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IN THIS ISSUE – “California Appears to be On the Verge of a New Demographic Era”
Public Policy Institute of California commenting on population decline
POLITICS & POLICY
- Voter Worries About Gas Prices Fuels Concerns About California’s Direction
- Hand-to-Hand Combat for Legislature Seats in “The Flippable Zone”
- Low Voter Turn-Out Determines Special Elections
- California’s Population Growth: Forecasts That Never Happened
- Your State Budget Jargon Dictionary…What Is “May Revise” Anyway?
- Newsom No Lone Star Fanboy
AIR & FIRE
- Air Board Rolls Out 2035 Gas Car Ban
- Golden State Shined on 97% Renewable Power…For a Few Minutes
- CEQA Douses Newsom’s Critical Fire Management Program
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 service.
READ ALL ABOUT IT!
FOR THE WEEK ENDING APR. 15, 2022
Voter Worries About Gas Prices Fuels Concerns About California’s Direction
Politico / Berkeley IGS Poll
Californians are concerned about gas prices and pessimistic about the state’s trajectory, according to the new Berkeley/IGS Poll.
A clear majority of voters said the state is headed in the wrong direction, and 70 percent were feeling a serious pinch from the soaring cost of fuel. Housing and homelessness led the list of paramount issues, followed by crime and public safety and then gas prices — with climate change ranking below fuel costs.
Four in ten Californians (41%) report that the recent price hikes in gasoline are causing a very serious problem for themselves and their families while another 28% say this is causing a somewhat serious problem for them. Replies are directly related to annual household income, with those at the lowest end of the income spectrum more than three times as likely as upper income Californians to say the price hikes in gasoline are a very serious problem. A relatively large proportion of voters (43%) say that because of the recent gas price hikes it is very likely that they will drive less around town or shorten their weekend or car vacation trips. By contrast, relatively few (11%) expect that the price hikes will increase their ridership of public transit.
Observed IGS co-Director Eric Schickler, “The substantial number of voters who see rising gas prices as a serious problem suggests that Democrats, both in Sacramento and nationally, need to develop responses that these voters can understand and find credible.”
Voters offer a wide range of replies when presented with a list of fifteen issues now facing California and asked which one or two they consider most important for the state to address. Most frequently cited are housing affordability, mentioned by 31%, homelessness (29%), crime and public safety (23%) and gas prices (21%).
There are big differences in the issue priorities that the state’s Democratic and Republican voters would like addressed. The three dominant issues on the minds of California Democrats are housing affordability (37%), homelessness (32%), and climate change and the environment (27%). By contrast, topping the list among the state’s GOP voters are crime and public safety, mentioned by 39%, followed by gas prices (28%), immigration (27%) and taxes (26%).
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7sn293xs
Hand-to-Hand Combat for Key Legislature Seats in “The Flippable Zone”
Politico’s California Playbook
Want a portrait of California’s most competitive state legislative races? Let’s paint by the numbers.
The California Secretary of State’s office released voter registration data last week for newly drawn districts. The data delineates which seats now fall in the flippable zone or in the overlapping defensive priority belt.
Don’t count on the Democratic supermajority dissipating this year, thanks to the party’s structural advantages and money edge.
But a conservative wave year could help Republicans make inroads, and there are plenty of contested districts to track.
We’re not getting into the same-party standoffs, though that’s where plenty of the money and action will be, or enumerating every candidate in these race. Let’s dive in:
— SENATE: There are a few open or Republican-controlled seats where relatively narrow margins have created openings for Democrats. That includes the vacant SD-4 (R+3), where contenders include former Rep. George Radanovich; the open SD-6 (R+0.6), where GOP former Assemblymember Roger Niello could match up with Democratic school board member Paula Villescaz; SD-36 (R+2), where GOP Assemblymember Janet Nguyen is hoping to return to the state Senate; SD-38 (D+6.5), which encompasses some of outgoing GOP state Sen. Pat Bates’ current district but is significantly bluer; and the evenly split SD-40, where Democrat Joseph Rocha is looking to unseat GOP Sen. Brian Jones.
Don’t sleep on the Central Valley, where outcomes often skew more conservative than the raw registration numbers would suggest. After moving so she could run in the newly drawn SD-16 (D+13) rather than collide with Sen. Anna Caballero in SD-14,
Sen. Melissa Hurtado faces competition from fellow Democrats Bryan Osorio and Nicole Parra and Republican farmer David Shepard.
— ASSEMBLY: Incumbents of both parties could see stiff competition. In the D+5 new AD-7, Democratic Assemblymember Ken Cooley seeks to fend off Republican chief of staff Josh Hoover; on the other end of the state, Democrat Brian Maienschein will seek to defend his D+6 district (AD-76) from Republicans June Cutter and Kristie Bruce-Lane. GOP Assemblymembers Devon Mathis (AD-33) and Laurie Davies (AD-74) have seen their seats tighten from majority Republican to even registration. It could be an uphill fight for GOP Assemblymember Susan Valladares who flipped a D+4 seat last cycle but is now defending a D+13 district.
Open seats also beckon. The new Riverside-anchored AD-63’s four-point Republican edge could be slim enough to put it in play for Democrats. The D+8 new AD-22 looks promising for Democrats — with Chad Condit looking to continue the family dynasty — but we’ll reiterate that Central Valley margins can be tighter than they appear. In battleground Orange County, Democrat Diedre Thu-Ha Nguyen will vie with five Republicans for the D+4 AD-70 after falling short in 2020 despite a $1.5 million investment from the California Democratic Party.
Speaking of party priorities, some formerly top-tier members now find themselves in much safer seats. Democratic Assemblymembers Cottie Petrie-Norris, Sabrina Cervantes and Tasha Boerner Horvath, who were all top party beneficiaries last cycle, saw their margins improve significantly. And Republican Assemblymember Phillip Chen is running unopposed in an R+7 seat after the parties poured more than $1.5 million into his district in 2020
Low Voter Turn-Out Determines Legislative Special Elections
CalMatters
Perhaps it’s because California is such a sprawling nation-state, where powerful political groups routinely spend tens of millions of dollars on high-profile campaigns, that we fail to recognize the more granular reality that in so many contests — most notably special elections — the outcome is decided by an astonishingly small subset of voters.
It’s a political axiom in the state that held true again this week in four special elections for seats in the Legislature and Congress. In each case, voter turnout was so low that if a comparable number of people had attended a big football game in California, there would have been plenty of empty seats in the stadium.
And if that’s the strong shot of whiskey, here’s the chaser: Three of this week’s special elections ended without a candidate winning the job. Those communities will now have to hold a second special election — another unplanned expense picked up by taxpayers — where turnout isn’t likely to be much better.
Elections were held Tuesday to fill three seats in the state Assembly, left vacant as part of a historic exodus from the Legislature.
The lone winner was Lori Wilson, the mayor of Suisun City who was elected in an Assembly district that stretches to the east of San Francisco Bay. She will replace former Assembly Member Jim Frazier, who resigned in December. Wilson, a Democrat, will probably take office next week and becomes the front-runner in November’s contest for a full two-year term.
In a district with more than 300,000 registered voters, the unofficial tally shows that Wilson was elected with fewer than 27,000 votes. And while some observers may point out that Wilson was running unopposed, that’s not enough to explain the voter apathy.
Tuesday also saw a special election in Los Angeles County to fill the seat left vacant by former Assembly Member Autumn Burke in representing communities from Inglewood to Venice. Even fewer voters showed up than for the race up north — less than 22,000 votes tallied as of Thursday — and none of the four Democratic hopefuls secured a majority, forcing a runoff in June.
The results were a little better in San Diego County, where early returns show less than 14% of voters cast ballots in the special election to complete the term of former Assembly Member Lorena Gonzalez. Here, too, a runoff election will be held between the top two candidates, both Democrats.
State law gives requires a special election unless a legislative vacancy occurs after the formal filing period for the next election. Not that everyone thinks that’s a good idea, especially given that special election costs are almost entirely borne by local governments.
