IN THIS ISSUE – “There Are Rapists In The Building”
SEXUAL HARASSMENT @ STATE CAPITOL
- “Whisper Network” Goes Public: Legislators Hear Sexual Harassment Horror Stories
POLITICS & REVENUE & RESOURCES
- New Poll Shows Governor’s Race Unexpectedly Tight; US Senate Contest Not So Much
- Governor Readies 2018-19 State Financial Plan – Sunny Today, Storm Clouds on Horizon
- Cap-and-Trade Auction Bounces Back, Raises Nearly $1 Billion
- Major Oil Co. Jumps on Renewables Bandwagon
- Water Bond(s) Return to Ballot in 2018
- Feds to Rewrite Controversial Waters of the US Rule
NEW CALIFORNIA
- The New “Mixed-Nationality” Family & the Lifetime Journey from Mexico to US to Mexico
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week, tailored to your business and advocacy interests. Please feel free to forward.
Ideas and inquiries are welcome: bob_gore@gualcogroup.com
Stay current daily! For our focused updates via Twitter: @jrgualco / @robertjgore / @gualcogroup
FOR THE PAST TWO WEEKS ENDING DEC.1, 2017…READ ALL ABOUT IT!!!
“Whisper Network” Goes Public: Legislators Hear Sexual Harassment Horror Stories
A lobbyist who says a sitting lawmaker trapped her in a bathroom and masturbated in front of her told legislators at a Capitol hearing this week that she has not yet named the perpetrator because she fears retaliation that could hurt her ability to make a living.
Pamela Lopez, a partner in K Street Consulting, told an Assembly subcommittee investigating sexual harassment that she has long experienced sexual harassment and even assault in her time working in politics.
“I can stand here and tell you as a 35-year-old woman what it’s like to experience sexual assault at the hands of a powerful colleague who in this instance happened to be a lawmaker,” she said. “I can also tell you stories about 23-year old me and 26-year-old me and even younger me when I was volunteering on campaigns.”
In a business that relies on relationships, she said she worries that naming names would damage her ability to connect in the Capitol. “I know that people will whisper behind my back. I know that people will snicker at me as I walk by.”
“Women have an instinctive desire to hide what has happened to us. It’s because we recognize that if anyone finds out something has happened to us, our own careers may be in danger.”
Instead, a “whisper network” takes the place of formal reporting about sexual assault and harassment said Christine Pelosi, chair of the California Democratic Party Women’s Caucus.
“We have rapists in this building. We have molesters among us.” she said. “There are perpetrators and enablers in this building, and … a lot of us know who they are. We find out through that whisper network. People do talk, they just don’t come forward.”
Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, chair of the the Assembly Rules Subcommittee on Harassment, Discrimination, and Retaliation Prevention and Response, said the hearing was only the beginning, setting the stage for a “serious and comprehensive” effort to change the Assembly’s harassment policies, procedures and training.
“In doing so, we can begin to change a culture that has for far too long been silent and protective of people who use their positions of power to prey on others,” she said. “We have been told about retaliation, lack of confidentiality, and a sense that members are protected at all costs. This has to end. Victims must not only be protected, their testimony must be encouraged because everyone deserves a safe space in which to work. In fact, California law requires it.”
Unlike state government employees, people who work for the Legislature are not covered by the California Whistleblower Protection Act. For four years, Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, has carried a bill that would give such protection to legislative employees. And for four years in a row, the bill has passed out of the Assembly with bipartisan support, only to be killed through a secretive process in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“It’s ironic to me that the Legislature passes laws that are very specific to what employers can and can’t do, but doesn’t want to impose the same rules on itself,” said Melendez. “What is that?”
Appropriations Committee chairman Sen. Ricardo Lara, a Democrat from Bell Gardens, has declined to comment. His committee’s analysis of Melendez’s bill says it’s unclear how whistleblower protections could work in the Legislature, where employees are not unionized and can be fired without cause.
At the hearing, subcommittee members grappled with how to apply harassment law to elected officials, who don’t have personnel files, and whether a complaint reporting process currently governed by a committee of lawmakers is truly independent.
They also touched on possibilities for change – from prohibiting use of cell phones during mandatory sexual harassment training to setting up a system for anonymous complaints.
