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We asked Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo to reflect on the differences, similarities, rewards, and challenges of serving in state and local government.

After proudly serving in the California State Assembly for six years, the transition from the State Capitol to county government as a new Monterey County Supervisor has been a smooth one for me. While in Sacramento, I was proud to have authored 76 bills and 16 resolutions, including landmark laws to allow immigrants to obtain drivers licenses, to raise California’s minimum wage and to modernize our complex groundwater adjudication laws and procedures.

Update: Late Thursday night the author of AB1250 pledged amendments so the onerous new contracting requirements will now apply only to Counties. If this policy was bad enough to remove cities from having to comply, it’s bad enough that counties shouldn’t have to either. This bill will raise costs and hurt some of the most vulnerable people that need county services, including; mental health, public health and emergency management services to name a few. Read more here.

Homelessness affects every county in the state. No matter how many people live there or what the economy looks like, there are people in your community who do not have a stable place to live. Homelessness has many causes, but we know that a significant number of homeless people suffer from mental illness, emotional disturbance and/or substance addictions that make finding a place to live even more difficult.

Tree mortality has not gone away with the wet winter we’ve had and neither have the dangers it presents for many California counties. We still have millions of dead trees and some of them still pose direct hazards to homes and infrastructure. The potential for a wildfire in those stands of dead trees is enough to keep me awake at night. California has many issues to deal with, but this one should stay near the top of the list. Please keep reading to find more about what’s happening in my home county of Amador, and also to hear from Mariposa County Supervisor Kevin Cann, Tulare County Supervisor Steve Worthley, and Tuolumne County Supervisor Randy Hanvelt.

Riverside County Supervisor John Tavaglione recently wrote a blog entry about sharing a podium with Rusty Bailey, the Mayor of Riverside, whom he first met when he was coaching the then-four-year-old soccer player. This is Mayor Bailey’s Response.

I read with great fondness the words of Supervisor John Tavaglione as he reflected on how, nearly 40 years ago, he first came into my life as a soccer coach. I was especially moved by the way he warmly described the bond we have shared ever since. I can assure you that this relationship has been far more beneficial to me than it has been to him.

Please click here to watch a brief video about the program.

If you research competitive mock trials on the Internet, you learn that they take place in numerous countries around the world. In the United States, students participate in them at the college, high school and even middle school levels.  But finding anything about mock trials involving incarcerated youths is a search that begins and ends with San Bernardino County.

Please click here to watch a brief video about the program.

San Diego County’s emergency website, ReadySanDiego.org, has information on a wide variety of natural disasters that could result in large-scale evacuations, such as an earthquake, tsunami, fire, or flooding; there are also man-made crises, like gas leaks or terrorism. The County and its cities work to prepare for such disasters – and now have a new tool to assist in their emergency response: a series of informative videos that provide first responders training on evacuating individuals with physical, cognitive and emotional disabilities.

Please click here to watch a brief video about the program.

We all know about California’s Adopt A Highway program that’s been in existence for more than 25 years. But few people know about a similar program in Orange County that’s keeping flood-control  channels free of litter and graffiti. It’s called the Adopt A Channel program and it’s making a positive environmental, scenic and fiscal impact on the County.

Please click here to watch a brief video about this program.

Libraries are designed to be calm, inviting places. So it wasn’t really a surprise when the Butte County library staff noticed that some of their “regulars” were using library branches for respite centers, safe places where they could escape the heat of summer or the cold of winter. And for some of them, suffering with mental illness, the Butte County libraries became places to try to escape their internal struggles for a little while.