Thanks to the La Mesa Courier for inviting me to share reflections on my eight years on City Council. I was the first Democrat elected to our council in decades, kicking the door open for many others. I'm proud of what we have accomplished.

I'm going to Big Sur for the week. I'll be without cell service, or pretending to be.

This was an especially good episode of Statecraft, about "How to Predict the Future." . I was especially interested to learn how prediction markets (wisdom of crowds) can provide more accurate forecasts because they mitigate for random errors and biases.

Tacos El Franc's outpost in National City is great. It's not as spectacular as the Michelin starred original in TJ, sure. But it's definitely closer, and it's a lot more accessible given the glacial pace of my Sentri renewal application.

Mom and I went to Tacos El Franc. So we're probably having a better day than everyone else.

Fourth of July hike up North Fortuna. It was steep!

So much fun. Americans forget that we have so much cultural appeal. It's like the goldfish and water. It's so ever-present we don't even notice it. Imagine someone saying Americans were a bunch of shy losers. Nobody on earth would agree with that.

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Heroes.

Allowing more homes is often policy to reduce regulations applied to private sector. One can appreciate the skepticism from those on the left. Abundance for transport is about empowering government to do good things. More comfortably aligns with other progressive sensibilities.

Transportation is an obvious place for abundance to provide value. Improving state capacity to deliver public goods is exactly what transportation policy should be about.

RT @sdut: What is your landlord allowed to charge you? Know your rights as a renter.

RT @CSElmendorf: California's new CEQA-reform package got UC Berkeley environmental law prof. Eric Biber to make the leap to X!. Read his s….

Liking this whole summertime thing. 🌞

I believe it involves publishing reports about parking reform. 😎

My mom's avocado trees are in overdrive.

RT @GovPressOffice: Turns out when California delivers the most consequential housing and infrastructure reform in modern state history, th….

Source: California Rolls Back Its Landmark Environmental Law

This framing misses what happened. Legislators didn't choose housing over the environment. They stopped believing that CEQA lawsuits for infill housing (often over traffic impacts, shadows, and other non-environmental issues) were protecting the environment whatsoever.

@CityofLaMesa It's ironic that jurisdictions choose not to grant the existing infill exemption either to (1) avoid, or (2) encourage litigation.

@CityofLaMesa There have been some modest recent changes to . CEQA process, to eliminate abusive litigation tactics. But the most impactful changes in recent history have been the "Swiss cheese" approach that leaves the system in place, but exempts favored projects like housing and transit.