Capital News & Notes
For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.
IN THIS ISSUE – “With our state facing continuing economic risk and revenue uncertainty, it is important to remain disciplined…”
Gov. Newsom’s veto message on bills with new expenses
- Newsom Signs, Vetoes Bills as a Governor…and POTUS Candidate, Business Owner, Dad
- Governor Approves Mental Health Care Reform; Puts $6.4-Billion Bond on March Ballot
- Universal Healthcare Study OK’d
- State Water Board to Rule on Groundwater Probation for Tulare Lake Basin; 5 More SJV Agencies Under Review
- California Seeks Federal Funds to Fix Sewage Crisis on Mexican Border; “We Are On the Brink of Collapse” Warns Coastal Commissioner
- Earth’s Oceans – Gigantic, Complex Climate Engines – Undergoing Important Changes
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique client service.
FOR THE WEEK ENDING OCT. 13, 2023
Newsom Signs, Vetoes Bills as a Governor…and POTUS Candidate, Business Owner, Dad
LA Times commentary from Laurel Rosenthall in California Politics newsletter
Gov. Gavin Newsom is in the home stretch of signing and vetoing about 1,000 bills the Legislature sent him this year. He has only about 100 left to decide on by the deadline this Saturday.
As you might expect with a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislature, most of Newsom’s decisions amount to a big “Yes.” He typically signs between 84% to 87% of the bills that reach his desk. That’s what makes the “Nos” more interesting.
Newsom’s vetoes this year show that he’s acting as a moderating force on the liberal Legislature. One reason is simply that the Legislature was unusually progressive this year, passing significant labor-backed bills that had failed in the past. Another is that the state’s finances are shakier than they were earlier in Newsom’s tenure, dooming many proposals that involved spending money.
And then there is the fact that Newsom, as he likes to say, is “a future ex-governor.” He’ll be termed out of California’s top office in three years, and it’s obvious Newsom has an interest in national politics. He established his liberal bona fides in his first term as governor. If he decides to run for president in the future, showing some moderation in his second term will likely be a benefit.
The governor vetoed dozens of bills using the same boilerplate paragraph that argued he won’t approve spending outside of the annual state budget.
“We enacted a budget that closed a shortfall of more than $30 billion through balanced solutions,” Newsom wrote.
“This year, however, the Legislature sent me bills outside of this budget process that, if all enacted, would add nearly $19 billion of unaccounted costs in the budget.”
He cited ongoing uncertainty about the economic future and wrote that “it is important to remain disciplined when considering bills with significant fiscal implications.”
This was the argument Newsom made in vetoing legislation to require independent redistricting in Los Angeles, as well as numerous other measures.
Among them: proposals to develop housing for homeless LGBTQ+ youth, expand the availability of free diapers to low-income families, and require health plans to cover treatment for emergency mental health and substance abuse without prior authorization.
Newsom was an entrepreneur before he got into politics, and still has ownership stakes in wine and hospitality businesses valued at many millions of dollars.
While he rode to office with the support of organized labor — and has approved many union-backed measures, including higher wages for fast food workers and an increase in paid sick days — Newsom rejected some labor priorities with vetoes that showed the mind-set of a business owner.
In vetoing a bill that would have allowed workers to receive unemployment benefits when they strike, Newsom wrote that doing so would increase the debt California owes the federal government for unemployment payments and could “significantly [increase] taxes on employers.”
His veto of a bill that would have given workplace safety protections to nannies and housekeepers argued that “private households and families cannot be regulated in the exact same manner as traditional businesses.” In particular, Newsom called out workplace regulations that require “providing an eyewash station if household workers use chemicals like bleach.”
Newsom showed support for Silicon Valley in putting the kibosh on two bills that sought to rein in Big Tech. He vetoed a bill that would have required human drivers in autonomous trucks and another that responded to massive job losses in the tech industry by increasing the notice period companies must give workers of impending layoffs.
From his earliest days as governor, Newsom made clear that his role as the father of four young children would shape his priorities in leading the state.
He delivered his 2019 inauguration speech with his toddler Dutch on his hip and championed family-friendly policies including universal preschool and longer paid leave for new parents.
