Bob Foster’s legacy is not reducible to a single policy win. It is an enduring reminder that leadership and policy challenges are addressed and solved less by slogans than by courageous leadership advancing and institutionalizing frameworks that survive political turnover.

Water doesn’t fail for lack of technology—it fails for lack of implementation. In this VX News interview, Booky Oren, former executive chair of Israel’s national water utility and CEO and founder of Booky Oren Global Water Technologies, explains why scaling proven water solutions remains so difficult, what utilities actually need to manage risk, and how global knowledge-sharing can accelerate resilience.

Hydrogen is not new to California. It has long served industrial users, refineries, and critical infrastructure. What is new, and what CEO Jason Caudle (First Public Hydrogen or FPH2) is focused on, is the deliberate expansion of hydrogen into new, scalable market segments, including: public transit, distributed energy, and stationary power.

General Manager and CEO of Moulton Niguel Water District (MNWD), Joone Kim-Lopez, brings a first responder’s mindset to water management. In this VX News interview, she shares how her experience as Pasadena’s first female Asian police officer shaped her leadership philosophy and drive to modernize public utilities. Kim-Lopez recounts her founding of the California Data Collaborative in working with respected water managers to enable data-informed policies and decision-making for California’s water future.

Testifying before California’s Little Hoover Commission at its recent hearing on data centers and electricity policy, Sen. Josh Becker framed the rapid growth of data centers as a pivotal moment for California’s energy system—one that could either accelerate the clean-energy transition or impose new costs on households and small businesses.

Billy Riggs, a national voice on autonomous mobility and Professor (University of San Francisco), explains why perception autonomy—the vehicle’s ability to truly see and interpret the world—is the real engine behind AV progress. Riggs argues that autonomy won’t solve congestion without major shifts in curb policy, workforce planning, and data governance, challenging cities to stop chasing sci-fi and focus on “Monday-morning” solutions like micro-transit, dynamic curb management, and realistic public–private models.

Chair Nava of the Little Hoover Commission joins VX News to unpack the findings of the Little Hoover Commission’s review of California’s electricity rates—and now the emerging impacts of data centers and AI. Addressing how ratepayers are not simply paying for electricity itself, Chair Nava details how profit structures and related costs of maintaining, hardening, and expanding the grid continue to compound California’s affordability challenges.