The Assembly doesn’t track sexual harassment complaints staff members told legislators.
Debra Gravert, chief administrative officer of the Assembly Rules Committee, said the committee tracks only investigations she and human resources officials decide to conduct. Not all complaints about behavior – such as someone asking someone else for a date – violate sexual harassment policy, she said. In the last six years, it has conducted eight investigations, she said.
The disclosure appeared to make several members of the subcommittee investigating the issue unhappy.
Tracking complaints, said Assemblyman Tim Grayson, D-Concord, could help find a problem before it reaches a systemic level.
Assembly Rules Committee Chairman Ken Cooley appeared to agree. “It kind of goes to setting the tone,” said Cooley, D-Rancho Cordova.. “Are we driving the message from the top that this sort of conduct is unacceptable?”
Lobbyist Samantha Corbin encouraged subcommittee members to rethink what might be considered sexual harassment under the current policy.
“A suggestion was made earlier that it is not sexual harassment if someone asks someone out on a date,” she said. “I beg to differ, because if the chair of appropriations was to ask me out on a date, I would certainly feel pressured. If a fellow was asked out by their boss, they certainly would feel pressured.”
“I think, at a minimum, we can understand that the power dynamics unique to our community makes these situations very different and worthy of a higher level of discourse,” Corbin added.
The hearing was announced last month, after nearly 150 women released an open letter denouncing “pervasive” sexual harassment in California politics. We Said Enough, the group of lobbyists, Capitol staff members, political consultants and others who organized the letter, has urged legislative leaders to overhaul an institutional culture that they say sweeps sexual misconduct under the rug and discourages women from reporting harassment for fear of losing their jobs.
The outcry has already led Senate and Assembly officials to rethink some of their policies; earlier this month, the Senate announced that it would hire an outside law firm to handle all sexual misconduct complaints going forward. But We Said Enough and some female lawmakers are pushing the Legislature to go further, including extending whistleblower protections to at-will Capitol staffers and creating a confidential reporting hotline.
Two sitting lawmakers have been implicated so far: Former Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, a Los Angeles Democrat, resigned on Monday amid mounting allegations that he groped or otherwise behaved inappropriately toward at least seven women, including some of his subordinates, while working as a chief of staff and serving in the Legislature. Bocanegra continued to deny that he did anything wrong, though he admitted he was “not perfect.”
The Senate on Monday also stripped Sen. Tony Mendoza of his committee chairmanship and two commissions posts while it investigates complaints of sexual harassment. The Bee reported last month that Mendoza fired three Capitol staff members after they complained to the rules committee about his behavior toward a fellow who worked in the office, including that he invited her to his home to review her résumé. Mendoza has called the allegations “unsubstantiated” and Senate officials have denied any connection.
Since then, two more women have come forward alleging that Mendoza behaved inappropriately toward them when they worked for him. Jennifer Kwart, a legislative staff member who testified at the hearing on Tuesday, previously told The Bee that Mendoza took her to a hotel suite at a state party convention in 2008 and gave her alcohol, even though she was underage.
New Poll Shows Governor’s Race Unexpectedly Tight, US Senate Contest Not So Much
A new statewide survey shows Democrats Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa in a closer than expected race for California governor, with Republicans so far behind that for the first time they may not make the statewide ballot next November.
The survey released Thursday by the Public Policy Institute of California also shows U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein leads a fellow Democrat, state Senate leader Kevin de León, by a 2-1 ratio — a testament to the veteran lawmaker’s name recognition across the state.
“Senator Feinstein is leading in the top-two U.S. Senate primary next June — reflecting the incumbent’s favorability rating — while the challenger is not well known,” said Mark Baldassare, president and CEO of the PPIC, who has directed the statewide survey since 1998.
Newsom, the state’s lieutenant governor, leads the governor’s race with 23 percent of likely voters voicing support for him, according to the poll. But it found former Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa is quickly catching up — 18 percent of likely voters are backing him. About a third of likely voters were undecided.
