California Local Explainers, Guides, Etc.

Community service districts can do most anything a city government can do. Here’s how they work and how to start one.

Inflation is on the rise, with prices in some parts of California their highest in 13 years. Here’s what caused this round of inflation, and how can it be stopped.

A new California law to lower speed limits, AB 43, is part of an overall effort, called ‘Vision Zero,’ to eliminate traffic deaths completely. Here’s what the law does, and why it can make a difference.

The pesky mosquito can be deadly as well as annoying. Here’s how local governments in California have been waging war on mosquitoes for more than a century.

Despite myriad obstacles, Dungeness crab remains one of the most valuable commercial fisheries in California. Here’s how it works.

California’s history of people getting directly involved in the affairs of government dates back more than a century, but it has sometimes been coopted by business and other interests.

A baker’s dozen of great and not-so-great ditties from all over California.

In an era of information overload, here’s how a rising form of journalism helps explain it all for you, and why California Local publishes ‘explanatory’ reporting.

What do resource conservation districts protect? Pretty much everything that’s worth saving.

The short-term or ‘vacation’ rental industry spawns hundreds of horror stories and damages the housing market, but governments struggle with how to bring it under control.

Why is California still experiencing offshore oil spills half-a-century after the catastrophic Santa Barbara disaster? The answer is found in the state’s longtime, close relationship with the oil business.

Here’s why cargo ship traffic has been dangerously heavy at California’s ports in 2021, and how the backup may have caused a disaster.

Extended unemployment benefits, the state's eviction moratorium and other COVID relief measures have ended. But people are still out of work and hurting in California as the recovery remains slow.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and California’s Democratic legislators have enacted a sweeping new package of police reform legislation. Here’s what the new laws will accomplish, and why.

The state’s largest power utility faced new criminal charges Sept. 24, but PG&E has a long and disturbing history of causing wildfires. Why? And how can the company change?

Residential wells are drying up in the state’s main agricultural region at the same time that agricultural businesses consume almost 90 percent of the water there.

Even as California’s wildfires grow more intense seemingly every year, insurers are cancelling policies for homeowners in the path of the fires.

California will soon add a new emergency hotline service with the number 988. Here’s the story behind that new service, and the original 911 number.

Cumbersome state bureaucracy and competition from their illegal counterparts has made life perilous for California’s nascent legal cannabis businesses.

Since long before the COVID-19 pandemic, states have possessed broad authority to protect public health, even to suspend laws and commandeer private property. Here’s why, and how it works.