For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.
IN THIS ISSUE – “…the end of an era when politics were less about ideological dog whistles and more about camaraderie and practicality.”
California’s leading political commentator on the deaths of two long-time advocates in the same week
- Welcome to a Family Business…the State Legislature
- End of An Era in California Capital – Two “Custodians of Institutional Knowledge” Pass
- $1.2 Billion Capitol Annex Project Halted Before Demolition Begins
- California’s Medicaid Cost-Cutting Experiment Succeeding
- Pandemic Food Benefit to End; Spike in Hungry People Feared
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 FEB. 10, 2023
Welcome to a Family Business…the State Legislature
CalMatters
You already know these famed political surnames: Kennedy, Roosevelt, Clinton and Bush.
But what about Bonta, Dahle, Lowenthal and Rubio?
Meet California’s Legacy Caucus — the state lawmakers related by blood or marriage to other legislators past and present. This year, they make up 10% of the Legislature — with more likely on the way in 2024.
Why does winning elections seem to run in some people’s families? How does politics as a family affair change the culture of the Legislature? And for the lawmakers in question, what are Thanksgiving dinners like?
I’ve had these questions on my mind since last December, when Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes, a Corona Democrat, announced she’s running for state Senate, clearing the way for her sister, Clarissa, to campaign for her soon-to-be-vacant seat.
As I reported the article, new examples kept popping up:
Last week, Assemblymember Megan Dahle said she’ll be running to fill her husband Brian’s Senate seat after he terms out.
On Monday, Nathan Fletcher, former Assemblymember and husband to Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, the prolific progressive who left the Assembly last year, said he’s running for Senate, too.
Having family in the politics business can help a candidate in a number of ways: Name recognition among voters, connections to endorsers and funders, a family environment that fosters respect for a certain kind of public service.
Claremont McKenna College politics professor Jack Pitney: “The Nepo phenomenon is not confined to Hollywood.”
For Assemblymember Blanca Rubio and her younger sister, Sen. Susan Rubio, serving in the Legislature at the same time comes with its own benefits. For example, sometimes it’s difficult for an Assemblymember to find someone to introduce their bill in the Senate and vice versa.
Blanca Rubio: “I know that if I can’t find anybody I can, you know — I’m the oldest, I’m gonna make her take the bill.”
FULL STORY:
End of An Era in California Capital – Two “Custodians of Institutional Knowledge” Pass
CalMatters commentary from Dan Walters
Governors, legislators and other political figures cycle through the state Capitol constantly, but behind that constant turnover lies a more or less permanent cadre of men and women who provide vital continuity.
Senior bureaucrats and legislative staffers and veteran lobbyists for thousands of interest groups are the custodians of institutional knowledge. While politicians preen and plot their next career moves, they do the real work of drafting legislation and administrative regulations, ironing out conflicts – if they can – and setting the stage for public unveilings by their bosses.
By happenstance, two of the longest-serving members of the cadre died last week within hours of each other. Their passing represents, in a sense, the end of an era when Capitol politics were less about ideological dog whistles and more about camaraderie and practicality.
Allan Zaremberg, who headed the California Chamber of Commerce for 23 years, and Rex Hime, who represented the California Business Properties
Association for 37 years, both stepped down in 2021, but enjoyed only a few months of retirement before succumbing to ill health.
Both men began their political careers as Republican political aides in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the two political parties were virtually tied in terms of political clout.
Zaremberg was an attorney in the Department of Justice when his boss, George Deukmejian, was elected governor in 1982. He joined the new administration and became one of its legislative liaisons, and continued in that role for Deukmejian’s successor, Pete Wilson, before he moved to the Chamber of Commerce about 30 years ago. Zaremberg took over as president and CEO in 1998.
Hime, also a lawyer, worked in Ronald Reagan’s administration before becoming a top aide to Mike Curb after his election as lieutenant governor in 1978.
He also had been a senior legislative staffer before joining the California Business Properties Association – the political arm of the commercial real estate industry – in the mid-1980s.
When the two shifted from being political staffers into lobbying for business interests, they could rely on their Republican connections, particularly in the governor’s suite, to help them protect their clients’ interests. During the last two decades of their careers, however, the GOP’s clout nosedived into irrelevance while Democrats became dominant, making their jobs infinitely more difficult.
They were forced into defensive mode, fending off efforts by their ideological rivals to enact laws and regulations that business considered to be burdensome or injurious. But both largely succeeded. They picked their fights carefully, cultivated pro-business Democrats and, most of all, maintained their own credibility as honest brokers for the interests they represented.
One of Zaremberg’s most effective tools was the chamber’s annual list of “job killer” bills the business community considered onerous, a tactic initiated by his predecessor as CEO, Kirk West. In the quarter-century since it began, roughly 90% of the bills receiving the epithet either died in the Legislature, usually without formal votes, were amended enough to escape the list, or were vetoed by governors.
Both men also took leading rolls in bipartisan campaigns for statewide ballot measures.
Hime, who served a stint on the University of California’s Board of Regents, was a leading figure in promoting several bond issues for school and college construction.
Zaremberg and the chamber were major players in passing Senate Bill 1, a 2017 gas tax increase to fix deteriorating roads and highways – that most prominent Republicans opposed – and in gaining voter approval when the measure was challenged via a 2018 ballot measure.
Since their deaths, Zaremberg and Hime have been widely praised as nice guys who pursued their clients’ interests with good humor and credibility. The plaudits are richly deserved.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/02/death-two-veterans-capitol-politics/
$1.2 Billion Capitol Annex Project Halted Before Demolition Begins
Capital Public Radio
Opponents of a $1.2 billion revamp of the California state Capitol Annex – the building that houses offices for the governor, state lawmakers and their staff – are calling for the state to reconsider the entire project.
A December court ruling has already delayed the demolition of the existing Annex and construction of a new building, parking garage and visitor center by requiring the state Department of General Services to recirculate its environmental impact report for public input.
Neither legislative leaders nor DGS have released a new timeline for the project or its received impact reports following the court ruling. While lawmakers moved into new offices over a year ago and the existing Annex has been closed off, demolition has not begun.
A 2017 planning study recommended demolishing and rebuilding the Annex, noting that the building’s current footprint would not allow for the necessary accessibility and seismic improvements.
A group of opponents has criticized the new building’s proposed design, the project’s $1.2 billion price tag, a lack of transparency over its plans and timelines, and issues with the project’s impact on local businesses, the Capitol’s west steps and trees in Capitol park.
“I’m calling on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to reopen this conversation,” Assembly member Josh Hoover (R-Folsom) said Wednesday. Hoover won his seat in November from Ken Cooley, the lawmaker who had been overseeing the annex project.
“I don’t think there’s any disagreement that we need solutions,” Hoover said, adding that the 70-year-old existing Annex building “certainly needs to be upgraded to add ADA accessibility and a number of other improvements.”
Hoover and other opponents have also called on the state to rehab the existing building, rather than spend money on demolition and rebuilding, especially when the state is projected to experience a budget deficit of more than $22 billion this year.
Aziz Bellarbi-Salah, who owns and operates three downtown establishments including Brasserie du Monde, which is steps from the Capitol, expressed frustration at a lack of information about the project and its impact on Sacramento’s downtown.
“Sacramentans deserve to know how our urban core is going to be affected by these projects,” Bellarbi-Salah said. “I’m not opposed to any sort of renovation. … What I am opposed to is not knowing that we are going to have a decade’s worth of disruption.”
The December ruling by the 3rd District Court of Appeals in Sacramento means the state must revise and recirculate plans for the Annex’s facelift and a new visitor center, which threw off the original timeline.
There also appears to be a leadership vacuum in the Legislature over the project.
Cooley had overseen the Capitol Annex Project as chair of the Joint Legislative Rules Committee, but lost his re-election bid in November.
The new Joint Rules chair, Assembly Member James Ramos (D-Highland), has referred CapRadio’s questions about the project to the Assembly’s Chief Administrative Officer, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
“The Capitol annex was full of issues, from asbestos to accessibility and compliance, and as an environmental impact report concluded, the decision to demolish and rebuild is the right solution,” Senate Secretary Erika Contreras said in an emailed statement. “We will continue to have discussions along the way, but this project is critical in our efforts to provide a safe, accessible State Capitol.”
Richard Cowan, a former chair of the state Historic Capitol Commission said he and other advocates have had “a couple of meetings” with lawmakers about the issue but have not yet met with Ramos.
Cowan said he would welcome Governor Gavin Newsom’s input. Though state lawmakers claim oversight of the Capitol building, he believes “the Legislature would listen” if the governor weighed in on the future of the Annex project.
https://www.capradio.org/185677
California’s Medicaid Cost-Cutting Experiment Succeeding
Associated Press
A five-year experiment aimed at improving care for some of California’s most at-risk Medicaid patients — including homeless people and people with severe drug addictions — resulted in fewer hospitalizations and emergency room visits that saved taxpayers an estimated $383 per patient per year, according to a review released Wednesday.
The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research said that for every 1,000 people enrolled in California’s Whole Person Care pilot program, there were 45 fewer hospitalizations and 130 fewer ER visits when compared with a similar group of patients who were not in the program.
California has the largest Medicaid program in the country, with about 13 million people getting free health care from the government. That’s about one-third of the state’s population.
In 2016, the state launched an experiment focused on the most at-risk Medicaid patients, those who were prone to expensive, repeated hospital visits but whose conditions rarely improved. These included people who were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless, people recently released from prison, people with multiple chronic health conditions and patients with severe drug addiction or mental health problems.
These programs focused not just on a person’s medical care, but also things like transportation, education, legal assistance and help finding and keeping a job. The program did not pay for people’s housing, but it did pay for things to help them get housing — including money to cover security deposits, first month’s rent, furniture and moving expenses.
Sacramento Covered, a nonprofit that works to connect people with social services in California’s capital, partnered with the local housing authority to find people places to live. Kelly Bennett, the group’s CEO, said it was often difficult to find housing in a competitive rental market, but having money to cover a security deposit increased the likelihood of success.
Beyond the housing assistance, Bennett said people got the most help from community health workers, who can guide patients through “all these various systems that are siloed and challenging under the best of circumstances.”
“Community health workers are really brokers of services and really grease the wheels, so to speak, on behalf of their clients,” she said.
Different groups had vastly different results. The program was much better at reducing emergency room visits and hospitalizations for people who were homeless, addicted to drugs or had a serious mental health issues than it was for patients who had complex medical issues. But the program was better at reducing the overall costs for people with complex medical issues, saving an average of $511 per patient per year.
Overall, the program cost $3.6 billion covering 25 pilot programs in 26 counties that served close to 250,000 patients — of which 70% had serious mental illness, drug addictions or were homeless.
The pilot programs ended in December 2021. But California is already expanding the services statewide, part of a larger overhaul of the state’s Medicaid program known as CalAIM — or California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal.
Pandemic Food Benefit to End; Spike in Hungry People Feared
CalMatters
Food banks across California are bracing for a feared spike in hunger amid inflated prices after a pandemic-era boost in food aid ends in April.
March is the last month CalFresh recipients will get the additional benefits, as the federal government cuts off the “emergency allotments” that have kept food stamp allowances higher than usual for nearly three years now.
The average household on CalFresh will lose about $200 a month, said Becky Silva, government relations director at the California Association of Food Banks. A single-person household, for instance, could drop from $281 a month in food aid to as low as $23 in April.
U.S. Department of Agriculture documents show that since November, the pandemic boosts have amounted to more than $500 million a month in additional food stamps coming into low-income Californians’ budgets.
In March 2020, Congress allowed the USDA to give states funding to boost all recipients’ aid to the maximum allowable benefits for their household size, or add $95 on top for those already receiving the maximum. The recent Congressional spending bill passed in December cuts that off this spring in exchange for funding for extra food aid for school children during the summer months.
More than 2.9 million California households receive food assistance through CalFresh, a number that has risen steadily throughout the pandemic.
The state social services department attributes the increase partially to a more flexible application process during the pandemic, while advocates like Silva also suggest the boost in aid made going through an application more worthwhile for eligible residents.
The loss of emergency allotments will be felt particularly hard by older and disabled people, many of whom have already seen their food aid eligibility reduced after a historic inflationary bump in Social Security checks in January. In addition to wages, Social Security, unemployment benefits and disability payments all count as income for the person receiving food aid.
The food banks association and other anti-poverty organizations have proposed that the state spend more than $2 billion providing a “ramp-down” of the extra benefits for five months after the federal boosts end.
But it’s unclear whether the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration would agree on new spending as they seek to close a $23 billion budget deficit.
MORE: