs in our community. Not only do green energy jobs clean the air and water, they pay well, too. I’ll use my business experience working for Edison to promote and attract more of these jobs. We also need to offer more skills and training at the same time, so that the workers in our community are ready to do the jobs.