California Treasurer Fiona Ma's husband Jason Hodge is a Ventura County resident and firefighter. Consequently she has a long history with Ojai and so stopped by the studio for a chat on a recent visit.

Surprisingly, Ma is only the second CPA to hold the position of the state's chief accountant, managing California's $310 billion budget in the state's $3.8 trillion economy, which, depending on how Germany is doing at the moment, is the world's fifth or sixth largest. Fiona Ma graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and received her master's from Pepperdine.

Fiona was first elected to the state Assembly in 2006 and was the first female to hold the Speaker Pro Tempore position, the second-highest ranking office in the body. She was also elected to the state Board of Equalization before being elected to the Treasurer post in 2018.

We talked about the daily challenges of running the finances of such a giant state with her staff of 500, the current deficit estimated at $38 billion or more, tackling the problems of homelessness and climate change, her run for Lieutenant Governor this fall, and much more. We did not talk about Arthur Bentley's 1908 classic, "The Process of Government," Hiram Johnson, or the Mayan writing system.

You can learn more about her at FionaMa.com.