"When you say 'California,' rural is not one of the adjectives that comes readily to mind."

Near the San Bernardino and Kern County line
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

That is one of the most memorable comments from today's Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) event, "Spotlight on Rural California."  It was made by PPIC president and CEO, Tani Cantil-Sakayue, former Chief Justice of the State of California, and it's one I appreciate given how difficult it seems to be to draw attention to rural issues, rural people, rural needs here in the Golden State.  It's an issue I've written about occasionally here on the blog, but more commonly ranted about verbally to friends and anyone who would listen.  One problem with people not thinking about the rural character of big swaths of California is that rural places don't command legislators' and policymakers' attention.  They don't seem important in the scheme of all the other things going on economically and culturally in the Golden State, but if the speakers are today's event are to be believed, rural California is absolutely critical to the success of its more urban counterparts.   

Wind turbines over Tehachapi Pass, Kern County
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

Thus I found this event really helpful and hopeful, a sort of bridge-building affair.  It featured Cantil-Sakayue in conversation with California Assemblyman and Republican leader James Gallagher (R) of Yuba City, one-on-one. Cantil-Sakayue then convened a panel that included California State Senator Shannon Grove (R) of Bakersfield, Chris Lopez of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors and Chair of Rural County Representatives of California, and Ashley Swearengen, Executive Director of the Central Valley Community Foundation.  I found all to be excellent and thoughtful speakers and advocates for rural California and what the state's rural reaches need.  All touched in one way or another on how rural places support and prop up urban areas, but in ways that typically go unseen, unacknowledged.     

The themes that came up over and over again were

• Rural and urban interdependence:  the food, fuel and fiber supplied by rural California, including green energy that comes from places like Kern County and permits urban areas like Los Angeles to claim green designations (see photo above of wind turbines over Tehachapi pass).  Grove asserted that 52% of California's clean energy comes from her district.  She mentioned, for example, a 6,000 acre solar installment, something you "can't put in Santa Monica," she quipped.
• The closure of rural hospitals and the threat of more closures, as well as other geographic inequities in health care.  As Grove mentioned, for example, the hospital in Ridgecrest recently closed its labor and delivery unit, a move that has national security implications because of nearby Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake.  She says that installation won't be able to attract young talent without health care access.  The nearest hospital with labor and delivery is 70 miles away, and those are not an easy 70 miles, Grove noted, with a ravine off to one side and a granite all on the other.  

  

  The number of Tesla superchargers in Mojave 
  may be the highest per capita in California.  
  (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

  
  
• The cost of living for all California families, including rural families, who tend to face non-negotiable transportation costs--to work, the grocery stores, and such.   They don't have the option of public transportation, and electric vehicle technology and infrastructure are not fully viable there--at least not yet.  The housing shortage was also addressed; Lopez, for example, mentioned thousands of industry-built units for farmworkers near Salinas, behind what he called "the lettuce curtain."  The rising cost of insurance--"if you can get it," Gallagher noted, is another concern.  
• The significance of green energy infrastructure--such as those thousands of acres of solar panels (noted above) and hydrogen-fueled airplanes being developed in Mojave.  (I wondered why there were so many Tesla chargers in Mojave--dozens of them--when I drove through last month; perhaps energy is especially cheap there and Tesla wants good charging infrastructure en route to Death Valley and other other remote points up Hwy 395 into the Eastern Sierra).
• The need for regional collaborations between rural and urban places.
• The struggle to staff rural law enforcement; Grove noted that only one law enforcement officer serves the entire "west side" of her district.  (I'd be interested to know where that officer is based, but I notice that the town of Maricopa, south of Taft, is the western-most point in Grove's district).
• The importance of rural tourism to California's economy--as well as its unrealized potential, including in the north state. 

I will come back with more details in a future post, but I wanted to provide at least this teaser, for now, about an event I found encouraging, an event that left me optimistic than I typically am about rural California's future and the possibility that state government might invest in it.