And though low turnout in special elections might have been expected in years gone by, with voters perhaps too busy to swing by a polling place, it’s important to remember that every voter now can cast a ballot from home. The pandemic led to a sweeping change in state law that now requires ballots to be mailed to every active voter.
The sharp uptick in recent years of special elections in California — there have been 22 just since the spring of 2018 — has led to calls for a change. The most talked-about idea would require the governor to appoint an interim lawmaker if the vacancy occurred in the home stretch of the lawmaker’s term in office. But in 2014, a bill to do that fizzled in the state Capitol, largely killed by legislators who had won office through — wait for it — a special election.
There will be one more stand-alone special election this year, when San Francisco voters head to the polls on April 19 for a runoff to fill the Assembly seat formerly held by City Atty. David Chiu.
California’s Population Growth: Forecasts That Never Happened
CalMatters commentary from Dan Walters
Although California’s population growth began to slow in the 1990s after exploding in the previous decade by 6 million people, both official and independent demographers continued to see relatively strong growth for decades to come.
In 2007, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s in-house demographers projected that California would have 39.9 million residents by 2011. It didn’t happen.
Five years later, then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2012-13 budget projected that the state’s population would be “over 39.6 million” by 2016. That didn’t happen either.
In 2016, with the state’s population estimated at 38.7 million, the Public Policy Institute of California declared that “California will continue to gain millions of new residents in each of the next two decades, increasing demand in all areas of infrastructure and public services – including education, transportation, housing, water, health, and welfare.”
By 2030, PPIC said, “California’s population is projected to reach 44.1 million.”
That’s not going to happen either.
The 2020 census pegged the state’s population at 39.5 million and a recent report from the Census Bureau says California had a net loss of more than a quarter-million residents between July 1, 2020, and July 1, 2021.
“California appears to be on the verge of a new demographic era, one in which population declines characterize the state,” PPIC demographer Hans Johnson writes in a new analysis. “Lower levels of international migration, declining birth rates, and increases in deaths all play a role. But the primary driver of the state’s population loss over the past couple years has been the result of California residents moving to other states.”
Since 2010, Johnson continued, “about 7.5 million people moved from California to other states, while only 5.8 million people moved to California from other parts of the country. According to Department of Finance estimates, the state has lost residents to other states every year since 2001.”
Instead of zooming past 40 million to 45 and then 50 million by mid-century, as earlier projections indicated, California may remain stuck just under 40 million indefinitely.
That said, a stagnant population doesn’t mean a lack of demographic change. Declining birth rates, the aging of the large baby boom cohort and rising death rates – three other components – mean, for example, that as a whole, California’s population is growing older. We’re already seeing sharp declines in public school enrollment from the state’s baby bust.
The state-to-state migration patterns Johnson cites also affect the composition of an otherwise stagnant population. Overall, he says, those leaving the state tend to have low to moderate incomes and relatively low levels of education while those moving here have higher levels of education and income.
“Most people who move across state lines do so for housing, job, or family reasons,” Johnson writes. “Since 2015, among interstate movers who cite housing as the primary reason, California has experienced net losses of 413,000 adults (according to the Current Population Survey).
“Net losses among those who cite jobs as the primary reason totaled 333,000 and among those who cite family 239.000. The PPIC Statewide Survey finds that 37% of Californians have seriously considered leaving the state because of housing costs.”
While the differences between incomers and outgoers would seem, at least superficially, to be a net positive for California, they have some very negative effects, including a worsening shortage of workers and widening the state’s already immense economic divide.
“The state’s high cost of living, driven almost solely by comparatively high housing costs, remains an ongoing public policy challenge – one that needs resolution if the state is to be a place of opportunity for all of its residents,” Johnson concludes.
Amen.
Your State Budget Jargon Dictionary…What Is “May Revise” Anyway?
California Budget & Policy Center
It can be hard to keep up with the California budget process.
What is a Budget Bill Jr.? Why should we care about the Gann Limit? Which proposition is which? Just what is a May Revision anyway?
If you’re struggling to understand all the jargon, assistance is available.
