CLEARLAKE— Every Thursday at 7 a.m. Mark Cooper hosts a Judges Breakfast Club at the Senior Center, also known as the Community Center in Clearlake. This week’s speaker was Congressman Mike Thompson, representative for the new Congressional 4th district which includes Napa and parts of Contra Costa, Lake, Solano and Sonoma. Thompson has been traveling throughout the district, reintroducing himself as the district lines had just changed.
Having represented California for over 20 years, Thompson is familiar with the County and feels that Lake County “Being a rural county it’s easy to become a fly over area” and thus needs proper representation to stand out. He also gave an overview of where California stands in the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the $1.9 trillion in funds from the American Rescue Plan were used, which was funding which provided vaccinations, keeping students educated, and reduced unemployment among other programs.
Thompson added “One component of COVID (related) legislation that I’m particularly proud of is the expansion of telemedicine. Telemedicine is something I started working on in the early 1990s while I was in the State Senate. It was a new technology and it wasn’t widely used leading to today where Medi-care patients have access to tele-medicine, making health care more accessible and affordable for the public.”
Thompson further discussed the $1.2 trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress, stating it is “The biggest infrastructure investment in the history of our country since Eisenhower was in office.” The project will fund construction of roads, bridges and highways as well as upgrade California’s electrical grids to adapt to growing needs and upgrade broadband systems as services like tele-medicine and long-distance learning have become more commonly used. It would also increase wildfire prevention initiatives including increasing the payment of the members of a prisoner fire crew. The project also includes the pathways to using more renewable energy and creating more electric vehicle charging stations to help reach the goal of getting a majority of electric vehicles on the road by 2030.
The Green Act was explained by Thompson as changes to the tax code for those using renewable energy and is something he hopes will incentivize companies, although it has not been passed yet. He also mentioned Congress is working on a plan to help aid with inflation which is being caused by ruptures in the supply chain. Thompson broke down the roadblocks faced in producing necessary computer chips as only “16 percent are currently made here… and zero percent of significant chips… which puts us at a real disadvantage.” This plan is designed to bring computer chip manufacturing back to America.
The public had several questions and concerns, one regarding funding for technology to get all of California and Lake County students online and learning, noting that other counties in the district received more funding, to which Thompson responded that he was able to earmark a total of $900,000 as part of a program getting kids easier access to education. This was similar to another concern voiced by those in attendance regarding funding for educating students with learning disabilities, something that had been promised for some time. Thompson’s response was that “There has been some progress made, not enough but some.” Another public issue came from District Attorney Candidate Anthony Farrington asking if there will be any advances in helping the homeless population, where Thompson answered that there will be a much bigger investment into the citizens mental health. Clearlake’s Chief of Police Andrew White also thanked the Congressman for his help in rejuvenating the local post office and what he said ultimately led to making a cleaner and safer city.
The full schedule to future meetings can be seen online at https://www.facebook.com/JudgesBreakfast
