^{Thumbnail and other photos by Persephone Rose.}

Dozens of constituents cornered Assemblyman Chris Rogers in what would have been an otherwise cozy nook of the Familia Cafe last week. 

They were packed so tightly that even gaining entry to the building proved to be a challenge, let alone getting close enough to hear the assemblyman’s responses to the crowd’s questions. Fortunately, Field Rep. Heidi McHugh asked the crowd to give others a chance to come forward, rescuing those who could hear little more than the murmuring crowd and bustle of a working cafe.

Rogers, former councilmember, and, for a time, the mayor of Santa Rosa, was elected to the California State Assembly’s 2nd district last year. His district covers Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Sonoma, and Trinity counties.

Rogers hosted a triple shot of “community office hours” —meetups across Weaverville, Crescent City, and Eureka. (Fun Fact: though both Crescent City and Eureka’s events were branded as “Community Coffees” taking place at local coffee shops, Weaverville’s was instead at the Trinity County Library.)

“Please join me for in-person community office hours this week where I’ll be discussing state, local and current legislation impacting our communities and answering your questions,” he posted on Facebook.

Redwood Voice Community News had the chance to attend not only the Crescent City event at Paragon Coffeehouse, but also Eureka’s event at the Familia Cafe at the Vance Hotel. Although KFUG Station Coordinator Amanda Dockter managed to breach through the crowd of 20-30 attendees and cover the event from early on, the scene at Humboldt was a bit more daunting. 

^{Assemblyman Rogers—approachable within the walls of a small coffee shop, yet unreachable in a sea of constituents.}

As the crowd filtered so that newcomers could engage, Rogers repeated a constituent’s question: “If I could get to the heart of the question, the question was about defending our forests from Trump when he says that we’re gonna just cut it down and make wood accessible for everybody again,” he said. 

Rogers said it started with reallocating $25 million at the beginning of the year for California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “Over the course of the campaign last year, whenever Trump would threaten anything in California, Rob Bonta, our attorney general, and our governor [Gavin Newsom] started to prepare legal briefs on how they were going to fight [him] in court,” he said.

Rogers explained these briefs could be applied to everything from environmental issues to birthright citizenship. “Those were things that [with] Trump, if nothing else, is transparent,” Rogers said. “He tells you what he’s going to do, even if it’s not well thought out.” He used an example of how California prepared a legal brief declaring Trump saying he would end birthright citizenship would be unconstitutional.

“Trump made a move to do this when he came into office,” the assemblyman said. “Within 24 hours, he got slapped with a lawsuit from California. We have those legal briefs that are ready to go for everything that he has threatened, everything he has indicated he could possibly do. That’s part of us being responsive to be able to tie everything up in the courts.”

Rogers dismissed the notion that California is a primary source of timber. “Even if you talk to the folks in the timber industry, most of the timber does not come from California,” he said. “Even if they chopped down all of our forests, it wouldn’t solve whatever fictitious problem Trump is trying to solve because climate change has actually moved where most of the usable lumber is grown—North from us.”

Another woman in the audience had three questions to ask. Her first — asked on behalf of “a man who maybe didn’t get to ask,” — had to do with a farm the man bought and invested $100,000 into solar, and concerns that Governor Gavin Newsom wanted to change the contract. Rogers verified the man indeed asked earlier. “There’s a bill that’s coming through the legislature that somebody is proposing that changed the existing contract that he currently has,” he answered. Rogers further explained the bill would likely be tied up in court as a violation of contract law, and that he himself opposed the bill and would vote against it when it comes to his committee.

Her second question pertained to law enforcement staffing in California. She cites that years ago the Eureka Police Department was 68 percent understaffed (we couldn’t verify this number, though she may have been referring to the numbers in this article from KRCR in 2022), and that currently Oakland is understaffed by 166 officers (the number is actually 199 officers, according to a study commissioned by the Oakland City Council.)

Rogers began his answer by stating that the main issue regarded limited resources and the cutting back of local budgets. “We have a really volatile budget in California,” he said. “We’ve made decisions to hold property taxes low, and then over-rely on things like sales taxes, personal income tax, and capital gains taxes.” 

Though this is usually fine and benefits California when the economy is good, when the economy slows it creates a volatility, which falls to local governments, Rogers said. This task falls to Arcata Mayor Meredith Matthews yearly, the assemblyman said. 

Rogers suggested trying to find ways to give stable revenue to communities so they’re prepared to do more long-term planning,referencing his time on theSanta Rosa City Council. Due to the volatility of their budget, he said, attracting police officers was difficult. 

“They didn’t want to move their families to an area if they were only going to have a job for a few years,” he said.

Rogers further referenced the competitive nature of attracting potential officers who were actually qualified for the job, to the point cities would “steal” officers from one another using signing bonuses. According to him, as mayor of Santa Rosa he “stole” eight officers from Petaluma. Rogers also suggested scaling up training programs, allowing new recruits to join police departments.

The woman’s final question directly referenced an article from the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, “How California lawmakers are trying to shield themselves from public view.”

According to the article, “State lawmakers have introduced at least a dozen proposals that would make it harder to confront local officials at public meetings, shield more information from the public and relax rules on financial reports.” The woman’s question came down to Rogers’ stance on transparency and, more specifically, where he received his money, such as from PG&E.

Rogers said this was an easy one for him—that he was a large proponent of transparency, citing his support for Santa Rosa’s Sunshine Ordinance and his willingness to speak with his constituents. He also mentioned his finances are public. “The answer on how much money I’m taking from PG&E is $0,” he concluded, eliciting applause and audible thanks from the crowd.

A man who identified himself as Dan posed a lengthy question: He described himself as living at “the bottom tier of society” and “in the top index of homeless support,” who was set to receive a Housing Choice Voucher (also known as Section 8), which was thrown off once the regional office “took all the money away from Humboldt County […] and sent it to the big city.” Getting to the heart of his question, Dan asked, “What are you going to do for people like me, that are having our knees chopped off and trying to crawl back out? […] What are you going to do for the bottom-end of society?”

Rogers first took time to address a concern Dan had mentioned that he had met several other California senators and assemblymembers, but not Rogers. The assemblyman told an anecdote of his mother who started a nonprofit working with developmentally delayed kids under the age of 5. “One of the more formative moments for me was watching her navigate that world with people who didn’t think the kids that she was serving deserved their tax dollars and thought they’d never amount to anything,” he said. “I got into politics because I wanted to work on poverty issues […] Our office’s four priorities are poverty, kids, climate, and health.”

Moving towards the question of homelessness itself, Rogers answered, “When we talk about homelessness, one of the things I’m always very weary of is that we talk about it like it’s a monolith where there’s going to be a one-size-fits-all approach — one policy, or one program that’s going to solve it — and it treats people as though they’re not human.” He proceeded to answer that it was of great importance that those on the local level who know “you” (referring in part to Dan, but likely also the community at large) are the ones who need to have these conversations, “and you’re going to be able to help them figure out how best to serve you.”

Other topics, of which there were many, raised at the event include:

• Ideas the assemblymember had for local economic development.
• A California ethnic studies bill which would censor public teaching of Israel and Palestine.
• The question of what state, federal, and private entities can do to prepare for the effect of continuous federal funding cuts, especially in natural resource management.
• The Department of Education, how one can protect their kids, and how concerned parents should be (especially in the example given of a disabled student receiving an IEP after years of their parent advocating for it, and what happens next.)
• In reference to Rogers’ mentions of fighting Big Pharma, what exactly that entails.
• Big Tech and the idea that exists that one can’t self-determine how much tech is one’s life, as well as concerns of Newsom being “in the pocket of Big Tech” and, if impeachment were to come up, whether Rogers was up to the task of doing so.
• Praise given for Rogers’ work on the Upper Klamath and a question on what’s next for water rights in general.

Rogers also reminded the crowd—as even with this large list of questions, there were visibly many more hoping to ask theirs—that these community office hour events will happen regularly. He also vowed that next time, he will find a larger venue to accommodate the large crowd (as well as a microphone, as suggested by someone in attendance.) He also encouraged attendees to reach out to his office and engage on social media. 

You can find more about and reach out to 2nd District Assemblyman Rogers at his website.