Only 9 percent of likely voters chose Democrat John Chiang, the state treasurer, and 3 percent said they’d vote for Democrat Delaine Eastin, the former superintendent of public instruction, according to the poll. Among Republicans, businessman John Cox garnered support from 9 percent of voters. Travis Allen, a state assemblyman from Orange County, received 6 percent, the poll showed.
Under the state’s “top two” primary system, the two candidates who get the most votes in the primary advance to a runoff in November, regardless of party. If the Republican candidates continue to poll poorly, that could mean California for the first time in modern history wouldn’t have a Republican candidate for governor on the November ballot, as in its last U.S. Senate race.
“While these new poll numbers are encouraging, polls don’t distract us from our goal of continuing to organize a powerful grassroots campaign that can help Mayor Villaraigosa win the fight for greater economic opportunity and economic equality,” said Luis Vizcaino, a spokesman for the Villaraigosa campaign.
Newsom’s spokesman, Dan Newman, said he’s “extremely skeptical” about Villaraigosa gaining support given the recent news that the former mayor “made millions lobbying for Herbalife and other shady clients that he refuses to come clean about.”
“While we’re pleased to see yet another poll showing Newsom ahead, we recognize it’s still a long way until the election,” said Newman, “which is why he’s busy traveling the state sharing his vision and record.”
Vizcaino retorted that Villaraigosa is focusing on “lifting more people into the middle class,” while Newsom’s strategy is “apparently to go negative to suppress voter turnout.”
Chiang’s sluggish start in the race is surprising to Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College. It could be because his message isn’t resonating with voters yet, he said.
“Maybe he ought to go out and have an affair so he catches up to Newsom and Villaraigosa,” Pitney said. “It’s still early, and he has the kind of approach that could play well on television — a cool, smooth and deliberate manner. As the race plays out, he may be able to move up.”
In the U.S. Senate primary, the poll found that Feinstein — who is seeking her fifth term — leads de León, the state Senate president pro tempore, 45 percent to 21 percent. A third of likely voters are undecided.
Larry Gerston, a professor emeritus of political science at San Jose State, said Feinstein has strong name recognition across the state — unlike de León — and the state senator’s role in the controversy surrounding sexual harassment in the state Capitol could be hurting his campaign.
De León’s housemate, Sen. Tony Mendoza, was accused of inappropriate behavior toward a young female intern, including inviting her to spend the night. The scandal raised questions about how much de León knew about the allegations.
“I think the sexual harassment issue and de León are wrapped together right now,” said Gerston, adding that the Senate leader can win the public’s trust by coming up with solutions such as sexual harassment training, resources for whistle-blowers or more transparency in the State Legislature. “He can either benefit from it in terms of coming up with far-reaching innovative legislation, or he may suffer dearly.”
Courtni Pugh, de León’s campaign manager, said the idea that the sexual harassment scandal might hurt his chances in the race are “nonsense.” She said the numbers merely reflect the current name recognition of the candidates.
In the governor’s race, Newsom is expected to draw liberal voters with his positions on gun control and his role in legalizing gay marriage in the state. He is largely favored in Northern California. Villaraigosa, preferred by 42 percent of Latino likely voters, will benefit from the moderate and Republican voters. His support base primarily hails from Southern California.
Independents polled by the PPIC preferred Newsom to Villaraigosa 24 percent to 15 percent.
“I like the way Newsom thinks outside of the box,” said Arleen Stanton, 73, a lifelong Democrat and Santa Claran who was polled by PPIC. “I like what he did with gay marriage in San Francisco — he didn’t wait for anyone else to decide. He took the lead on the issue.”
The poll by the nonpartisan PPIC surveyed 1,704 California adult residents who were interviewed on their mobile or landline telephones Nov. 10 to Nov. 19 in English or Spanish, according to respondents’ preferences. Among them were 1,391 registered voters and 1,070 likely voters. The overall margin of error was plus or minus 3.4 percentage points for all adults surveyed, 3.9 points for registered voters and 4.3 points for likely voters.
PPIC survey:
Governor Readies 2018-19 Budget – Sunny Today, Storm Clouds On Horizon
Mac Taylor, the Legislature’s top adviser on the state budget, delivered some superficially good news this month to his bosses.