Newsom’s veto messages don’t explicitly say anything personal. They contain formal arguments based on policy, law and budget. But in reading some of his vetoes this year, and knowing that his older kids are moving into their teenage years, I felt the dad vibes coming through – especially on issues related to sex and drugs.
Newsom vetoed a bill designed to make it easier for teenagers to get condoms with an argument about funding. In vetoing the measure that would have prohibited stores from refusing to sell condoms to youth and required high schools to distribute condoms for free, Newsom wrote that the bill would have created an unfunded program that was not included in the state’s annual budget.
While Newsom signed several bills to expand rights for LGBTQ+ youth, he vetoed one that would have made a child’s gender identity an issue in custody disputes between parents.
The bill would have instructed judges to consider, among other factors, a parent’s affirmation of a child’s gender identity or expression when determining custody or visitation rights.
Newsom wrote that he held “a deep commitment to advancing the rights of transgender Californians” but that courts are already required to consider a child’s health, safety and welfare when making custody decisions.
Newsom also vetoed two bills that would have given Californians more legal leeway to use drugs.
He wrote that legislation to allow Amsterdam-style cafes for smoking cannabis would violate California’s longstanding ban on smoking in workplaces. He quashed an attempt to decriminalize the use of some psychedelic drugs, including magic mushrooms, by arguing that the state should develop rules for safe use of psychedelics in medical treatments before loosening the law.
Of course, looking at legislation through a dad lens also means avoiding some national headlines about crazy California. And that could be what Newsom is aiming for.
Newsom Approves Mental Health Care Reform; Puts $6.4-Billion Bond on March Ballot
Sacramento Bee
California voters will decide in March whether the state should borrow $6.4 billion to add thousands of new behavioral health beds and change how the state administers mental health services.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed a pair of bills that will place the funding and policy changes on the primary election ballot under Proposition 1.
Standing at a podium with a “Treatment Not Tents” sign, Newsom said, “Today is about holding ourselves to a high level of accountability, a higher level of expectation.
“I think this is a big day not only for the state, but I think is a model for the nation as well,” the governor told reporters. “I think people recognize we need to do things differently.”
Newsom added that now the focus will be to “galvanize this state, across jurisdictions, north, south east west but also across party lines” to approve the measure. Newsom first announced his plan for a bond measure in March.
His administration then pushed the measures through the Legislature, promoting them as strategies for alleviating the state’s homelessness crisis. A coalition of people who provide and receive California mental health services worry it could lead to program cuts and an expansion of involuntary treatment.
This ballot measure is part of a broader plan by the governor to address California’s homeless crisis by cracking down on encampments and getting homeless individuals who have been diagnosed with mental illness or substance abuse into treatment programs.
This measure builds off of Newsom’s controversial Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Court, which passed last year and launched earlier this month. CARE creates a civil system of mental health courts where judges can order people with severe untreated psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, into treatment.
The bond funding will go toward constructing, acquiring or rehabilitating more than 11,000 new treatment beds and supportive housing units. The governor’s office projects that such projects will help house and treat more than 100,000 people a year.
Up to $4.4 billion will be used to add treatment beds across the state. Of that pool of money, $1.5 billion will be set aside for local governments to apply for and use for local initiatives. There is $30 million dedicated to tribal communities.
The remaining $2 billion will help provide new permanent supportive housing options, giving residents services as well as a place to stay. Of that, about $1 billion is earmarked for veterans.
The Mental Health Services Act was co-authored by Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg when he was serving as an assemblyman. It was approved by voters in 2004. MHSA levies a 1% tax on personal incomes above $1 million to fund mental health and substance abuse programs.
Those funds represent nearly a third of the dollars in the state’s behavioral health system. Right now, most of the money goes directly to counties, which have broad authority to determine their spending priorities.
The measures before voters in March would shift how counties can spend their allocation. Under the current system, 76% must go toward community services and support, 19% to prevent and early intervention programs and 5% for “innovation.”
If approved, the bond measure would place substantially more emphasis on finding housing for people diagnosed with substance abuse or mental illness.
