Building Ventura County’s Future
The cost of living in Ventura County has risen faster than many families’ ability to keep up. Housing, insurance, utilities, healthcare, childcare, and everyday essentials continue to strain working families, seniors, young professionals, and small businesses. Michael believes Sacramento must focus on practical policies that lower costs, expand economic opportunity, and make it possible for people to continue living and working in the communities they call home.
Restoring Affordability
Housing costs, regulatory barriers, and limited housing stock have made it increasingly difficult for working families and young people to stay in the communities where they grew up. Michael believes Sacramento must focus on policies that expand housing availability, modernize construction rules, and support practical solutions that increase supply while protecting the character of local communities.
To address California’s housing crisis, Michael supports removing unnecessary barriers that slow down housing production and increase costs for renters and homebuyers. Every delay in the approval process drives up the final cost of housing, making it harder for families, seniors, and young professionals to afford to live in Ventura County.
Michael’s housing priorities include:
• Remove barriers to building: Streamline permitting timelines, expand by-right approvals for compliant projects, and eliminate redundant reviews that add cost without adding value. Projects that meet local standards should move efficiently through the process.
• Lower the cost of construction: Address rising impact fees, support modular and prefabricated construction methods, and invest in workforce development programs that create good-paying jobs while helping reduce construction costs.
• Create certainty in the process: Developers, nonprofits, and local governments need confidence that approved projects can actually move forward. State and local processes should be aligned to ensure compliant housing projects are not stalled by conflicting requirements or unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Support balanced community growth: Housing solutions should include workforce housing, affordable housing, missing-middle housing, and responsible market-rate development that fits within the existing character and infrastructure of local communities.
Michael believes California can increase housing supply, reduce costs, and keep communities strong by focusing on practical, balanced solutions that work for residents, workers, and local governments alike.
Ventura County should be a place where teachers, nurses, service workers, and young families can afford to live.
Controlling Insurance Costs
California’s insurance market is in crisis — from health coverage to homeowners’ insurance. Families across Ventura County are facing skyrocketing premiums, policy cancellations, and fewer coverage options as insurers pull back from the state. Michael believes California needs a balanced approach that stabilizes the market, protects consumers, and keeps insurance companies operating in California.
“We cannot simply ignore rising climate risks and infrastructure costs, but we also cannot allow families to be priced out of coverage or left without options,” Michael says. “We need a competitive and stable insurance market that keeps carriers in California while also ensuring accountability and fairness for consumers.”
Michael supports reforms that reduce risk, create greater predictability in the market, and ensure homeowners are not left relying solely on the California FAIR Plan.
Michael’s priorities include:
• Rebuild and stabilize the insurance market: Reform the California FAIR Plan so it functions as a true safety net rather than becoming the primary insurance option for homeowners across the state.
• Strengthen consumer protections: Support reasonable non-renewal protections, improve transparency in the rate-setting process, and ensure consumers are protected from excessive or unreasonable premium increases.
• Invest in wildfire prevention and resilience: Expand home-hardening programs, vegetation management, and wildfire mitigation projects that reduce long-term risk and help bring private insurers back into the market.
• Modernize regulations and speed up mitigation efforts: California must modernize outdated regulations where necessary while accelerating infrastructure upgrades and wildfire prevention projects that reduce insurer risk exposure.
• Create long-term market certainty: Insurance companies need predictability to remain in California, but consumers also deserve fairness, accountability, and reliable access to coverage.
Michael believes California can stabilize the insurance market by focusing on practical solutions that reduce risk, strengthen infrastructure, protect homeowners, and restore confidence for both consumers and insurers.
Public Safety
Public safety is one of the primary responsibilities of government. Michael believes safe communities require a balanced approach that supports law enforcement, strengthens emergency response systems, expands mental health and crisis intervention services, and addresses homelessness with both compassion and accountability.
Residents deserve to feel safe in their neighborhoods, businesses, schools, and public spaces. Michael believes public safety policy should focus not only on responding to crime, but also on prevention, intervention, and building stronger community trust.
Michael’s public safety priorities include:
• Supporting law enforcement and first responders: Ensure police, firefighters, and emergency personnel have the staffing, training, equipment, and resources needed to keep communities safe.