With no economic downturn on the horizon, he said in his annual survey of the state’s fiscal situation, there should be no problem writing a balanced 2018-19 budget next year. In fact, he said, with revenues continuing to flow nicely, it could theoretically end 2018-19 with more than $19 billion in unspent reserves
Just hours earlier, Gov. Jerry Brown’s Department of Finance had reported that through the first four months of the current fiscal year, revenues are closely tracking expectations.
Over the next few weeks, Brown will finalize his 2018-19 budget proposals, then announce them in early January.
During the ensuing five months, he and legislators will negotiate over details and almost certainly will emerge from his office with smiles to announce a comprehensive budget deal in time for enactment by June 15.
It will be, after four terms as governor, Brown’s last budget – his last chance to affect the single most important thing that governors and legislators do each year. The most difficult aspect will be to fend off demands from the Legislature’s restive liberals for more spending.
Brown will likely give a little on spending, insist on fattening reserves a little more and claim that he’s tamed the budget crisis he faced upon returning to the governorship in 2011 after a 28-year absence.
However, he hasn’t. In fact, during his second stint as governor, Brown, lawmakers and voters have made the state’s longer-term situation potentially even worse, as Taylor very indirectly hints.
For one thing, off-budget debts, especially for pensions and health care for retired state workers, have increased. Brown has made some token efforts to deal with them, but has never been willing to fully confront the issue.
For another – and more importantly – the recent comity on budgets has stemmed from two very uncertain factors: a relatively healthy economy and hefty increases in income tax rates on the highest-income Californians that most voters eagerly embraced because they wouldn’t be paying them.
Brown himself warns – and will likely do so again in January – that the state is overdue for a recession that could, his own budget staff says, drop revenues by $55 billion over three years.
That’s because the state depends on income taxes for 70 percent of its general fund revenues and the top 1 percent of taxpayers account for half of those income taxes. Their taxable incomes are weighted heavily toward capital gains, rather than salaries, and therefore are very likely to plummet in recession.
Brown has acknowledged the potential problem, but has been unwilling to undertake tax reform that would reduce volatility. Instead, he’s opted for a “rainy day” reserve fund that would cover only a small fraction of the projected shortfall should recession hit.
Taylor’s report gingerly explores the effects of a moderate recession in 2019 and confirms that it would hit revenues very hard, quickly exhaust Brown’s emergency reserve and create multi-billion-dollar deficits for his successor to resolve.
“Given all of the uncertainties faced by the state budget, we encourage the Legislature to continue its recent practice of building more reserves,” Taylor urged.
Yes it should. But no reserve is possibly big enough to stave off fiscal disaster.
If Brown really wants to leave a sound fiscal legacy for California, he would not just warn of a future recession, but spend some of his popularity to fix a taxation system that has been badly out of whack for decades and has become markedly more distorted since he returned to the governorship.
https://calmatters.org/articles/commentary-state-budget-seems-healthy-isnt/
Cap-and-Trade Auction Bounces Back, Raises Nearly $1 Billion
California will collect $860 million from auctioning carbon-emissions permits after the allowances sold out at a record price for the second straight quarter, according to state data released this week.
Auction results released by the California Air Resources Board showed that demand remains strong for pollution permits since California lawmakers renewed the state’s cap-and-trade program in July. The program requires polluters to obtain a permit for each ton of greenhouse gases they release. The number of available permits declines each year.
Auction proceeds pay for a variety of environmental, transportation and other projects including high-speed rail and clean-vehicle subsidies.
Permits sold for $15.06 for current emissions, the highest price ever. That’s the nearly $1.50 above the auction floor and up from $14.75 in August. Permits for emissions in 2020 and beyond sold for $14.76 in last week’s auction.
Lawmakers voted in July to reauthorize the cap-and-trade program through 2030. Before that demand for permits plummeted as businesses waited to see if the program would continue.
Gov. Jerry Brown has lauded the program around the world, including earlier this month at climate talks in Europe. California and the European Union agreed to host regular meetings, also working with China, on improving carbon markets, which aim to reduce pollution by putting a price on carbon emissions.
Cap-and-trade supporters say the program is the most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gases because it creates financial incentives for polluters to cut back their emissions without strict mandates. But some environmentalists criticize the program, saying that flexibility allows oil refineries to continue fouling the air.
California emissions in 2016 dropped nearly 5 percent from the year before, largely due to the state’s renewable portfolio standard, which requires power utilities to increase the share of electricity that comes from renewable resources, according to state data released earlier this month.
California has set a 2030 goal of the reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below their 1990 levels.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article185888453.html#storylink=cpy
Major Oil Co. Jumps On Renewables Bandwagon
Bowing to pressure from shareholders and the Paris international climate accord, Royal Dutch Shell pledged to increase its investment in renewable fuels and to cut its carbon emissions in half by 2050.
Shell and other big oil companies have moved only sporadically over the last decade toward greater production of wind and solar energy. Now there are signs of a commitment to take climate change more seriously.
In comments to investors, Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief executive, said that from 2018 to 2020, the company’s new-energies division would spend up to $2 billion a year on renewable energy sources like wind, solar and hydrogen power and on electric-car charging stations.
While that sum is a large increase from Shell’s previous commitment, it is well below 10 percent of the oil giant’s total investment dollars. Still, Mr. van Beurden stressed that the pledge was just a start and that the company supported the goal of the Paris accord, which is to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.
“We will do this in step with society’s drive to align with the Paris goals,” Mr. Van Beurden added, “and we will do it by reducing the net carbon footprint of the full range of Shell emissions, from our operations and from the consumption from our products.”
Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, said it aimed to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent by 2035 and by half by 2050. The growing global dependence on natural gas, as a replacement for coal, should help Shell meet its goals since it has made a big investment in producing and trading gas.
Environmentalists gave the Shell pledge generally positive reviews.
“It’s good that they are looking in the right direction,” said Dan Becker, director of the Washington-based Safe Climate Campaign. “They are ahead of their competitors in recognizing that the days of oil dependence are numbered.”
But he added, “We’ll have to make progress a lot more quickly than they are projecting in order to protect the climate.”
Since the adoption of the 2015 Paris accord, in which most of the countries in the world agreed to set goals to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions, international oil companies have begun to make more public pledges to reduce their carbon releases.
Several European oil companies have acknowledged that they would have to leave some carbon resources in the ground. Statoil, the Norwegian oil company, has begun a major shift toward investing in wind power. This month, Shell and seven other oil companies pledged to reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from leaky pipes and wells.
Shell is working with BMW, Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen to install fast-charging stations on Europe’s highways to make electric cars capable of longer trips. Shell has projected that the expansion of the global electric-car fleet over the next decade will significantly slash gasoline demand.
Perhaps Shell’s most ambitious project is its Quest carbon capture and storage project in Canada, which recovers carbon dioxide emissions from a major oil-sands project and then compresses it into a liquid for storage underground. The project is one of only a few in the world.
While some energy experts say carbon capture could be a useful tool to control climate change, skeptics say the technology is too expensive to be deployed broadly enough to make a real difference.
Generally, European oil companies have moved faster on climate efforts than their American counterparts, partly because there is a broader political consensus on the problem on the Continent. Norway, though a major oil producer, is considering removing oil investments from the holdings of its sovereign wealth fund.
Mr. van Beurden said the company would measure the accomplishments of the carbon-reduction effort in reports every five years. “This is a challenge for the whole planet,” he said.
Shell’s carbon pledge followed a shareholder resolution, backed by the company, that called on Shell to embrace targets to improve its performance to control climate change.
Mark van Baal, founder of Follow This, a group of environmentally minded Shell shareholders that has the support of the Church of England and an assortment of Dutch institutional investors, praised the initiative as “an ambitious decision to take leadership in achieving the goals of the Paris climate agreement.”
In the meantime, Shell appears to be making increasing profits from oil and gas. With oil prices and cash flow gradually rising again, Shell announced on Tuesday that it was reviving its all-cash dividend, discarding a program that gave shareholders an option of receiving dividends in shares of stock, which had been depressed in recent years.
Water Bond(s) Return to Ballot in 2018
With a five-year drought and then a winter of floods having exposed the limits of California’s vast network of reservoirs, dams and canals, voters are likely to have the chance next year to decide whether to pay for major upgrades to the state’s waterworks.
Two multibillion-dollar bonds are expected to go before voters that promise to boost water supplies, offer flood protection and restore rivers and streams. One measure, sponsored by the Legislature, also would fund new parks and hiking trails. The second, a privately backed initiative, would go further to improve the infrastructure that moves water to cities and farms.
Regardless of whether state voters approve either measure, a handful of reservoirs will be built or expanded with billions of dollars from a previously approved water bond.
Supporters of the new initiatives say the need to upgrade the state’s water-storage system has been apparent for some time, and that with the near-failure of Oroville Dam last winter and drought-induced water shortages still fresh in voters’ minds, now is the time go to the public to fund long-term improvements. But with two measures likely to add a combined $14 billion-plus to the state’s bond debt, some skeptics say the would-be water overhaul is an overreach.
“It’s a great time to be talking about California water needs and funding and financing,” said Sara Aminzadeh, executive director of California Coastkeeper Alliance, an advocacy group for clean water and healthy watersheds. “But there’s a danger that the political capital for water projects is misappropriated and we have a missed opportunity.”
With only so much voter goodwill, and competing demands on the state budget, familiar fault lines are re-emerging among those invested in how the state stores its water. Some argue the priority should be improving water infrastructure by upgrading dams and aqueducts; others push for alternatives such as recycling and conservation programs that would reduce demand for new water supplies.
The proposed bonds would commit money to both, though in different proportions.
The Legislature’s $4.1 billion measure on the June ballot was forged as a compromise among several interest groups, with the support of Gov. Jerry Brown. Its water-related components lean away from traditional infrastructure projects such as new dams, and toward funding for recycling, construction of flood-control levees and cleanup of polluted waterways.
Close to half the bond money, however, would have little or nothing to do with water projects. Some would go to park acquisition and maintenance, much of it in Southern California. Money would be allocated for trail construction and land conservation in the Bay Area. Low-income communities would be given priority for the funding.
“Over 1 million Californians still lack access to safe drinking water, and too many children lack access to healthy outdoor spaces,” said state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, who wrote the enabling legislation for the bond. The initiative, he said, “will finally give voters a chance to fund these critical priorities and protect our quality of life.”
The other bond measure is being headed by Jerry Meral, a former deputy director of the Dept. of Water Resources and former conservation leader,
supports the Legislature’s bond but says it wouldn’t go far enough. He is leading a signature drive to qualify an $8.9 billion bond for the November ballot, and appears to have the financial support, largely from farmers, to get it there.
Like the Legislature’s measure, Meral’s proposed bond would support recycling, groundwater and clean-up programs. But it would also pay for traditional water projects such as improved canals for farm irrigation in the Central Valley. The measure wouldn’t fund new dam construction, but would include $200 million for Oroville Dam repairs and millions more for other reservoir upgrades.
“We are a hydraulic society and we have invested millions of dollars in water infrastructure, and it needs to be maintained,” Meral said.
The initiative has won support from several agricultural water agencies, urban suppliers and wildlife groups. Many say it would complement the Legislature’s bond. But unlike the Legislature’s measure, Meral’s effort has drawn opposition. Some worry about the high price, while the Sierra Club calls it a “pay-for-play” deal that will serve big growers and other wealthy water users.
Agribusiness is still holding out hope for new reservoirs that would be funded by $2.7 billion left over from a 2014 bond measure, Proposition 1. The front-runners are proposals for a Sites Reservoir on the Sacramento River in Colusa County and a Temperance Flat Dam on the San Joaquin River east of Fresno.
Also, the Santa Clara County Water District is seeking money to build a dam at Pacheco Pass, and the Contra Costa Water District wants money to raise its dam at Los Vaqueros Reservoir near Livermore.
Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California who runs public opinion surveys, said voters are generally supportive of water bonds.
“We’re not in a crisis anymore about water because the drought has passed,” he said. “But many Californians have been left with the impression that this is a recurring problem and something we need to take care of.”
California has a long history of using bonds to finance major water projects. More than a dozen have been approved since the 1970s. Such measures allow state officials to borrow money for programs that they can’t afford up front and are too expensive to be financed locally, then pay it back with interest over 20 to 30 years.
Feds to Rewrite Controversial Waters of the US Rule
In an effort to provide more time to reconsider a definition of “waters of the United States,” and to prevent ongoing court cases from interfering in that process, federal agencies have proposed to delay the effective date of a controversial WOTUS rule by two years.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Army have been working to revise a 2015 WOTUS rule written by the agencies during the Obama administration. The 2015 rule drew widespread criticism from farmers, ranchers, agricultural groups and others, for expanding the agencies’ Clean Water Act jurisdiction over water, land and land use.
The rule has been put on hold by courts, and the Trump administration has undertaken to rescind and replace it. In a proposal released last week, the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers proposed that the 2015 WOTUS rule would not go into effect until two years after the Nov. 22 action is finalized and published in the Federal Register.
California Farm Bureau Federation Senior Counsel Kari Fisher said she hopes the two-year period “allows the agencies ample time to properly rewrite the WOTUS rule to avoid over-expansive misapplication of the Clean Water Act while protecting water quality, and providing farmers and ranchers with needed clarity and consistency.”
Along with providing the agencies more time on the rule, she said, the delay would prevent the agencies from having to change course abruptly, depending upon how the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a case affecting the rule.
According to Fisher, the agencies’ proposal to amend the effective date is likely “a tactical move to pre-empt the 2015 rule from going into effect if the U.S. Supreme Court finds that the appellate courts are not the correct venue.”
Implementation of the 2015 rule is currently on hold as a result of a nationwide stay issued by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but that stay could be affected by the pending Supreme Court case. The 2015 rule is also stayed in 13 states due to a North Dakota district court ruling.
“The Supreme Court heard oral argument last month on what the appropriate court is for the WOTUS challenge, and we are awaiting the court’s decision on whether it should be in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit or the district court,” Fisher said. “If the Supreme Court finds that the case should have remained at the district court level, the 6th Circuit stay would go away, and the 2015 rule would go immediately into effect.”
Agency officials said the proposed delay in the effective date would provide added time to write the next WOTUS rule.
http://www.agalert.com/story/?id=11378
The New “Mixed-Nationality” Family & the Lifetime Journey from Mexico to US to Mexico
The home that American dollars built stands out among the dusty adobe farmhouses and crumbling concrete shacks on the edge of this rural Mexican town.
Visitors may wryly refer to it as a “hacienda” because of its grandiose touches — the elaborate wooden entryway, the curved staircase leading up to the front door — but with its red brick, pitched roof and garage sheltering a bright blue SUV, what it really looks like is a little bit of Texas.
Athens, Texas. That’s where German and Gloria Almanza spent two decades toiling in factories and building, cleaning and repairing other people’s homes so that one day they could make a place of their own back in Mexico — a place to finish raising their two kids.
When in 2012 the couple brought their children back to their hometown of Malinalco, a picturesque pueblo two hours southwest of Mexico City, they were not alone.
Census data show more than 1 million Mexicans and their families left the U.S. for Mexico between 2009 and 2014, and fewer made their way north — a major demographic shift that is reshaping the immigration equation and having profound effects on both countries.
Most have left the U.S. on their own accord, drawn home by new economic opportunities in Mexico, the impact of the Great Recession on the U.S. job market and in many cases the irresistible lure of family. Others have been forced out by an increase in deportations from communities in the interior of the U.S. Security along the Southwest border has also been beefed up significantly, making crossings so dangerous and expensive that many no longer try.
The result is that towns like Malinalco, whose economies once were infused with money sent home from fathers, sisters and husbands working in the U.S., are now making room for returnees, some of whom have lived like Americans for years.
Coming home can be a powerful emotional experience. Those returning with savings can use their capital and skills learned in the U.S. to open businesses and get ahead.
But it’s not always easy. Schools are struggling to integrate an influx of new students, including a large number of youngsters born in the U.S. who often aren’t fluent in Spanish and lack the necessary identity documents to enroll. Returnees must readjust to the culture and leaner paychecks of Mexico, where the average hourly wage is less than $2.50. And many families now have children in the U.S., parents in Mexico.
“Families are now mixed-nationality families, and that’s not something policy tends to understand,” said Ellen Calmus, who runs the Corner Institute, a migrant support organization in Malinalco. The children of returning migrants are especially vulnerable, she said, often without full access to services and education in either country. “This is going to have costs for all of us down the road,” she said.
The Almanzas always knew they’d come home. It was only a matter of when.
The house they built on a hill across from a picturesque church has it all — a gorgeous kitchen, two bathrooms and a big bedroom for each of the children. Strewn with clothes, team photos and old yearbooks, the rooms look like those of any busy teenager.
There is only one thing missing from the home that their American dollars built: the kids.
On a recent steamy summer morning, as chickens clucked and roosters crowed, German slipped on scuffed cowboy boots and started work at the construction site of a house down the road from his own.
Sparks flew as German, athletically built and deeply tanned, sliced into an iron post with a high-powered saw that he brought back from Texas. He paused for a moment to wipe sweat from his brow and readjust the Ace Hardware ball cap he brought back from Texas, too.
Since he returned in 2012, it has felt like there aren’t enough hours in the day for him to finish all his work. Malinalco, with its brightly painted colonial-era homes and historic churches, has transformed into a popular tourist destination for both Mexico’s elite and its growing middle class. Each weekend, tourists from the capital flood the town, booking rooms at new boutique hotels, hiking to the Aztec ruins perched atop a nearby hillside and strolling cobblestone streets with ice cream or a michelada in hand.
The town German and his wife left nearly two decades earlier has changed.
Back then, jobs were scarce in Malinalco. A currency crisis had sparked a nationwide recession, and the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement were beginning to be felt, with agricultural workers on the outskirts of town struggling to compete with cheaper U.S. imports of corn and other staples.
German left in 1995 after graduating high school. He was one of close to 3 million Mexican immigrants who crossed into the U.S. between 1995 and 2000, according to the Pew Research Center. Between 2005 and 2010, that number fell to about 1.4 million, and between 2009 and 2014 it fell to about 870,000.
Now that he’s back, German has a good job with the government helping to maintain the municipality’s water system. He also manages an avocado farm and an outdoor event space for weddings and other parties that he and his wife built from scratch.
In between those jobs, German has been scrambling to finish up the house down the street. Like German’s own home, this two-story stucco structure sticks out so much from the others that locals have started using it as a landmark when giving directions (“turn left at the tall pink house”). One day soon it will be occupied by his brother, who is sending money to pay for it from Texas, and his brother’s wife and young son.
Every day, German works from sunrise to sunset, stopping for only a few moments just after noon to gulp down sweet agua fresca and a hot lunch cooked by Gloria, whom he started dating when he was just 15. She spends her days sweating, too, cleaning their house, pulling weeds at the event space and distilling a local liquor to sell to neighbors on the side.
They work because that is what they have always done. And they work because they don’t want to spend long days in an empty house.
More than a year has passed since Danny, then 17, sat his parents down and told them he wanted to go home.
For his parents, home was Mexico. But for Danny it was Texas.
He grew up playing football — the American kind — and eating Texas chili. He listened to Coldplay and Linkin Park, not the Spanish-language music his parents favored. He had just finished seventh grade in 2012 when his parents told him and his sister to pack their things for the move to Mexico. He spent the next four years dreaming about the day he would come back.
Gloria and German supported his decision to return to the U.S., but they were heartbroken. They had gone to the U.S. with a meticulous plan: Work, save, build a future for their children in Mexico. Their plan hadn’t accounted for this.
Both had grown up on the impoverished outskirts of Malinalco, where cobblestone gave way to dirt roads and fields planted with corn and squash.
German was the oldest child of a couple who sold slow-cooked barbacoa along the one-lane highway that led to town. Gloria was one of five sisters who chafed under their machista father, who barred his girls from looking for work even if it meant them dropping out of school for lack of funds.
Both grew up fighting their siblings for space in one-room adobe shacks. Both knew they wanted something different for their children — a good education and a house with indoor plumbing, with a bedroom for each kid.
“Come with me,” German implored Gloria on a visit to Mexico after he had been working for a year in Costa Mesa as a roofer. If both of us work in the U.S., we can earn twice as much, he said.
“It is not easy,” he warned her.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she replied. “Let’s go.”
(Story continues.)