Under the governor’s proposal, counties would spend 30% on housing programs and 35% on full-service partnerships — intensive programs for adults with severe and persistent mental illness.
The remaining 35% would pay for behavioral health services and supports, half of which must be spent on early intervention. In response to opposition, Newsom amended the original proposal.
The changes make it easier under certain circumstances to transfer money between spending categories and for rural counties to seek exemptions from certain spending mandates.
Steinberg, a proponent of the changes outlined in the governor’s ballot measure, said Thursday that it will “prioritize much more effectively people who are the most vulnerable.
“There has not been, up until now, the state leadership to demand that the money be spent where the needs are the greatest — and that is to build more beds and to build more roofs,” Steinberg said.
Newsom now must sell his spending plan and policy changes to voters. It’s unclear whether they will support the ballot measures, but polling shows Californians believe mental health is a major problem in the United States.
A Public Policy Institute of California survey conducted in late August and early September shows 87% of adults across political parties say there is a “mental health crisis in the U.S. today.”
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article279878959.html#storylink=cpy
Governor’s Office media release:
Universal Healthcare Study OK’d
Los Angeles Times
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that sets the stage for California to work toward universal healthcare, such as a single-payer system that progressive activists have sought for years.
The law could help California obtain a waiver that would allocate federal Medicaid and Medicare funds to be used for what could eventually become a single-payer system that would cover every California resident and be financed entirely by state and federal funds.
California’s health secretary will have to offer recommendations on crafting the federal waiver by June 1, 2024, under Senate Bill 770.
“With this signature, California takes a historic step toward universal healthcare,” said a statement from the bill’s author, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco). “The state will now begin answering the complex question of how we can access federal financing to fund a universal healthcare system like single-payer.”
For decades, Californians have tried and failed and tried again — just about 10 times — to overhaul the state’s healthcare system. But attempts at a sweeping overhaul have been stymied by enormous costs, legal and bureaucratic hurdles and disagreement among groups within the healthcare industry.
Wiener’s legislation represents an incremental approach that will kick-start the process of solving one piece of a complicated puzzle, rather than attempting a massive revamp of the healthcare system.
Supporters of a single-payer model find fault with the existing healthcare system that leaves many patients paying astronomical co-pays and some haunted by fear of the debt they will accrue from medical procedures.
Though the bill had support from many healthcare reform advocates, it faced opposition from both ends of the political spectrum. Critics on the left said it doesn’t go far enough in moving California toward single-payer healthcare, while critics on the right said it represents an ultimate goal of abolishing private health insurance and increasing taxes.
The California Nurses Assn., which has advocated for single-payer healthcare for decades, opposed the measure, contending that the work the bill asks the California Health and Human Services Agency to do has already been done.
Michael Lighty, president of Healthy California Now, the sponsor of Wiener’s bill, countered that the legislation promises a universal system, which could include a single-payer system.
The nurses union is urging lawmakers to consider a more ambitious single-payer bill next year.
CalMatters
California water officials Thursday recommended putting several San Joaquin Valley groundwater agencies on probation for failing to develop an adequate plan to stop over pumping their severely overdrafted aquifers.
The Tulare Lake groundwater basin — which provides well water to residents and hundreds of square miles of dairies and farms, including land owned by agricultural giant J.G. Boswell Company — is designated as critically overdrafted, which dries up wells and causes land to subside.
The State Water Resources Control Board staff’s recommendation is the first time that state officials have moved to crack down on inadequate local plans for groundwater pumping in California.
Thousands of wells in the Central Valley have already gone dry. The 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, prompted by well outages during a long drought, requires each basin to develop plans to curb overdrafting of the basins.
The staff recommendation isn’t the final word for this largely agricultural region in Kings County, which is home to 146,000 people and the cities of Corcoran, Hanford and Lemoore.
The State Water Resources Control Board will collect public comment and hold workshops leading up to a hearing and vote next April on the recommendation, released in the draft staff report.
The five local groundwater agencies — controlled largely by landowners and agricultural interests — were required to submit their plan in 2020, and the state Department of Water Resources warned them in late 2021 that it was not sufficient to protect the basin.
