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IN THIS ISSUE – “Message control practices do real harm to the public interest. The people need to know the full story, not just the official story.”
Capitol Press Corps journalist on the Newsom Administration’s “pervasive” media management
- Capitol Journalists Frustrated With Newsom Administration’s “Obstacles and Troubling Behavior”
- “Kind of a Stunt” or “It’s Working” – Governor’s National Campaign Trip Gets Mixed Reactions
- Snowpack is Officially a GOAT
- California’s Population Drop Impacts 58 Counties in Different Ways
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 APRIL 7, 2023
Capitol Journalists Frustrated With Newsom Administration’s “Obstacles and Troubling Behavior”
CalMatters
Like so much else about California, its state government is large: A $300 billion budget. More than 230 departments and agencies. More than 234,000 employees.
Keeping the public apprised of everything that’s happening in that massive bureaucracy requires its own small army of communications staff, who craft messages, write press releases and answer questions from journalists covering everything from the governor to welfare programs, prisons to water policy.
Lately, however, the information isn’t flowing as freely — raising transparency concerns among the press corps that acts as a watchdog for Californians.
Last month, the Capitol Correspondents Association of California, which represents journalists who cover the state Capitol and advocates for improved press access, distributed guidelines to its members about how to handle some of the increasingly common hurdles they encounter, including government agencies asking for questions in advance and refusing to attribute information to their spokespeople.
Ashley Zavala, president of the correspondents association who covers state government and politics for Sacramento NBC television station KCRA, said the extraordinary step was prompted by years of complaints from Capitol press about problems reporting on Gov. Gavin Newsom, his administration and the Legislature. These have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, which accelerated a shift to digital communication that has transformed how the state government discloses its work.
“The pandemic did cause some bad behavior,” Zavala said. “It let some of these agencies and some of these offices get lackadaisical in how they handled the media.”
Many of the standard features of government reporting — including in-person press conferences, with an opportunity for follow-up questions, and media phone lines where journalists could talk to a live staffer — disappeared three years ago with the shutdown orders and have been slow to return, if at all.
Changes that reporters and public information officers adopted to do their jobs virtually in a strange new stay-at-home world became ingrained, encouraging practices, such as written statements instead of interviews, that offer less clarity and greater distance between state government and the people it serves.
This tension — between journalists seeking accountability and a bureaucracy that does not always welcome scrutiny — is not new. Covering state government has grown more difficult in recent years with fewer reporters covering the Capitol and social media offering politicians new ways to reach constituents and voters without speaking to the press. Those trends were exacerbated by restrictions applied during the pandemic.
The risk is a decline of “open, honest and transparent communication” essential to the functioning of democracy, said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for a free press and government disclosure.
Media outlets across the state note rejected interview requests, challenges obtaining public records or the lack of any official response in their stories:
- For a Los Angeles Times series over the past year about the broken promises of recreational cannabis legalization, the Department of Industrial Relations and the Department of Cannabis Control refused to provide information about complaints filed by exploited workers, ignored questions about delayed wage theft investigationsand policies for handling allegations of labor trafficking, and sought to block the release of satellite imagery mapping illegal cultivations.
- On the Friday afternoon before the New Year’s holiday, the Department of Health Care Services sent out a notice walking back changes to its bidding processfor insurers under Medi-Cal, the state’s health care program for poor people. A CalMatters reporter followed up with questions about why the department changed course, whether it was related to a possible lawsuit by insurance providers left out of the process and when patients would be notified. The department said its “statement speaks for itself” until after the holiday, but never responded when the reporter followed up.
- KCRA aired a story last year about criminal groups skimming food benefitsand welfare funds at ATMs, for which the Department of Social Services did not respond to questions about fraud prevention efforts.
- Ahead of the end of California’s COVID-19 state of emergency last month, a CalMatters reporter asked the Department of Public Health for an interview to discuss widening racial and ethnic gaps in vaccination ratesand the state’s long-term strategy for managing the coronavirus. The department did not respond until after the story was published, in a written statement which acknowledged, “We know we missed your deadline, but hopefully this information is still useful and of value for you!”