The California Budget and Policy Center has released a helpful glossary of terms that you may find useful to refer to, particularly as the aforementioned May Revision approaches.
https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/glossary-of-state-budget-terms/
Newsom No Lone Star Fanboy
Politico
For the most part, Jerry Brown, the Democrat who led the Golden State at the time, didn’t respond to the provocations. (He dismissed the radio spots as “barely a fart.”) That was then. Perry’s successor, Gov. Greg Abbott, has continued the California bashing. And Brown’s successor, Gov. Gavin Newsom, has started to fire back more frequently — in speeches and with policy proposals, as we recently reported. Political experts have said that’s not surprising. Now that California isn’t doing policy battle with the White House, Texas and other conservative states have taken former President Donald J. Trump’s place as Newsom foils, especially as they pursue legislation aimed at restricting abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. rights. “It’s the erosion that we’re experiencing in real time across this country of rights that have been hard fought and well-established — at least for most of my lifetime,” Newsom told us.
We asked Newsom why he thinks California needs to lead the pushback. Here is our conversation, edited and condensed:
California and Texas have been considered rivals for a long time. What’s changed? It’s not just Florida and Texas, although they sort of punctuate this moment. There are these copycat bills that are being advanced in states like Iowa, Arizona and Tennessee. And that’s why you may have seen recently my office express itself a little more pointedly about what the hell is going on. We’re not only the largest state, but we’re also the most diverse state in the union. We’ve always been the state where people come from around the world for new beginnings, to remake themselves. It’s a point of pride. I’m hardly naïve about California’s challenges. Quite the contrary. Our biggest critique has been the homeless and housing and the cost of living. And we’re taking those issues on. But my entire life, not just in my political life, I can’t stand the othering of people. And that’s what they’re doing. We need to stand up to that and let folks know we have their backs even if they’re not in our state, and give them some hope that we can turn this around.
You’ve mentioned that you think even people in your own party need to be woken up to what’s happening. Can you expand on that? I feel like the president’s got his hands full with Ukraine, inflation and other issues. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been doing her best at the House to actually pass bills on voting rights, abortion and the like. Senator Chuck Schumer doesn’t have the votes. So I do think the Democratic Party has to come together. There’s something really profound happening at the state level, and I just think we’ve been sleepwalking. It’s not an indictment of national party leadership. It’s an indictment of all of us. We’re so situationally focused, and the Republican Party is quite disciplined. What’s happening to democracy, the anti-democratic impulses, the scapegoating, the conspiracies, what’s happening in these states, what’s happening in our courts, what will happen this year most likely. I couldn’t believe it: A U.S. senator — a sitting U.S. senator! — said he thinks it would be appropriate for interracial marriage to be determined by the states. I mean, that’s just extraordinary. I’d taken for granted so much of the progress over the last 40, 50 years. I didn’t realize how vulnerable these rights are to the whims of these leaders in these states.
California is, at least for now, still a more expensive place to live than Texas and Florida. Are you worried that people will have to pay a premium in order to have their rights protected? I often say: “We’re not going to be the cheapest place to do business. But we’ve consistently been the best place.” Our G.D.P. has outperformed most Western democracies. There’s a robustness to our approach, and it’s because of our values, not despite them. That said, I’m deeply aware and have been working hard for the last three years to address the affordability in the state and the cost of living in this state with our efforts on housing. It’s right that the issue of homelessness — which is a pre-existing condition — is at crisis levels. And we have an obligation and responsibility to address that. But California is one of many blue states. We’re not unique, and I wonder what world we’ll be living in in five years. The cost of living here is high, and we acknowledge we have work to do in that space. But there’s a maturity in California’s economy and democracy.
Air Board Rolls Out 2035 Gas Car Ban
CalMatters
California’s clean-air regulators unveiled a far-reaching proposal requiring a ramp-up in sales of zero-emission cars, culminating in a ban on new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
The rules to force Californians to end their dependence on conventional cars are a critical component to California’s goals to tackle climate change and poor air quality.
If adopted by the California Air Resources Board this summer, the regulations would be the first in the world and could pave the way for nationwide standards. At least 15 other states pledged to follow California’s lead on car standards on previous clean-car rules, and the federal government usually follows.
Carrying out Gov. Gavin Newsom 2020 executive order ordering the board to end the sale of gas-powered cars in California by 2035, the new proposal sets in motion the public regulatory process. Public comments will be collected for 45 days, then a hearing will be held on June 9 and the board is expected to vote in August.
Automakers did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the draft rules. But many major manufacturers, including General Motors, have already announced goals to ramp up clean-car models on a similar timeframe.
“This is a hugely important inflection point. This rule finally, definitively puts us on the path to 100% zero-emission vehicles,” said Daniel Sperling, a member of the Air Resources Board and founding director of the University of California, Davis Institute of Transportation Studies.
Under the new proposed mandate, 35% of new cars, SUVs and small pickups sold in the state will need to be zero-emission starting in 2026, increasing to 68% in 2030 and 100% in 2035. Of those, 20% can be plug-in hybrids.
The rule does not apply to sales of pre-owned cars, and it wouldn’t do anything to force the millions of existing gasoline-powered cars off roads. Only about 2% of cars on California’s roads were zero emissions in 2020.
California has already enacted standards that will require roughly 8% of new cars sold in the state to be zero emission in 2025, according to air board staff. That goal already has been exceeded: About 12% of California’s 2021 new vehicle sales were clean cars, according to state data. But the pace would have to triple in just five years to reach the new target.
One of the biggest roadblocks could be the lack of charging stations for electric cars. Nearly 1.2 million chargers will be needed for the 8 million zero-emission vehicles expected in California by 2030, according to a state report. Right now, there are only about 70,000 with another 123,000 on the way, falling far short.
Another obstacle is the cost of the vehicles. “The cost to manufacturers will be high per vehicle in the early years, but significantly decrease over time by 2035,” the air board’s staff report says.
Environmental advocates had raised concerns about previous drafts, saying they ramped up too slowly, allowing millions of cars powered by fossil fuels to remain on the roads since the average car is driven for 12 years.
Starting at a sales requirement of 35% is “a marked improvement,” said Don Anair, research and deputy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ clean transportation program. Still, he said, “It’s kind of the bare minimum. So we really see that as a floor, not a ceiling, to get started.”
Car manufacturers may meet a small portion of the sales targets through 2031 with credits aimed at helping low-income residents who are disproportionately harmed by pollution. For instance, they could earn credits for selling less-expensive new zero-emission cars costing less than $20,000 or ensure that vehicles are offered up for resale in the state.
Last year Newsom approved a $3.9 zero-emission vehicle budget that included about $1.2 billion to bolster rebates and other clean-car incentives, particularly for low-income and disadvantaged communities. Another $300 million will go toward building charging and fueling infrastructure. This year Newsom proposed another $10 billion zero-emission funding package in his January budget blueprint.
The state auditor has warned the Air Resources Board, however, that it “has generally not determined the effects its incentive programs have on consumers’ behavior and thus, has overstated (greenhouse gas) emissions reductions its incentive programs achieve.”
While battery-powered cars emit no pollutants, the generation of the power that runs them does. However, air-quality regulators say emissions from electricity generation are far lower than from vehicles. Much of California’s electricity comes from natural gas, solar, wind and hydropower.
Golden State Shined on 97% Renewable Power…For a Few Minutes
Bloomberg
California, which aims to have a carbon-free power grid within 25 years, got a short glimpse of that possibility earlier this month. The state’s main grid ran on more than 97% renewable energy at 3:39 p.m. on Sunday April 3, breaking a previous record of 96.4% that was set just a week earlier, the California Independent System Operator said Thursday in a statement.
“While these all-time highs are for a brief time, they solidly demonstrate the advances being made to reliably achieve California’s clean energy goals,” said California ISO CEO Elliot Mainzer said in the statement.
Power production from the sun and wind typically peak in the spring, due to mild temperatures and the angle of the sun allowing for an extended period of strong solar production, the grid operator said. While hitting the new renewable record is remarkable, the state has found itself scrambling for power supplies during the past two summers as it has added more intermittent sources and retired natural-gas plants for environmental reasons. California has set a target to have a zero-carbon power system by 2045.
CEQA Blocks Newsom’s Critical Fire Management Program
CapRadio
Critical forestry management projects to reduce fire danger across the state are encountering a bureaucratic bottleneck before shovels can even break ground, a prolonged inquiry by CapRadio found, and Gov. Newsom’s much-publicized vegetation clearance initiative is not working.
The state’s byzantine environmental approval process, required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), is slowing projects from Mendocino County to the Sierra Nevada to the Central Coast. The landmark environmental law was intended to protect ecologically and environmentally sensitive landscapes. But foresters worry that the glacial pace of environmental approvals under CEQA may lead to a much worse outcome — extreme wildfires obliterating these areas.
To combat this, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration launched a program more than two years ago that promised to break the logjam, by fast-tracking environmental reviews.
But that program, called the California Vegetation Treatment Program (CalVTP), hasn’t led to the completion of a single project so far. This stands in stark contrast to projections by the state Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, which anticipated CalVTP would lead to 45,000 acres of completed work in its first year.
experienced foresters said they didn’t know how to use the new system, which includes many new bureaucratic processes. The Board of Forestry did not respond to inquiries about its outreach and training for CalVTP; the earliest training webinar available on the board’s website is dated more than a year after the program’s launch. As a result, many foresters use the sluggish CEQA system they already understand.
Money is not the problem. The state set aside roughly $1.5 billion for fire mitigation and forest resilience last year. Cal Fire is scrambling to get this money out the door, and many projects across the state are funded. But the clock is ticking. Without the green light to complete prescribed burns, fuel breaks and vegetation thinning, nearby communities are at the mercy of another wildfire season that threatens to be just as devastating as the last two, which burned nearly 7 million acres combined.
Though not a single CalVTP project has been completed, Lisa Lien-Mager, deputy secretary for communications at the California Natural Resources Agency, claimed in a series of emails that the state’s efforts to speed up environmental reviews have shown early signs of success. She declined repeated requests for an interview.
Newsom did not respond to an interview request, though a spokesperson acknowledged receiving the inquiry.
In 2020, Newsom signed an agreement with the U.S. Forest Service, with USFS and California each promising to perform 500,000 acres of fire prevention and forest management work in the state every year by 2025.
To help meet the state’s responsibility, the Newsom administration launched CalVTP in late 2019. The program promised to streamline the time-consuming environmental approval process for forest management projects. CalVTP completed a massive environmental review on more than 20 million acres in California. The idea was for new projects to cut through red tape by using this existing environmental review template instead of starting from scratch.
When the program launched, Newsom hailed it as a way to “increase the pace and scale of critical vegetation treatment in a way that safely and responsibly protects our environment.”
“The scale of the wildfire crisis in California is unprecedented, and we need a response to match the scale and severity of this challenge,” he said.
The Board of Forestry projected CalVTP’s output would skyrocket after its first year, setting a goal of accomplishing approximately 250,000 acres through CalVTP — half the state’s annual target — every year by 2024. Achieving this lofty target would mean completing hundreds of projects annually, according to the board’s estimates.
But more than two years into the program, it hasn’t resulted in a single completed project. A handful of local groups have begun projects using CalVTP, but it’s unclear how much progress they’ve made, because the Board of Forestry only collects data on a project when it’s finished. As of late March, the Natural Resources Agency said only 26 projects had been approved and another 45 proposals were being reviewed.
The agency did not provide current figures on the number of project acres approved through CalVTP. In December, it told CapRadio and The California Newsroom that the program had approved 28,000 acres.
“This is not enough by any stretch of the imagination,” said Char Miller, professor of environmental analysis and history at Pomona College, who has monitored the development of CalVTP. He says California has millions of acres in desperate need of forest management and fuel reduction.
Nevertheless, officials in the Newsom administration have continued to gloss over CalVTP falling dramatically short of its goals.
In interviews, foresters and fire prevention experts around the state said they still don’t fully understand how the program is supposed to work. Others were turned off by the large amount of unfamiliar paperwork required under the program. CalVTP’s official workflow template, published on the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection’s website, includes a dizzying decision tree of acronyms.
Much more: