Redistricting has rearranged legislative boundaries throughout California, including the 75th Assembly District that I have represented for the past 10 years. The current district includes the cities of Escondido, San Marcos and Temecula, along with Bonsall, Fallbrook, Palomar Mountain, Pauma Valley and Valley Center. But that’s changing.

Escondido and San Marcos will now be located in the 76th Assembly District, and Temecula will be in the 71st. The 75th has been expanded to the east, now taking in most of rural northern and eastern San Diego County from the Riverside County line to the Mexican border, and east to the Imperial County line. It covers about two-thirds of San Diego County.

Redistricting also creates some technical issues. On November 18, our legislative data system will go dark as technicians in Sacramento go to work transferring constituent records into the new districts. The data system will be live again on December 5th. Hopefully, records will be updated so that constituents are correctly included in their new districts and constituent needs can be handled by the appropriate Assembly offices.

The 2023-2024 session begins on December 5th. Normally, the one-day session welcomes new and returning members who get sworn in, sometimes introduce a few bills, then go home for the holidays. The new session begins in earnest after January 1st, but this time there may be more to it. Governor Newsom is talking about a special session to raise taxes on oil companies, which he says will make them cut the cost of gasoline. Yep, that’s the plan. Anyway, if there is a special session, it will most likely also occur on December 5th. In reality, nothing much is likely to happen.

The real work will begin after January 1st. Given the present state of California, we’ll have our hands full.