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IN THIS ISSUE – California’s “Dullest” Elected Job Already Has 21 Campaign Accounts Open for 2026
CalMatters
- $35 Million in Campaign Cash Stashed by Former Elected Officials
- Legislative Latino Caucus Remains One Party
- State Employee Union Membership Drops – “Uphill Struggle”
- Two Major Climate Policy Actions
- Air Board Approves Scoping Plan
- Public Utilities Panel Cuts Solar Incentives
- California is Home to Nearly One-Third of US Homeless…
- New Numbers
- Root Causes
- FOR 2023…Become a Tech Luddite…A Band of Teenagers Leads…
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 DEC. 22, 2022
Capitol News & Notes resumes publishing in the new year on Jan. 6
$35 Million in Campaign Cash Stashed by Former Elected Officials
CalMatters
Nearly 100 accounts belonging to state political candidates hold about $35 million in leftover campaign cash, according to a CalMatters analysis of California campaign finance records. The stashes range from $13.1 million that former Gov. Jerry Brown didn’t need to win re-election in 2014 to $9.62 in the account for a failed Assembly run that same year run by investment manager Thomas Krouse.
CalMatters counted campaign funds for the Legislature and state constitutional offices that politicians are sitting on years after leaving their positions, that are in committees for past races or for which the candidate did not end up running.
These 96 accounts rarely raise new money, and in some cases, politicians have carried the same leftover contributions through election cycle after election cycle, transferring the money to new committees for positions they never actually sought.
The “dull” job of lieutenant governor, as Gov. Gavin Newsom once put it, is an especially popular choice. There are currently 21 open lieutenant governor committees for the 2026 primary, including for both Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. Fewer than half are actively fundraising.
By passing cash from one account to another each election cycle, some former politicians can hang onto campaign contributions for years — even decades — after they held state office.
The 2026 treasurer campaign controlled by former Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, for example, is sitting on nearly $2 million. That’s what remains of the $2.1 million the account received from Núñez’s treasurer 2022 committee in late August. That account, in turn, got its cash from a Fabian Núñez for Treasurer 2018 committee, which was funded by a treasurer 2014 account, which was funded by a committee for a 2010 state Senate campaign.
This daisy chain of electoral accounts, connected by transfers made within those crucial 90 days after the end of each election cycle, reaches back to its ultimate source: the former speaker’s 2006 Assembly committee, which was shored up with a then-controversial influx of cash from the state Democratic Party.
Núñez has not campaigned for office since he was termed out of the Assembly in 2008. Through a colleague at the consulting and lobbying firm Actum, where he is a managing partner, Núnez agreed to an interview for this story, but never followed up.
He isn’t the only former elected official to play this game of financial hot potato. Besides Lockyer and Gatto, Jerome Horton, who served in the Assembly and on the Board of Equalization; former state Sen. Jean Fuller; Jeff Denham, who spent two terms in the Senate before he was elected to Congress; and others have all kept their electoral funds active by transferring the money from one account to the next.
With $3.1 million in a lieutenant governor 2026 account, LA City Councilmember and former state Senate Pro Tem Kevin De León sits on the largest post-incumbency nest egg of any former state legislator.
After finishing his second eight-year stint as governor in early 2019, Brown moved more than $14.7 million from his 2014 re-election campaign to the newly formed Campaign for California. It has since spent $855,000 to defeat a 2020 initiative that would have rolled back a parole expansion pushed by the governor; donated $250,000 to the Oakland Military Institute, a charter school founded by Brown when he was the city’s mayor; and directed $141,000 into the most recent Oakland school board election.
“The primary focus is advancing the issues central to Gov. Brown’s gubernatorial terms, including but not limited to climate action, criminal justice reform and public safety, and education,” spokesperson Evan Westrup said in an email.
Westrup’s consulting firm, Sempervirent Strategies, is paid $10,000 per month by the Committee For California, its largest expenditure during the most recent two-year election cycle.
Lorena Gonzalez, who resigned from the Assembly in January to become the head of the California Labor Federation, used $1.1 million remaining in accounts for Assembly and secretary of state campaigns to form a new committee in May: The Future of Workers Action Fund.
Spokesperson Evan McLaughlin, in a text message, declined to provide further information on the goal of the account “beyond the obvious motivation reflected in the committee’s name and the reputation of its sponsor.”
Some of the politicians holding onto past campaign contributions are simply waiting to figure out their next race, at which point they may tap into those eligible funds. Others are using the money to keep a foothold in the public arena, slowly spending down what’s left on political donations, charitable contributions and administrative expenses. Many of the accounts hold massive debts and must remain open if the candidates ever plan to raise cash to pay off outstanding loans and bills. And some of the money is merely sitting idle, in accounts where nothing much goes in or out, save interest and annual state filing fees.
Once a politician leaves office or loses an election, a regulatory countdown begins.
If a candidate wants to use any of the spare cash from a prior campaign to fund a future political venture, state law allows 90 days to set up a new account and transfer the money. Miss that window and the funds are designated “surplus.”
Surplus cash can be used to pay down debts, refund donors, expense administrative costs, support political parties or contribute to a “bona fide” charity. But it cannot fund a campaign for state office in California, whether the candidate’s own or someone else’s.
Avoiding that dreaded surplus designation is why so many former politicians always seem to be running for something — at least on paper.
A final, if rarely used option, for campaigns: Give back the unused cash to donors.
MORE:
Legislative Latino Caucus Remains One Party
Sacramento Bee
A few months after she was elected in 2020, Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, the first Republican Latina senator in state history, considered joining the California Latino Legislative Caucus. It seemed only natural, she said. Ochoa Bogh had spent half her youth in Mexico. Her first language was Spanish. And she was raised by parents who immigrated to the United States to achieve the “American Dream.”
But Ochoa Bogh soon learned that Republican legislators, regardless of Latino ethnicity, are barred from joining the caucus. “It came with an irony because traditionally Democrats speak of equality and opportunity and they’re not allowing all Latinos,” she said.
Democratic lawmakers created the caucus 50 years ago and excluded Republicans from the beginning. It is one of two ethnic caucuses in the California Legislature that prevent GOP members from joining, and the policy has been a point of contention from time to time when multiple Hispanic Republicans win state office. The one-party dynamic works, Democratic members say. The caucus, now at a record 35 members, is influential in the Legislature and has racked up a series of major wins over the last decade, including building a social safety net for the state’s roughly 2.3 million undocumented immigrants. “For 50 years, the California Latino Legislative Caucus has advocated for the nearly 16 million Latinos in California,” said Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes, chair of the caucus, in an email statement. “The CLLC will continue as our founding memberships’ precedent set forth.”
But critics denounce the membership policy as a relic of past time, arguing it fails to reflect the diversity of opinions among California Latinos. “It’s problematic because the Democratic Party is no more the home for Latinos than the Republican Party is the home for Christians…It’s damaging to democracy while creating some very narrow policy focus,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican Latino voting trends expert. Ochoa Bogh renewed the debate just as the state’s Republican party made inroads with conservative Hispanic leaders. GOP Assembly members Juan Alanis of Modesto, Kate Sanchez of Orange County and Josh Hoover of Folsom secured wins in the midterm election, growing the number of Latino Republicans in the Legislature to four. The three new Assembly members expressed interest in learning more about the Latino Caucus, but stopped short of saying they would join if welcomed. They mark the largest bloc of Hispanic Republicans in the Legislature in nearly 20 years. “Unfortunately, Latino voices have been excluded from the conversation and left out of the Latino Caucus because of party registration,” said Alanis in an email statement.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article269771152.html#storylink=cpy
State Employee Union Membership Drops
Sacramento Bee
Union membership among California state workers dipped in 2022, according to data from the State Controller’s Office. The trend reflects the challenge of recruiting new members in the era of hybrid and remote work, union leaders say. Just under 65% of workers across California government paid union dues in October, according to the most recent data available from the controller’s office. That’s slightly fewer than the 66% of workers who paid dues in October 2021. The number of rank-and-file workers in state government shrank by about 2,400 rank-and-file workers in the last year, the data show, now hovering just over 188,000 employees.
“It’s been an uphill battle with membership,” said SEIU Local 1000 board chair Bill Hall. “The majority of the people leaving are people leaving state service for better employment.”
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article270113207.html#storylink=cpy
Two Major Climate Policy Actions:
Air Board Approves Scoping Plan
Public Utilities Panel Cuts Solar Incentives
CalMatters & state regulatory reports
Climate policy and controversy go hand in hand in California.
Depending on whom you ask, the two major actions state regulators took are either indicative of California “leading the world’s most significant economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution” (as Gov. Gavin Newsom put it) or represent “a complete retreat from California’s unrivaled position of leadership in the clean energy revolution” (as Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, described the state’s new rooftop solar rules).
Air Board Approves Landmark Scoping Plan
State officials at the Air Resources Board passed a major milestone last week by giving its stamp of approval to California’s latest scoping plan, the years-long roadmap that lays out how the state plans to reach carbon neutrality by 2045, slashing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 48% below 1990 levels by 2030, up from the 40% reduction currently required by state law.
Doing so will require a serious shift away from fossil fuel, and recent moves by state officials, like the 2035 ban on new gas vehicles and a $54 billion climate package, will help the state get there.
But as Gov. Jerry Brown keenly observed when he signed the executive order in 2018, reaching carbon neutrality by 2045 “will not be easy.”
California will need to quadruple wind and solar power by 2045 to meet its goals and the expected growth in demand. The Air Resources Board also says California needs to cut back its driving by roughly a third to lower pollution to target levels — something that’s going to be tricky considering efforts to reduce driving have faltered in the past.
To meet the plan’s targets, state officials estimate that California over the next 20 years will need about 30 times more electric vehicles, six times more household electric appliances and four times more windand solar generation capacity, CalMatters’ Nadia Lopez reports. The estimated cost: $18 billion in 2035 and $27 billion in 2045.
Air Resources Board Member Daniel Sperling: “This is an extraordinary exercise and document, and it’s the most comprehensive, detailed plan for getting to net zero anywhere in the world.”
But many members of the public who spoke during the eight-hour meeting opposed the plan’s reliance on carbon capture, a controversial strategy to capture emissions from oil refineries and other facilities and inject the carbon deep into rocks underground. Critics say that approach merely prolongs the lifespan of fossil fuel plants.
CA Public Utilities Commission Cuts Rooftop Solar Incentives
A hard-fought battle between utilities companies and the solar panel industry came to a close yesterday when the Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved a change the 27-year-old rules governing state incentives rooftop solar power.
The shift aims to incentivize the use of batteries with solar panels, while also reducing costs for users who can’t afford the expensive solar power systems. But industry leaders have decried the change, saying it reduces incentives for homebuyers to purchase solar panels and could severely hinder growth in an important clean energy sector.
Almost all of the comments delivered during the intense, hours-long meeting were in opposition — and neither utility companies nor solar advocates emerged happy.
Kathy Fairbanks, spokesperson for Affordable Clean Energy for All, a coalition that includes California’s three largest utility companies: “This final decision was a missed opportunity that will prolong the harm to low-income Californians and renters for decades to come.”
Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar & Storage Association: The new rules “will result in business closures and the loss of green jobs.”
Public Utilities Commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen: “The decision strikes the right balance between many competing priorities and advances our overarching goals of ensuring California meets its climate and clean energy goals equitably.”
The divisive vote comes as California races to shore up its fragile energy grid — which narrowly escaped rolling blackouts this summer and remains at high risk of energy shortfalls during peak demand, according to a Thursday report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — while simultaneously relying more on solar power as part of its plan for achieving carbon neutrality.
More on the CARB Scoping Plan…
Scoping Plan:
CPUC solar power rules…
Media coverage:
What is called the docket item:
New Chapter in the Water War Crucible: West Coast’s Largest River Delta
CalMatters commentary by Dan Walters
The most important piece of California’s water puzzle is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the 1,100-square-mile estuary where the state’s two most important rivers meet.
The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers drain a watershed of mountains and hills that stretches about 400 miles from Mount Shasta, near the Oregon border, to the Sierra southeast of Fresno. After meandering through the dozens of channels and sloughs of the Delta, their combined waters flow into San Francisco Bay and thence to the Pacific Ocean – minus whatever has been diverted into cities and farms along the way.
And that’s the rub.
For decades, in political and legal forums, there’s been a great debate over how much water can be taken from the two rivers, their many tributaries and the Delta itself without destroying its natural function as habitat for fish and other wildlife.
Environmental groups and state water quality authorities, occasionally backed up by federal court decrees, contend that too much is being diverted, particularly by farmers. But the latter say that the water is needed to maintain California’s largest-in-the-nation agricultural industry.
For years, the state Water Resources Control Board has been on the verge of mandating sharp cuts in the diversions by raising Delta water quality standards. However, it has delayed what could be a high-stakes showdown over water rights, many of which stretch back more than a century, in hopes that satisfactory “voluntary agreements” could be reached.
Last week, a new chapter in the saga opened when environmental justice groups and Indian tribes filed a civil rights complaint with the federal Environmental Protection Agency against the board. It alleges that failure to issue those water quality standards gives preference to agricultural interests and violates the federal Clean Water Act.
Last spring, the same coalition submitted a 169-page petition to the water board, demanding that it issue new Delta water standards, but the board denied it, saying that updating was already underway.
The semi-permanent drought that’s plagued California adds urgency to the debate over the Delta because it reduces the overall supply of water to be divvied up among the various demands. Farmers and cities have experienced sharp cutbacks in deliveries from the federal and state canals that pump water from the Delta’s southern edge. Farmers also face new restrictions on how much they can draw from depleted underground aquifers to offset reductions in surface water.
The Public Policy Institute of California has estimated that the looming restriction on tapping underground water supplies alone will require at least 500,000 acres of farmland to be taken out of production. Permanent reductions in surface water that would result from higher water quality standards in the Delta would cause more farmland to be fallowed.
As the water quality clash plays itself out, another conflict over the Delta’s future looms –whether to bore a tunnel that would transport some Sacramento River water to the head of the California Aqueduct near Tracy, bypassing the Delta altogether. In one form or another, what’s now called the “Delta conveyance” has kicked around for six decades, first as a “peripheral canal,” later as twin tunnels and, since Gavin Newsom became governor, a single tunnel.
Advocates say such a bypass would solve some Delta water flow problems while providing more reliability in supplying water to Southern California , a central point of the environmental impact report issued by the Department of Water Resources a few months ago. However, critics contend that it would undercut efforts to increase flows through the Delta by reducing upstream diversions.
As the drought continues, how – or when – these intertwined Delta issues will be resolved remains the biggest mystery of California’s water supply conundrum.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2022/12/californias-water-conundrum-hinges-on-delta/
California is Home to Nearly One-Third of US Homeless…
New Numbers
CalMatters
California accounted for 30% of the country’s homeless population in 2022, despite making up less than 12% of the total population, according to federal data released Monday. It was also home to 50% of the country’s unsheltered people, or those living in places such as streets, cars or parks.
The federal government also awarded California first place in a number of other categories:
- It had the country’s highest homelessness rate,with 44 people out of every 100,000 experiencing homelessness.
- It had the largest rate of increase in its homeless population of any other statefrom both 2020-22 (6.2%) and 2007-22 (23.4%), whereas Florida — a state often in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s crosshairs as he spars with its Republican governor Ron DeSantis — saw a 5.6% decrease from 2020-22 and notched the country’s biggest decrease from 2007-22 (46%).
- California had nine times more unsheltered people than Washington,the state with the next highest number (115,491 people compared to 12,668 people).
The Atlantic
When someone becomes homeless, the instinct is to ask what tragedy befell them. What bad choices did they make with drugs or alcohol? What prevented them from getting a higher-paying job? Why did they have more children than they could afford? Why didn’t they make rent?
Identifying personal failures or specific tragedies helps those of us who have homes feel less precarious—if homelessness is about personal failure, it’s easier to dismiss as something that couldn’t happen to us, and harsh treatment is easier to rationalize toward those who experience it.
But when you zoom out, determining individualized explanations for America’s homelessness crisis gets murky. Sure, individual choices play a role, but why are there so many more homeless people in California than Texas? Why are rates of homelessness so much higher in New York than West Virginia? To explain the interplay between structural and individual causes of homelessness, some who study this issue use the analogy of children playing musical chairs. As the game begins, the first kid to become chairless has a sprained ankle. The next few kids are too anxious to play the game effectively. The next few are smaller than the big kids. At the end, a fast, large, confident child sits grinning in the last available seat.
You can say that disability or lack of physical strength caused the individual kids to end up chairless. But in this scenario, chairlessness itself is an inevitability: The only reason anyone is without a chair is because there aren’t enough of them.
Now let’s apply the analogy to homelessness. Yes, examining who specifically becomes homeless can tell important stories of individual vulnerability created by disability or poverty, domestic violence or divorce. Yet when we have a dire shortage of affordable housing, it’s all but guaranteed that a certain number of people will become homeless. In musical chairs, enforced scarcity is self-evident. In real life, housing scarcity is more difficult to observe—but it’s the underlying cause of homelessness.
In their book, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, the University of Washington professor Gregg Colburn and the data scientist Clayton Page Aldern demonstrate that “the homelessness crisis in coastal cities cannot be explained by disproportionate levels of drug use, mental illness, or poverty.” Rather, the most relevant factors in the homelessness crisis are rent prices and vacancy rates.
Colburn and Aldern note that some urban areas with very high rates of poverty (Detroit, Miami-Dade County, Philadelphia) have among the lowest homelessness rates in the country, and some places with relatively low poverty rates (Santa Clara County, San Francisco, Boston) have relatively high rates of homelessness. The same pattern holds for unemployment rates: “Homelessness is abundant,” the authors write, “only in areas with robust labor markets and low rates of unemployment—booming coastal cities.”
Why is this so? Because these “superstar cities,” as economists call them, draw an abundance of knowledge workers. These highly paid workers require various services, which in turn create demand for an array of additional workers, including taxi drivers, lawyers and paralegals, doctors and nurses, and day-care staffers. These workers fuel an economic-growth machine—and they all need homes to live in. In a well-functioning market, rising demand for something just means that suppliers will make more of it. But housing markets have been broken by a policy agenda that seeks to reap the gains of a thriving regional economy while failing to build the infrastructure—housing—necessary to support the people who make that economy go. The results of these policies are rising housing prices and rents, and skyrocketing homelessness.
The claim that drug abuse and mental illness are the fundamental causes of homelessness falls apart upon investigation. If mental-health issues or drug abuse were major drivers of homelessness, then places with higher rates of these problems would see higher rates of homelessness. They don’t. Utah, Alabama, Colorado, Kentucky, West Virginia, Vermont, Delaware, and Wisconsin have some of the highest rates of mental illness in the country, but relatively modest homelessness levels. What prevents at-risk people in these states from falling into homelessness at high rates is simple: They have more affordable-housing options.
MORE:
FOR 2023…Become a Tech Luddite…A Band of Teenagers Leads…
New York Times
On a brisk recent Sunday, a band of teenagers met on the steps of Central Library on Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn to start the weekly meeting of the Luddite Club, a high school group that promotes a lifestyle of self-liberation from social media and technology. As the dozen teens headed into Prospect Park, they hid away their iPhones — or, in the case of the most devout members, their flip phones, which some had decorated with stickers and nail polish.
They marched up a hill toward their usual spot, a dirt mound located far from the park’s crowds. Among them was Odille Zexter-Kaiser, a senior at Edward R. Murrow High School in Midwood, who trudged through leaves in Doc Martens and mismatched wool socks.
“It’s a little frowned on if someone doesn’t show up,” Odille said. “We’re here every Sunday, rain or shine, even snow. We don’t keep in touch with each other, so you have to show up.”
After the club members gathered logs to form a circle, they sat and withdrew into a bubble of serenity.
Some drew in sketchbooks. Others painted with a watercolor kit. One of them closed their eyes to listen to the wind. Many read intently — the books in their satchels included Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” Art Spiegelman’s “Maus II” and “The Consolation of Philosophy” by Boethius. The club members cite libertine writers like Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac as heroes, and they have a fondness for works condemning technology, like “Player Piano” by Kurt Vonnegut. Arthur, the bespectacled PBS aardvark, is their mascot.
“Lots of us have read this book called ‘Into the Wild,’” said Lola Shub, a senior at Essex Street Academy, referring to Jon Krakauer’s 1996 nonfiction book about the nomad Chris McCandless, who died while trying to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. “We’ve all got this theory that we’re not just meant to be confined to buildings and work. And that guy was experiencing life. Real life. Social media and phones are not real life.”
“When I got my flip phone, things instantly changed,” Lola continued. “I started using my brain. It made me observe myself as a person.”
Briefly, the club members discussed how the spreading of their Luddite gospel was going. Founded last year by another Murrow High School student, Logan Lane, the club is named after Ned Ludd, the folkloric 18th-century English textile worker who supposedly smashed up a mechanized loom, inspiring others to take up his name and riot against industrialization.
Jameson Butler, a student in a Black Flag T-shirt who was carving a piece of wood with a pocketknife, explained: “I’ve weeded out who I want to be friends with. Now it takes work for me to maintain friendships. Some reached out when I got off the iPhone and said, ‘I don’t like texting with you anymore because your texts are green.’ That told me a lot.”
Vee De La Cruz, who had a copy of “The Souls of Black Folk” by W.E.B. Du Bois, said: “You post something on social media, you don’t get enough likes, then you don’t feel good about yourself. That shouldn’t have to happen to anyone. Being in this club reminds me we’re all living on a floating rock and that it’s all going to be OK.”
Night was falling on the park as the teens walked in the cold and traded high school gossip. But a note of tension seemed to form in the air when the topic of college admissions came up. The club members exchanged updates about the schools they had applied to across the country. Odille reported getting into the State University of New York at Purchase.
“You could totally start a Luddite Club there, I bet,” said Elena Scherer, a Murrow senior.
Taking a shortcut, they headed down a lonely path that had no park lamps. Their talk livened when they discussed the poetry of Lewis Carroll, the piano compositions of Ravel and the evils of TikTok. Elena pointed at the night sky.
“Look,” she said. “That’s a waxing gibbous. That means it’s going to get bigger.”
As they marched through the dark, the only light glowing on their faces was that of the moon.
MORE, and if you don’t subscribe to the NYTimes, just email me and I will send you this whole wonderful article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html?mc_cid=da416a765e&mc_eid=6160209477