Michael Smolens

3 days ago | sandiegouniontribune.com | Michael Smolens

It’s like an immutable law of physics. The Federal Highway Trust Fund, which helps pay for the cost of road repairs across the country, is running out of money. Its expenditures are increasing while revenues have not kept up. A big part of the reason is the increase in electric, hybrid and more fuel-efficient vehicles that pay no federal gas tax, or decreasing amounts. The federal tax is 18.4 cents a gallon, which has remained unchanged since 1993.

5 days ago | sandiegouniontribune.com | Michael Smolens

The city of San Diego is downshifting on its permissive rules encouraging backyard apartments. That raises the question of whether a desire for more “gentle development” will spread to some of the city’s other aggressive housing policies. Last week, the city Planning Commission strongly supported an effort to roll back some of the extreme aspects of the backyard apartment program.

1 week ago | sandiegouniontribune.com | Michael Smolens

Chula Vista Mayor John McCann’s role in helping a South Bay businesswoman convicted of fraud get an early release from prison is not new. But it is newly relevant in a political sense as McCann wages what is widely described as an uphill battle against Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre to win an open county supervisor seat in a special election runoff on July 1.

1 week ago | sandiegouniontribune.com | Michael Smolens

It was a conversation Bob Filner probably never thought he’d have. In the early 1990s, he was asked if he could explain why there didn’t appear to be any record of him spending time in a local jail in Jackson, Miss., where he had been arrested more than three decades earlier with other Freedom Riders protesting segregation and discriminatory laws in the South. To say he was angry would be an understatement. Apoplectic might come close.

2 weeks ago | sandiegouniontribune.com | Michael Smolens

The Republicans’ yearslong push to toughen requirements to vote and restrict how ballots are counted continues, as does the debate that rages around them. Dozens of states already have voter ID laws and limit how ballots can be cast and how long after Election Day they can be counted, if at all. But the research on what impact this has is largely inconclusive and at times contradictory.