It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Yesterday, I finally submitted a complete and edited book manuscript to Princeton University Press. January also saw the publication of three other pieces I’ve been working on for a while.
First, in the new issue of Dissent, I have an essay about the relationship’s relationship with bureaucracy. In this piece, I argue that the left needs to finally abandon the anti-bureaucratic romanticism of the New Left and follow Zohran Mamdani in embracing the power of public administration.
Instead of retreating into facile cynicism about the safety net and regulatory state, people on the left should be trying to occupy the bureaucracy at the state, local, and, after the MAGA putschists are finally expelled from power, federal level—not simply because we need good people in those jobs, but because enough good people in any given department can change its internal culture for the better. A lot depends, for example, on whether state and local transportation departments are staffed by car-brained traffic engineers or planners who are genuinely invested in walkability and developing viable mass transit networks. Just as much hinges on whether state health agencies are staffed by people with a genuine commitment to the cause of universal healthcare, even in the face of brutal federal Medicaid cuts.
There’s another reason for occupying the bureaucracy, too. For a movement that wants to transform the state, there is tremendous value in understanding how policy implementation and institutional change happens on a granular level. If you spend some time working inside the bureaucracy and you keep your eyes open, you can learn a lot about the points of leverage that leftist politicians and outside advocacy groups can press to their advantage. On the flipside, you can also learn a great deal about the tradeoffs associated with certain approaches and how well-intentioned but undercooked policy initiatives can produce unintended consequences. These are all important lessons for anyone trying to push any level of government in a more humane direction. But they’re especially important lessons for leftist officials who have ambitious agendas, a finite amount of time in which to implement them, and little room for error.
I really want to shout out the lead editor on this piece, Natasha Lewis. Every article is a collaboration between author and editor, but that is even more true than usual with regard to this one in particular. My original draft was very different from what ultimately saw publication; Natasha found the real core of what I was trying to say and drew it out.
Next up, I have a new brief for the Roosevelt Institute that dropped this morning. This one is an attempt to articulate the fundamental principles of YIMBY policymaking and their applicability to other domains such as the energy transition and universal health care provision.
You might say this is a brief about “abundance,” but I eschew the label here, because I’m not interested in litigating the meta-political culture war fights about the makeup of “the abundance movement.” Instead, I hope that this brief will help to refocus people’s attention on the actual policy content of a generalized YIMBY approach. I hope it’s a useful intervention in the whole YIMBY/abundance discourse.
Lastly, this one is for the hardcore California policy nerds. I wrapped up my fellowship at California Forward last week with a blog post summarizing much of the research I did for them on Climate Resilience Districts. These are special districts that California’s local governments can use to finance climate resilience infrastructure projects, broadly defined. They’re a powerful tool, but one that has gone pretty much un-utilized since SB 852 authorized the creation of CRDs a couple years ago.
Ultimately, local governments are going to have to incorporate resilience planning into every element of their infrastructure development and maintenance, programmatic work, and long-term strategizing. Doing all of this costs money—more money than many local governments are able to raise through the tax code, which is significantly hampered by the limits imposed on property tax revenues by Proposition 13.
That is where Climate Resilience Districts (CRDs) come in. The state legislature created this category of special district in 2022 through SB 852 (Dodd) to help local jurisdictions access the funding and financing needed to make their communities more resilient. CRDs can use a wide variety of revenue-raising tools, making them potent vehicles for local and regional resilience work.
So far, the CRD model remains largely unutilized. There is, to date, one CRD in existence in California—the Sonoma County Regional Climate Protection Authority (RCPA). Even this example is limited: while RCPA uses its CRD as a regional governance structure, it has not utilized any of the financing tools available to CRDs.
Why haven’t local governments in California taken advantage of SB 852? How can they best use CRDs to improve their resilience? And what can the state do to encourage CRD adoption in regions that would benefit from the model? In 2025, as part of its broader efforts to promote fiscal resilience, CA FWD sought answers to these questions.
I don’t mention it in the post, but the critical context for SB 852—and pretty much every other piece of state legislation regarding special districts since the late 1970s—is the ruinous effect that Prop 13 had on local government finances. Because California municipalities can’t raise very much revenue through property taxes, they’ve had to turn to a set of increasingly exotic financial instruments in order to fund basic infrastructure improvements.
I wrap up my blog post with some recommendations for local governments and suggestions for how the state legislature might consider amending SB 852. Always happy to discuss more with city/state policymakers and staff!