- Multiple news outlets, including CalMattersand the Los Angeles Times, covered the Department of Education’s highly unusual rollout of long-delayed state test scores last October. It included holding a short briefing for reporters before providing them with any of the results and then releasing the data on a Sunday morning, embargoed for the next day, severely limiting their opportunity to reach school officials to discuss the scores before they became public. A department spokesperson said their timeline was constrained because they wanted to release the state scores alongside results from another federal exam.
- The Department of Public Health turned down numerous interview requests and often refused to answer specific questions for a series of stories in 2021 by CalMatters, online news site LAistand San Diego radio station KPBS about failures in state oversight of nursing home, including allowing a nursing assistant to stay on the job for more than three years after he was accused of sexually assaulting a patient.
“These message control practices do real harm to the public interest,” Loy said. “Because the people need to know the full story, not just the official story.”
There is no shortage of people responsible for the state government’s communication of public information: 435 employees in the executive branch, to be exact, according to a count conducted for CalMatters by the Department of Human Resources. An analysis of salary ranges based on job titles found that the annual cost to taxpayers is between $36.5 million and $44.8 million.
There are even more press aides working for other branches, such as the Legislature, the judiciary and public universities. The jobs of these communications officials extend beyond answering reporters’ questions and can include duties such as developing public relations strategies, writing speeches and managing social media accounts.
Yet, besides laws mandating open meetings and the release of public records, California does not have standards for appropriate public communications. Policies are at the discretion of those hundreds of individual agencies and departments.
The governor’s office does get involved with the response to the most notable media inquiries and records requests.
“As is the case across all aspects of the administration, including communications, policy and legislation, there is an expectation that departments and agencies flag high profile issues for attention for the governor’s office,” spokesperson Anthony York said in an email. “That’s also true for legal matters, including public records act requests. We trust agencies to use their discretion to notify the governor’s office as they see fit, depending on the issue.”
Newsom has faced criticisms of his own for his press strategy, including favoring the national media over California journalists for interviews and major announcements, which has contributed to speculation, repeatedly denied by the governor, that he is raising his profile to run for president.
His office is also highly secretive about his schedule and travel compared to governors in other states, as The Sacramento Bee recently reported, and staff has on occasion physically blocked journalists from approaching Newsom to ask questions at public events, including the Capitol tree lighting ceremony in December and a march to his second inauguration in January.
The obstacles and troubling behavior highlighted by the Capitol Correspondents Association of California are broader and more pervasive.
Many offices have moved nearly entirely toward written communications, directing a reporter who does reach someone by phone to instead send their questions by email. Some no longer list a media number on their websites at all, including the California Department of Public Health, which has often been the primary messenger for the Newsom administration’s pandemic response.
This approach favored by the state government restricts contact through official spokespeople; interview requests for policymakers and subject matter experts are frequently rejected, while agency employees are discouraged from speaking to the press without first getting permission.
During the pandemic, Julie Watts of television station CBS Sacramento spent two years investigating health and safety failures at a state-funded COVID-19 testing lab. She was never allowed to speak with Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly, who oversaw the state’s coronavirus response, or Department of Public Health officials about her findings, even after Newsom directed her questions to Ghaly.
Watts said she was forced to rely on written statements, which documents and reports often later revealed to be inaccurate or untrue. Without an opportunity to sit down with Ghaly, Watts said she could not fully push back on the state’s carefully constructed messages and get to the bottom of one of her central questions: Was California getting false information about the effectiveness of the lab, or covering up negligence?
“The answers they were sending us in writing were disingenuous,” Watts said, adding that it made her question whether the state had something to hide. “We were talking about complex, scientific issues. And it’s difficult to convey that to the public when it’s hundreds of back-and-forth emails.”
“These message control practices do real harm to the public interest. Because the people need to know the full story, not just the official story.”
The written responses crafted by communications staff are often sent anonymously from a general email account, as though coming from the entire faceless bureaucracy rather than a particular spokesperson. For example, media inquiries fulfilled by the state Department of Justice, which is overseen by Attorney General Rob Bonta, are generally signed only “Press Office.”
The result is a slower, more complicated process for sharing public information. Follow-up and clarifying questions that would be quickly settled in an interview or phone call can be drawn out over days of correspondence. That’s a luxury of time that is not always available to reporters, especially in a breaking news situation. Sometimes those written responses blow through deadlines, coming after a story has been published or never at all.
Ariane Lange, an enterprise reporter for The Sacramento Bee, said she submitted a public records request to the Department of Health Care Services last summer for which she still has not received any documents.
MORE:
“Kind of a Stunt” or “It’s Working” – Governor’s National Campaign Trip Gets Mixed Reactions
Politico
Gavin Newsom is showing up behind political enemy lines, taking on conservatives in southern states like Alabama and Texas, where the California governor’s presence is not always welcome — even among the people he’s supposedly there to help.
Newsom just finished a spring break tour of the deep South, visiting civil rights landmarks and beleaguered Democrats and picking fights with Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. His new PAC, seeded with $10 million of his leftover campaign money, is a bet that the potential presidential aspirant — not now, his people insist — can go even further and become a serious player in helping Democrats actually win in red states and districts across the country.
But, like a California cabernet left out on a humid afternoon, the Newsom brand may not travel all that well. Montgomery, Alabama, is a long way from Sacramento, California, and Newsom’s political machine has only been tested in friendly territory, where his party enjoys a supermajority.
Many Democrats will be glad to spend his money, but it’s far less clear that they’ll want his advice or his obsessive focus on the culture-war contrasts between Democratic and Republican states.
“It just strikes me as a kind of a stunt,” said James Carville, a Democratic political operative with deep experience in the South. “We’re not going to carry Oklahoma anyway, or Kentucky for that matter.”
“They will do much better if they will strategically fund operations in Texas that are overtly political and engaged in actually winning races,” said Matt Angle, who directs the Lone Star Project, a Texas committee devoted to defeating Republicans.
Florida Democrats echo that view. State Party Chair Nikki Fried said she’d welcome extra resources “to highlight the failures of Ron DeSantis,” but there are limits. She also said Newsom’s favorite California-versus-Florida framing, which resonates with some West Coast liberals, would backfire in DeSantis’ backyard.
“What would not be helpful is a comparison between the two states,” Fried said. “Florida is very different from California.”
Newsom has cast the effort as a moral imperative. In the launch video for the campaign, the governor — who is shown at one point marching across an iconic Sacramento bridge with hundreds of Democratic activists — decries the right’s policies on issues like abortion, guns and voting rights against a mashup of polarizing GOP figures.
In a Thursday email to supporters, he touted press coverage of the tour as evidence that “it’s working.”
It’s not an unexpected play from a governor who has long portrayed himself, and California, as a defender of democracy, enacting world-leading environmental policies and gun restrictions and expanding abortion access for people from out of state.
But this strategy bets that the message of a California governor — who made his fortune in fine wines and has deep ties to elite San Franciscans like Nancy Pelosi — can resonate elsewhere. While Newsom’s advisers comprise the dominant campaign team in California, they have little experience with the politics of conservative America.
Newsom and his people swear he’s not going to challenge President Joe Biden in 2024. But the PAC play reads like a classic bid to win friends and allies ahead of a future run.
“I think that he’s planning a campaign in the event that President Biden plans not to run for reelection,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in an interview, and “if he’s out there helping Democrats, he’s building a reserve of goodwill that would come in handy in 2028.”
Since defeating a recall effort in 2021, the governor has shifted his gaze away from California without suffering political consequences. He barely ran a reelection campaign last year and still won 60 percent of the vote.
Back home, Democrats are viewing this as a classic Newsom move. The governor is known to spend hours a day absorbing far-right media and often laments conservatives’ ability to dominate the narrative. “Somehow, Democrats are constantly on the defense,” he wrote in a recent campaign email. “… That has to end. We have to flip the ‘red state freedom’ narrative on its head.”
A cash infusion could certainly buoy Democrats fighting uphill battles in conservative states or competitive races in purple areas. Newsom kicked off the endeavor with his own leftover campaign cash and is soliciting donations, money that could go a long way for candidates in states and down-ballot races who have otherwise been starved of resources.
“Everyone needs to be doing this,” said David Pepper, a former chair of the Ohio Democratic Party. “We’ve seen the consequence when only one side is engaging in these states — it’s a disaster.”
Chris Jones, a Democrat who challenged Arkansas GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders last year, is among the beneficiaries of Newsom’s checkbook and attention. The California governor donated $100,000 to Jones’ campaign last year and visited him this past week.
Jones said that as an Arkansas Democrat, he’s often felt overlooked by the party, but he sees Newsom’s visit as indicative of a wider trend. “We’re in a moment now where national Democrats are saying, ‘wait a minute, we have to look beyond the coasts and lean into the entire country,’” he said.
National Democrats are also backing the effort. Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison in a statement said that he’s “glad to see Governor Newsman making the case about what we’ve accomplished, what our values are, and the clear contrast with MAGA Republicans.”
Newsom has been known to use his donor list to boost Democrats and lambast his enemies, sending out fundraising emails with subject lines like “Indiana” or “DeSantis and Abbott,” referring to the Florida and Texas governors. The new campaign website promotes the importance of preserving democracy and American values, but under the “threats” section, Newsom lists DeSantis, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Newsom’s brand of political prodding, though popular among his progressive devotees, may not be the messaging red-state Democrats are looking for. It’s a problem Angle, the Texas organizer, has seen before. Democrats there need to show the “the contrast between responsible mainstream Democrats and irresponsible, extreme Republicans,” he said — not “more ‘turn Texas blue’ pep rallies.”
“The resources are needed, and there is some smart money that gets spent in Texas from outside,” Angle said. “But Texans, even Democrats, resent people coming in and acting like they’re bringing fire to cavemen.”
One adviser granted anonymity to speak about the governor’s strategy said Newsom knows that his presence is not necessarily an asset for red-state Democrats who would prefer cash to appearing with a leading progressive.
“He’s self-aware enough to know where he’s helpful and not helpful,” the adviser said.
But Newsom’s penchant for seeking the spotlight, combined with the long odds of Democrats winning in the South, have seeded doubt about the plan.
Nathan Click, who also worked on Newsom’s gubernatorial campaigns, said it was the governor’s idea to travel outside of California to go after the GOP, noting his sizable chunk of leftover contributions. “How do you use that money for good?” he said.
For months, Newsom has called for national Democrats to go on the offensive when it comes to lightning-rod issues like gun control, abortion and LGBTQ rights. His new effort is the most concrete step in that direction. The hybrid PAC can channel money toward independent expenditure advertising, campaigns and get-out-the-vote efforts in other states.
Aside from the cash, Newsom has something red-state Democrats don’t: political security. With a Democratic supermajority in the statehouse, Newsom hasn’t been hemmed in by a need to moderate his rhetoric — and can go after Republicans without much fear of retribution.
“Personally, I wouldn’t have said the things he has said and the way he has said it,” Jones, the Arkansas candidate, said, noting that Newsom’s solid electoral footing gives him the freedom to go on the attack in ways he could not.
Randy Kelley, chair of the Alabama Democratic Party, said he welcomes Newsom’s attention. State Republicans are “still fighting the Civil War,” he said, noting the ban on critical race theory and efforts by Gov. Kay Ivey to funnel education funds toward prison construction. Republicans have controlled both chambers of the state Legislature in Alabama since 2010, and only one of its seven congressional seats is held by a Democrat. As of January, gun owners can carry concealed weapons without a permit.
Democrats there don’t know much about Newsom, Kelley said, but that doesn’t matter as much as the assistance.
“Whatever message he has, it can’t hurt Alabama,” Kelley said. “It can only help.”
California Snowpack is Officially a GOAT
State Dept. of Water Resources
It’s official: California’s snowpack has reached all-time levels.
Sierra Nevada snowpack on Monday rang in at 237% of average, tying 1952’s record, according to state scientists who conducted the latest snow survey at Phillips Station, south of Lake Tahoe.
The data comes from an ensemble of 130 electronic sensors placed throughout the Sierra Nevada that, as of Monday, registered an average “snow water equivalent” of 61.1 inches. (That’s the height if you melted the snow to its liquid state.)
In the southern Sierra Nevada, the numbers are almost off the charts: The southern Sierra— which includes Mount Whitney, the range’s tallest peak — held 306% of its April 3 average snowpack, the most since recordkeeping began in 1950. From Lake Tahoe north, where the peaks are lower, it’s 194% of average.
Sierra Nevada communities are still digging out of snow that has caused roofs to collapse and blocked roads for weeks. Mammoth Pass recorded 104.5 inches of snow water equivalent, shattering all records for at least 90 years. The ski resort there announced it will stay open at least through July after receiving a record 704 inches — so far, with more on its way.
The snowpack is an important provider of water for California cities and farms in the summer and fall. But the downside is that officials warn that when the snow melts, it could cause major flooding in the Central Valley.
A year ago, snow was scarce in the alpine meadow at Phillips Station. During last April’s annual survey, its snowpack measured 38% of average. In 2015 it was just 4%, and then-Gov. Jerry Brown accompanied the team, standing on bare ground to measure nonexistent snow.
Even the wettest winters end, and while most of California is now either soggy or snowbound, this will soon change. Historically April 1 marks the end of the rainy season and the approximate date of peak snowpack.
This year’s snow is so deep that state officials say they are highly likely to conduct a May 1 snow survey, too, which is unusual.
“They were on a dry field last year on April 1, and now they’re sitting on 10, 12 feet of snow,” said David Rizzardo, a Department of Water Resources hydrologist.
Dept. of Water Resources media release:
https://water.ca.gov/News/News-Releases/2023/April-23/Snow-Survey-April-2023
California’s Population Drop Impacts 58 Counties in Different Ways
LA Times
A prison closed in Lassen County. College campuses welcomed students back in Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz counties, and thousands of new housing units were added in Yolo County.
While California’s overall population continued to shrink, new census data show that during the pandemic period of the last two years, population swings have affected large and small counties across the state, the result of COVID-19 health protocols, the return of employees to workplaces, new housing construction and various other factors.
Several large urban counties — including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Barbara — have rebounded from population losses that hit hardest at the start of the pandemic.
Meanwhile in rural counties such as Lassen and Yolo, population numbers have fluctuated due to local changes, such as the closing of a prison or construction of new housing.
The big takeaway from the latest census data: Californians relocated quite a bit in response to the pandemic and other factors but many counties are now starting to resettle into the pre-pandemic status quo.
Demographic experts say the census data reflect movements of the population during the period when COVID-19 was still a major concern — and they point out that it is possible that the population losses have slowed and urban centers could soon see their populations rebound when numbers for 2022-23 are released.
In the 2020-21 census data, urban counties such as Los Angeles and San Francisco showed the biggest percentage losses. But the population loss tapped off the following year in those urban counties in comparison to rural counties.
The “waning of the worst days of the pandemic has slowed the exit from major cities” as fear of living in crowded communities has decreased and in-office workers have become more common, argued Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA.
The cities have “once again become appealing to a new generation of young workers,” he said, though they still have major issues to address.
Housing, homelessness, infrastructure and safety issues have been “exposed and exacerbated” by the pandemic, and “without correcting these flaws, major cities will continue to depopulate,” Ong said.
On the other end of the spectrum, some of the counties that lost many people in 2020-21 rebounded the following year.
Yolo County was the standout. After losing 1.5% of its population in 2020 — ranking 10th-most in the state — the county topped the list in growth in 2021-22.
Notably, Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara counties flipped from losing among the most people — 2nd- and 4th-most, respectively — to showing top 10 percentage population gains.
“Many counties with large universities saw their populations fully rebound this year as students returned,” Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for estimates and projections in the U.S. Census Bureau’s population division, said of the census results. Both Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara have major college campuses.
Riverside, Madera, Placer, Yuba and San Benito counties all continued to grow, showing top 10 percentage population gains in both years.
Here are the 10 counties in California that gained the most population between July 2021 and July 2022.
- Yolo County: +4.26%
- Merced County: +1.95%
- Santa Cruz County: +1.49%
- Santa Barbara County: +1.46%
- San Benito County: +1.36%
- Yuba County: +1.31%
- Placer County: +1.20%
- San Luis Obispo County: +0.97%
- Madera County: +0.85%
- Riverside County: +0.84%
State Dept. of Finance Demographic Research Unit resource page: