The CHP is touting “record hiring” in 2025 after years of recruiting

The California Highway Patrol graduated 780 new employees this yearincluding more than 130 cadets on Friday, highlighting the success of the agency’s recruiting efforts amid a once-worrisome vacancy rate.

Struggle with vacancies that have grown 94% between 2015 and 2023asked the agency in 2022 $2 million from the state legislature to hire more officers and launched a recruitment drive known as CHP 1000. In recent years, it also received some of its highest pay increases for officers, providing 7.9% wage increase in 2023 and $489 million, three years employment contract in 2024.

Since those efforts began, the agency has hired more than 2,300 employees by 2022 and is on track to increase hiring by more than 60 percent, reports The Sacramento Bee. Applications also jumped 52 percent, from more than 16,000 in 2022 to nearly 25,480 in 2024, according to the agency. This year, CHP is on track to receive more than 33,000 applications.

• Governor Gavin Newsomin a statement: “As the year comes to a close, California continues to make real progress — strengthening protections across the state while staying focused on the needs of the people we serve.”

Hiring Increase Comes as Governor Deploys Cogeneration”crime prevention” teams in six California regions, following a similar state intervention effort in 2024 OaklandBakersfield and San Bernardino.

Although Newsom denied the squads were expanded in response to what the Trump administration called a crackdown in Democratic-led cities, enforcement activity by San Francisco police has reportedly increased due to potential threats of federal intervention.

Proponents of artificial intelligence and skeptics of the technology’s promised benefits have clashed over how California must approach AI data centers at a recent CalMatters event moderated by reporter Alejandro Lazo.

The Nov. 18 panel discussion featured Liang Min, managing director of Stanford University’s Bits & Watts Initiative, who said forecasting the state’s electricity demand is difficult because new AI applications are spreading rapidly. He argues that as AI places more demands on the grid, the country will have to rely on other sources of energy, such as nuclear, geothermal or natural gas.

The explosive growth of data centers is also raising environmental concerns, as well as concern from utility watchers that Californians may end up footing the bill for billions of dollars in grid upgrades. But AI supporters say overregulation could stifle competition in the state.

• Ahmad ThomasCEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group: “It’s very hard to see a world where California is at the top of the AI ​​heap if we don’t have an approach to data centers that is — at the very least — mildly competitive with other states.”

Read more here and watch the event summary.

Before voters elected her to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors in July, Paloma Aguirre spent two decades trying to mitigate Sewage pollution of the Tijuana Riverwrites Deborah Brennan of CalMatters.

Considered by Aguirre to be one of the country’s worst environmental crises, the pollution of the Tijuana River dates back to at least the 1930s. As the Mexican border town’s population grew, its waste exceeded what cross-border sewage plants could handle. In the early 2000s, sewage spills and beach closures along San Diego’s south coast became commonplace. Pollution in the ocean is making swimmers sick, and emissions of toxic gases near the river are giving residents headaches and nausea.

As the former mayor of Imperial Beach, Aguirre called on California and the federal government to declare a state of emergency over the pollution problem and lobbied to have the area classified as a Superfund site. After becoming county supervisor, she led plans to study the health effects of pollution and requested $50 million from the state to help alleviate the problem in a particularly polluted area known as the Saturn Boulevard hotspot.

• Aguirre: “The river carries dangerous chemicals, pollutants, pathogens and toxic gases that affect the communities of South San Diego.”

Read more here.

To speed up coastal housing development, the state Coastal Commission approved a rule change to give affordable projects more time after permits are issued. CalMatters’ Nadia Lathan and Director of Video Strategy Robert Meeks have a video segment on the commission moved away from its slowly growing reputationas part of our partnership with PBS SoCal. Watch it here.

SoCalMatters airs at 5:58pm weekdays on PBS SoCal.