• Expanding mental health and crisis services: Increase access to behavioral health care, crisis response programs, and early intervention services that help prevent emergencies before they escalate.
• Addressing homelessness responsibly: Support practical solutions that combine shelter, treatment, accountability, and long-term pathways to stability while maintaining safe and accessible public spaces.
• Investing in prevention and intervention: Support programs focused on youth services, violence prevention, rehabilitation, and community-based strategies that reduce crime and improve outcomes.
• Strengthening community trust: Promote transparency, accountability, and collaboration between public safety agencies and the communities they serve.
Michael believes Ventura County deserves leadership that takes public safety seriously, remains present and engaged in the community, and works every day to keep residents safe.
Strengthening Ventura’s Economy
Ventura County’s economy has changed dramatically over the last several decades. For generations, agriculture and energy production helped drive economic opportunity and support working families across the region. Today, the economy is evolving, and public policy must evolve with it.
Michael believes Ventura County needs a forward-looking economic strategy that supports local businesses, encourages innovation, strengthens workforce development, and creates pathways to good-paying jobs while preserving the county’s unique character and quality of life.
A strong economy means more opportunity for working families, stronger communities, and greater long-term stability.
Michael’s economic priorities include:
• Support small businesses and entrepreneurs: Reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens, modernize permitting processes, and improve access to resources that help small businesses grow, hire workers, and remain competitive.
• Invest in workforce development: Strengthen partnerships between schools, community colleges, trade programs, and employers to prepare workers for high-demand careers in healthcare, skilled trades, clean energy, advanced manufacturing, technology, and public service.
• Encourage innovation and economic diversification: Ventura County must position itself to attract and grow emerging industries while continuing to support the agricultural, tourism, healthcare, and energy sectors that remain critical to the regional economy.
• Build infrastructure that supports growth: Invest in transportation, water reliability, broadband access, and energy infrastructure that allows businesses and communities to grow responsibly and remain competitive.
• Support smart environmental and energy policies: California can protect the environment while also creating good-paying jobs through clean technology, sustainable infrastructure investment, and practical climate solutions.
• Keep Ventura County affordable: Rising costs for housing, insurance, utilities, fuel, childcare, and groceries continue to place pressure on families and businesses. Economic policy should focus on lowering costs and expanding opportunity so people can afford to live and work in the communities they serve.
Michael believes economic growth and community character are not mutually exclusive. With thoughtful planning and practical policies, Ventura County can build a stronger economy that creates opportunity while protecting the values that make the region unique.
Ensuring a Transparent and Accountable Government
Michael has spent his career strengthening transparency, accountability, and public trust in government. As Ventura’s City Clerk, he has modernized records systems, expanded public access to government processes, improved digital accessibility, and implemented electronic campaign finance filing to increase transparency and public accountability.
Michael believes government works best when it is open, accessible, and responsive to the people it serves. Residents deserve leadership that listens, communicates honestly, and puts the public first.
Throughout his career in public service, Michael has worked to make government more transparent, efficient, and easier for residents to engage with. From improving public records access to modernizing legislative and meeting processes, he has focused on practical solutions that strengthen confidence in local government.
Michael’s priorities include:
• Strengthening transparency and accountability: Expand public access to government information, modernize outdated systems, and ensure residents can easily participate in the democratic process.
• Reforming campaign finance laws: California’s political system is increasingly dominated by large donors, independent expenditures, and special interest money that make it harder for everyday residents to have their voices heard. Michael supports stronger transparency requirements, increased disclosure, and reforms that reduce the influence of big money in politics while creating a more accessible and equitable system for candidates and communities.
• Improving government responsiveness: Advocate for policies that make government more efficient, accessible, and focused on delivering results for residents and local communities.
• Supporting ethical and responsible governance: Strengthen accountability standards, ethical oversight, and public trust in government institutions.
• Modernizing public services: Invest in technology and innovation that improve government operations, accessibility, and communication with the public.
• Being present and accessible: Michael is committed to being visible, engaged, and responsive to the communities he represents. He believes Ventura County deserves a representative who shows up, listens to residents, and fights every day for the region’s future.
Michael is committed to bringing practical leadership, transparency, accountability, and responsive government to Sacramento while always putting Ventura County first.