Paul Stiglich, general manager of the South Fork Kings groundwater sustainability agency, said he hopes that it will have worked out issues identified in their groundwater plan before the public hearing and that the state board will give them the breathing room to comply.
“Allow us to succeed, and don’t hamper us. That’s what probation would do — probation would throw a cold bucket of water on the whole issue,” said Stiglich, who noted he was speaking on behalf of his own agency, and not the entire basin.
The other agencies — the El Rico, Tri-County Water Authority, Mid-Kings River, and Southwest Kings groundwater sustainability agencies — did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“We need these basins back on track by 2040, not to be at the starting line four or five years late,” said Natalie Stork, the water board’s program manager for the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
The current plan “will allow substantial impacts to people who rely on domestic wells for drinking, bathing, food preparation, and cleaning, as well as impacts to critical infrastructure such as canals, levees, and the aquifer itself within the subbasin,” the staff wrote.
There is no schedule yet for the other basins deemed inadequate — the Chowchilla, Delta-Mendota, Kaweah, Tule and Kern County subbasins, all in the San Joaquin Valley. Board staff said in an April hearing that the six plans did not address deficiencies related to groundwater levels, sinking land and water quality.
Last winter, floodwaters that filled the once-dry Tulare Lake bed submerged homes, chicken farms and crops. But they are unlikely to make a dent in the vastly depleted groundwater stores.
“The wet year has helped with the status of the wells, but there are still wells going dry,” said Jasmine Rivera, a community development specialist with Self-Help Enterprises, which provides emergency water supplies in the San Joaquin Valley. “A lot of people see all of this rain, and they think, ‘Oh, we’re in the clear, at least for a little while,’ when that’s not really the case.”
Twenty-seven wells in the Tulare Lake subbasin went dry in 2022, and nearly 700 are now considered at risk of going dry under the plan amended last year, according to state officials. Groundwater pumping also caused land under Corcoran to sink so much that local flood control districts were forced to raise nearby levees twice in the last 10 years.
If put on probation, groundwater pumpers could be required to report their usage and face fees of $300 a year plus $40 per acre-foot of water pumped. Households are exempt, but larger groundwater users pumping more than 500 acre-feet per year — mostly farms — may have to install meters to measure pumping if the board decides to follow staff recommendations.
The staff opinion comes nearly 10 years after California lawmakers acted to protect the state’s precious and rapidly declining underground stores of water from the effects of agricultural overpumping.
Under the state’s landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, local agencies made up of irrigation districts and local governments, growers, and others have until 2040 to bring critically overdrafted aquifers into balance and stop the impacts of over pumping from worsening. That includes the Tulare Lake subbasin. Other medium and high-priority basins have until 2042.
Agencies had to submit plans to the state’s Department of Water Resources for two years of vetting. The water department deemed the plans for six critically overdrafted basins inadequate, including the Tulare Lake plan, and passed them along to the State Water Board to weigh whether to intervene.
Board staff said the Tulare Lake subbasin is the first to receive a hearing because of its severe degree of groundwater overdraft and the impacts on local residents and infrastructure, including the California Aqueduct and flood control levees. It was also the first to be deemed inadequate by the state’s Department of Water Resources, Stork said.
“We recognize that we should start where problems are most urgent and solutions appear to be further away,” Stork said.
The Tulare Lake Basin
The probationary period is mostly about fact-finding for the water board, Stork said. State Water Board staff said in today’s draft report that putting the Tulare Lake subbasin on probation “is critical for getting the subbasin back on track to achieve sustainability by 2040.”
After at least a year of collecting data and charging fees to fund their efforts, if there’s still no viable plan, the board can extend probation or put that data to use in developing and adopting its own interim plan for managing groundwater in the basin. That’s the point where “board management would be most involved and where pumping restrictions could be implemented by the board,” Stork said.
When the groundwater agencies think they’ve addressed the deficiencies, the board can consider ending its intervention and the local agencies can resubmit plans for another chance at approval.
Stiglich said that the Tulare Lake basin presents unique challenges for management because of varied geography, groundwater, flood plains and water quality. He expects the groundwater act to strike a major economic blow to the entire San Joaquin Valley.
“We’re doing our best to comply,” he said. “I think it’s prudent that we allow the process to proceed, and it will all be aired in public at the state board hearing.”
But environmental justice organizations told the board at a hearing in April that this process has taken far too long, and that residents — especially in communities of color —continue to suffer.
“As we continue to wait for (the groundwater agencies) to do better, and now wait for the state to make decisions about intervention, wells will continue to go dry, we’ll see further degradation of groundwater quality, land will subside and critical groundwater storage will continue to be lost,” Nataly Escobedo Garcia, policy coordinator for the nonprofit group Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, told the board six months ago.
A team of scientists with universities and environmental organizations analyzed 108 groundwater sustainability plans — more than 162,000 pages of text — and reported that the plans “do not protect 60% of agricultural wells, 63% of domestic wells, and 91% of ecosystems.”
Another analysis, published in September, warned that thousands of wells in the Central Valley are likely to fail despite the state’s groundwater law.
“Locally-proposed sustainability criteria are consistent with business as usual groundwater level decline, and if reached, could impact over 9000 domestic wells and around 1000 public supply wells.”
San Diego Union-Tribune
Gov. Gavin Newsom says the sewage crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border does not qualify as an emergency under state statute and that is why he has not issued a declaration. So members of the California Coastal Commission, following a visit Wednesday to the South Bay area affected by the ongoing toxic pollution, agreed to consider asking President Joe Biden to proclaim one.
For months, local, county and state officials have called on Newsom to use his emergency powers to waive state regulations that would expedite solutions to fix the deteriorating wastewater treatment plant in San Diego that is allowing Tijuana sewage to foul San Diego County beaches. The Governor’s Office had not publicly explained why he would not issue the order until Tuesday.
In a letter to Coastal Commission Executive Director Kate Huckelbridge, David Sapp, Newsom’s legal affairs secretary, explained that it was a jurisdictional issue and he said that “a state proclamation of emergency cannot accelerate federal work needed on this federal facility that is in a federally controlled area on an international border.”
Thus, such a proclamation is not necessary “to trigger a federal declaration,” which the president can do under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, Sapp added.
Imperial Beach Mayor and Commissioner Paloma Aguirre, who has spearheaded calls for an emergency declaration, proposed the commission turn to the president for said proclamation as well as solicit help from other agencies.
She suggested the state Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention get involved by conducting a comprehensive public health assessment because “we are on the brink of collapse.”
Commissioners agreed that at its next meeting it would consider sending Biden a letter requesting he issue an emergency declaration, and a letter to Newsom urging him to do the same.
In August, Newsom asked that Biden immediately free up $300 million in previously allocated funding to repair the San Ysidro-based wastewater treatment plant but he stopped short of asking him to declare an emergency.
Chairperson Donnie Brownsey said the commission should also ask that the federal government fully fund the expansion of the outdated wastewater plant, a project, that with repairs included, would cost nearly $1 billion.
The Coastal Commission heard from Maria-Elena Giner, a commissioner with the International Boundary and Water Commission, which operates the San Diego wastewater treatment plant.
She reminded commissioners that some repairs will take up to a year but that the amount of wastewater flowing from Tijuana will start to reduce gradually.
Giner underscored the challenges of expediting construction work with only a $50 million budget the agency has available to cover all of its construction projects along the U.S.-Mexico border. Thus, funding is the biggest challenge.
Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who attended the meeting, said she first witnessed the severity of the sewage crisis in 2019 and found it “mind-boggling” that circumstances have only worsened. She demanded that Giner return before commissioners next month with answers to questions she posed, including an explanation for the poor condition of the wastewater plant and the agency’s budget for maintaining the plant.
Earth’s Oceans – Gigantic, Complex Climate Engines – Undergoing Important Changes
Yale e-360
British physicist Helen Czerski explains the impacts, both dramatic and subtle, that climate change is having on the world’s oceans. Czerski describes oceans as gigantic and highly complex engines that are undergoing important changes, as seas are deprived of oxygen, stratification increases, and the currents that influence global weather are altered.
“As an ocean scientist,” she says, “I’ve learned that the ocean humbles you all the time. It does things you didn’t expect.”
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