District 66 Assembly candidates talk education, housing and environment – Daily Breeze

Four of the six candidates vying for state Assembly District 66, which encompasses the South Bay area, attended a local League of Women Voters forum in Torrance last week to discuss education, housing, gas prices and the environment.

These candidates who attended the Monday, April 20, forum were Sara Deen, a dentist and president of the local Palos Verdes Peninsula school board; Scott Houston, who serves on the Board of Directors for the Los Angeles County Business Federation and the Los Angeles County Commission for Older Adults; registered nurse Jessica Maldonado; and former Hermosa Beach Mayor George Barks.

The two absent candidates from Monday’s forum were Shannon Ruiz-Ross, a South Bay Beach commissioner, and Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor Paul Seo. Ruiz-Ross’ priorities include public safety, quality health care and affordable housing, and Seo’s priorities include affordability, public safety, homelessness, climate change and supporting small businesses, according to their campaign websites.

Education

Deen, who has focused much of her campaign on improving public education, said during the forum that much of the education-focused legislation that is passed does not always impact the schools and students as intended.

Sara Deen on April 20th, 2026 in Torrance, CA. (Photo by Gil Castro-Petres, Contributing Photographer)

“When you’re serving these local seats, you really see how sometimes that legislators do not think through the downstream impact,” Deen said. “So, I think that’s an important approach to have.”

She also said the Legislature needs to look at how education is funded, especially when it comes to special education.

“Special education is unfairly and proportionally underfunded,” she said. “Educating a kid with the IEP generally costs twice as much and our funding formula does not match.”

Houston had a similar view, saying there is often sufficient money invested in schools, but it is not being prioritized correctly.

“You’ve got to get the funding right,” he said. “And that is one of our biggest challenges. It’s extremely inequitable across this state as to how that formula works. And you’re seeing that right here in our communities.”

Scott Houston on April 20th, 2026 in Torrance, CA. (Photo by Gil Castro-Petres, Contributing Photographer)

Students, Houston added, should be prepared for all different types of employment following high school graduation – not just college.

“Not everyone is college-bound and that’s OK,” he said. “We’ve got big community colleges, we’ve got big trade schools, we’ve got unions, we’ve got a lot of other sectors of the water industry and utilities. We need workers that are smart and competitive, but they also are capable and they want to work with their hands.”

Barks agreed that with the rising popularity of artificial intelligence, it is more important than ever to prepare students for more hands-on work.

“AI, whether we like it or not, is here to stay,” he said. “We need to educate our young people for jobs that use their hands because AI is going to reduce the number of employees that we’re going to have in the nation.”

Another issue brought up was the quality of the education children are receiving.

“The education issue that I would like to work on is graduating eight through 12th grade youth that can read and can write at grade level,” Maldonado said. “Right now, we are in the 38th percentile out of the nation.

“We’re failing our children in California and that is absolutely unacceptable.”

Jessica Maldonado on April 20th, 2026 in Torrance, CA. (Photo by Gil Castro-Petres, Contributing Photographer)

Maldonado said she thinks the school districts are prioritizing the wrong things when it comes to educating children.

“I think that the school district is prioritizing other courses that take away from them,” she said, “(instead of) focusing on the right kinds of courses that the children should be learning.”

George Barks on April 20th, 2026 in Torrance, CA. (Photo by Gil Castro-Petres, Contributing Photographer)
Housing

“We need to build more starter homes, duplexes, smaller units; housing younger families can actually afford,” Deen said. “Workforce housing may be the strongest area of local housing development for nurses, school staff and first responders.”

Housing affordability was a major issue discussed during Monday’s forum.

“Most of us could not afford to buy the home we live in today,” Houston said. “Nor can your kids or your grandkids. We need to find the right balance where we can build more homes, we can build more units and at the same time, of course, respect local control. I know that’s really important here in the South Bay communities.”

Barks said he also supports increasing local control — highlighting the South Bay Regional Housing Trust.

So far, 10 cities in the region have joined the trust: El Segundo, Hawthorne, Hermosa Beach, Inglewood, Lawndale, Lomita, Manhattan Beach, Rancho Palos Verdes, Redondo Beach and Torrance. The coalition will utilize recently obtained funding from Los Angeles County’s Measure A to realize affordable housing in the South Bay.

Housing, for the most part, is only affordable in the South Bay for a household that makes six figures, according to a presentation by the South Bay Cities Council of Governments.

Many essential workers and city employees struggle to afford housing, the presentation said, with firefighters, teachers, nurses, child care workers, cooks and waiters having a “low income” or less.

There is not necessarily a lack of housing development, but rather, a lack of affordable options.

Because of Measure A, the SBCCOG will receive about $7.3 annually to dedicate toward affordable housing. The SBCCOG could utilize that money  without the trust, but would be limited in its abilities, since the coalition is only able to distribute the funding in grant form.

Many developers will choose not to accept grants because of the tax implications, the SBCCOG’s presentation said. Grants, for example, are treated as taxable income, increase a developer’s tax burden and reduce the basis for federal tax credits.

Issues like this are where the housing trust would be able to potentially step in and provide some or all of that funding.

The trust would also be able to dedicate funding to preserve existing affordable housing, rent subsidies and first-time homebuyer assistance. The trust, Bacharach said, could even purchase a multi-unit building for sale with numerous affordable units in it to ensure a different buyer does not increase the rents.

Maldonado also said she would prioritize local control.

“All these multi-unit structures; they are not filled up,” she said. “So I don’t believe that we have a shortage of housing and I believe that we need to restore local control so that we can maintain our quality of living.”

The real problem when it comes to affordable housing, Maldonado added, is high taxes driving up the cost of living.

“The taxes are what’s impacting on how much we pay for rent, how much we pay for our mortgage as well,” she said. “Taxes are really a problem across the board.”

Refineries

At the end of 2025, the massive Phillips 66 Los Angeles Refinery closed – the second of four planned refinery closures within California.

Combined with the Phillips 66 refinery, located in Carson and Wilmington, which produced about 139,000 barrels of crude oil and 85,000 barrels of gasoline per day, California is set to lose nearly 20% of its refining capacity.

Many within the oil industry have blamed these closures on over-regulation of the refinery industry.

Maldonado said she would support “reopening” the already decommissioned refineries.

“Refineries need to stay open,” she said. “I want to make sure that we have enough fuel that is affordable at the pump.”

Houston also agreed that the state cannot lose any more refineries.

“We’re losing two more refineries in the state of California,” he said. “Gas prices are going to go up. We can’t afford to lose another refinery in this state.”

He did note that he would support making refineries safer while not creating a significant amount of regulations.

“In this refinery here, they’ve made great strides to make it safer,” Houston said about the Torrance Refinery. “I’ll support every effort to keep it safe and make it safer, but I’m not going to go down the path to where we lose another one. We have to be very cautious.”

The safety of how the Torrance Refinery currently operates, however, is a concern for Deen. She even signed a pledge to work with the community to phase out the use of modified hydrofluoric acid at the refinery.

In 2015, an explosion at the Torrance Refinery registered as a small earthquake, left four workers injured and covered the surrounding communities in catalytic dust. It was later called a “near-miss” by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board because it launched a 40-ton piece of debris that landed just 5 feet away from puncturing storage tanks carrying tens of thousands of gallons of modified hydrofluoric acid, the chemical in question.

The Torrance Refinery is one of two refineries in the U.S. that uses MHF for refining high-octane gasoline. Officials there have repeatedly said MHF is safe and the only financially viable catalyst.

“I was having a conversation with one of our emergency physician doctors who serves on the disaster preparedness team for one of the large health care organizations here and he feels that the continued use of MHF puts South Bay residents at great risk,” Deen said. “We’re not talking about shutting down a refinery.”

Barks said he would work to ensure South Bay residents are safe without doing anything that would cause the refinery to close.

“I know most of the Torrance residents are very concerned about this and that it has the potential of creating a very serious hazardous situation,” he said. “I’m not an expert in that area, but we definitely need a refinery. We cannot continue in the next 50 years without some fossil fuels, but we have to make sure that these refineries are going to be as safe as possible.”

Water

Houston, who served on the West Basin Municipal Water District’s Board of Directors for 12 years, said one of his top priorities would be creating water infrastructure to support the state during droughts.

“This is one of the most important issues facing not just California, but the West,” he said. “This is a crisis. The Colorado River is in crisis.”

Houston said one major thing he would support is recycling waste water instead of dumping it into the ocean.

Deen said she thinks there needs to be increased regulation when it comes to monitoring water usage throughout the state.

“I was shocked to hear that there’s no live mechanism for keeping track of who’s pulling water,” she said. “I have found that as a matter of habit, we tend not to measure. We implement programs and we don’t measure how we’re doing and we don’t decide whether or not this program is working or not working. So, I think the first thing is investing in infrastructure. We definitely need to invest in all kinds of water infrastructure, but specifically, to keep track and monitor water throughout our state.”

Barks agreed that the state is in a “water crisis,” but said the reason is overregulation when it comes to protecting wildlife.

“The environmentalists have a lot of say with regards to protecting sea life,” he said. “We need to create a balance so we can really start addressing these issues because it’s unbelievable the state that we’re in now with this water shortage.”

Maldonado, on the other hand, said there is no water crisis.

“We do not have a water crisis,” she said. “We live by the ocean; there’s plenty of water. So when people talk about a water crisis, that’s politicians talking because they want to really regulate everything, but they’re really not concerned about your quality of life.”

Instead, Maldonado proposed that the state pull water directly from the ocean and create desalination infrastructure so it can be used for irrigation and drinking water.

“I strongly disagree that we have a water crisis,” she said. “And when you save a fish at the expense of your properties, I would question those politicians’ decisions on your behalf.”