For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.
IN THIS ISSUE – “The process is always tough and I recognize I don’t make it easy.”
Gov. Newsom on his relationship with Legislators
- Governor & Legislative Leaders Assess “Borrowing Bonanza” on 2024 Ballot
- Newsom’s Trademark: Jamming the Legislature
- State Cash Flow Results Mixed for June
- Maverick Dem Legislator Calls for Better Results from Spending: “Good intentions & Lots of Money Not Enough to Fix the Golden State”
- Is the Tech Sector Slowdown Slowing Down?
- Barbie Captivates Sacramento
- State Resource Managers Enlist Beavers in Climate Change Battle
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 JULY 28, 2023
Governor & Legislative Leaders Assess “Borrowing Bonanza” on 2024 Ballot
Politico
California is on the cusp of a borrowing bonanza as Democratic lawmakers line up tens of billions of dollars in bond proposals to pay for mental health treatment, schools and adapting to climate change.
But voters would need to sign off on the new debt. And everyone is looking to Gov. Gavin Newsom to settle how much to ask for and where to spend it — acknowledging that asking an economically anxious electorate for too much could mean inundating voters in 2024 and ending up empty-handed.
“A number of legislative leaders have come to me — ‘Hey, support this, support my bond, this bond,’” Newsom said at a recent press conference. “We have to work together on what the priorities are going to look like for November.”
The governor and others are weighing a complex set of political calculations as proposals advance in the Legislature, including whether to target the March primary ballot, when turnout will be lower and skew more conservative, or a crowded November ballot where a cluster of initiatives will compete for voters’ attention.
Then there are the practical constraints: The state generally avoids taking on excessive debt as a matter of fiscal caution and Wall Street financing’s capacity, with Newsom estimating the prudent limit at around $26 billion.
Democrats’ bond bills — added together — would tally more than $100 billion, though some overlap and would almost certainly be combined.
Newsom would have to sign off on any bond measure the Legislature approves with a two-thirds vote. He has signaled he’d like his proposal — to fund thousands of new mental health and substance use treatment slots — to sit alone on the March ballot, which would push other bonds to a November election teeming with high-stakes initiatives. Lawmakers have until October to place something before primary voters.
Here are the major proposals and players:
Behavioral health treatment
This is Newsom’s baby. The governor wants to ameliorate homelessness by channeling money into treatment for substance abuse and serious mental health disorders with a $4.68 billion bond that would fund up to 10,000 placements and housing for veterans. A companion policy bill changes how an existing, voter-passed mental health initiative allocates money.
Lawmakers have rallied behind the governor’s proposal, along with the California Professional Firefighters, who respond to addiction and mental health crises. Both measures are exceedingly likely to pass — and Newsom has emphasized he wants to focus on this before moving on to the other bond proposals.
Climate change
Flood prevention, water supplies, clean energy generation: There’s no shortage of ideas to help California adapt to a changing climate. Newsom backed a bond measure this year to offset his deficit-driven cuts to environmental programs.
Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia and state Sen. Ben Allen, Southern California Democrats, have proposed measures worth more than $15 billion. The parallel bills are parked in committee, at leadership’s request, as the players negotiate. There are also multiple flood-focused bond bills.
The Nature Conservancy has been heavily involved in negotiations, conducting polling on the ideal size and timing, along with an array of environmental and local government groups. Water politics will influence the outcome, with the Association of California Water Agencies and its members pushing for funding.
Education
Voters in 2020 decisively rejected the last statewide school construction bond despite Newsom backing the measure. Supporters say the need for school facility improvements has only increased since then, with the state estimating last year that needed upgrades would cost more than $7 billion.
But the bond’s failure has informed current negotiations as players look to avoid another rejection. One point of contention: whether to fund university facility projects. A $15 billion bond from state Sen. Steve Glazer would cover four-year colleges, while a $14 billion proposal from Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi would fund only K-12 schools and community colleges.
Glazer’s proposal has support from the University of California and California State University. Muratsuchi’s has marshaled a larger coalition that includes administrators, school boards, construction groups like the California Building Industry Association and the Coalition for Adequate School Housing, a group that spent heavily for the 2020 measure.
Housing
California faces a massive housing shortfall. Assembly Housing Chair Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat, wants to make a dent with a $10 billion bond, much of which would flow to the state’s Multifamily Housing Program to construct and renovate housing for low-income Californians. State Sen. Anthony Portantino is pursuing a separate mortgage and construction bond that, at its current $25 billion, would swallow up the entire bond budget.
Wicks has some powerful allies in supporters like the California Apartment Association, which represents landlords, and the California Housing Consortium. The State Building and Construction Trades Council union group supports Portantino’s measure.
Newsom’s Trademark: Jamming the Legislature
LA Times
In a talk at a climate summit in New York, Gov. Gavin Newsom in September said he “had to jam” his own Democratic Legislature in order to pass a series of climate bills in the final days before lawmakers adjourned last year.
The comment frustrated his legislative allies back in California and prompted Newsom to embark on an apology tour to smooth things over.
He’s tried to ram major policy through the statehouse twice more since then.
Every governor employs different strategies when they step outside of their traditional powers in the executive branch and into the public policy making arena in Sacramento, where the state Legislature is responsible for introducing, debating and passing legislation.
Some governors limit their policy agenda, creating little need to bargain with lawmakers. Many tether their marquee proposals to the state budget process that begins and ends with the governor. Others use their celebrity, or the statewide ballot, to force lawmakers to cut deals.
Whether born from a lack of patience or hard-nosed intentionality, the policy trademark of California’s 40th governor has become increasingly apparent in his second term. Newsom has a penchant for publicly manufacturing a sense of urgency and giving lawmakers as little time as possible to act.
“The process is always tough and I recognize I don’t necessarily always make it easy,” Newsom said at a news conference this month in Sacramento as he celebrated signing a series of infrastructure bills that he sprang on the Legislature in the 11th hour of the budget process.
“You weren’t supposed to snicker,” Newsom said to lawmakers standing next to him on stage.
Though said in jest, the governor was alluding to an uncomfortable reality. Despite coming together for a photo opportunity that day, the tactic isn’t endearing Newsom to interest groups or his Democratic colleagues at the statehouse.
“Gavin Newsom has correctly decided that he’s willing to aggravate his allies because they need him more than he needs them,” said Thad Kousser, a professor of political science at UC San Diego who wrote a book about how governors succeed in passing bills and budget proposals. “He’s leveraging the publicity that every utterance that he makes creates in order to kind of create a political ultimatum when he wants the Legislature to do something.”
So far, it’s produced mixed results.
Though Newsom’s tactic has helped him score some victories, it doesn’t always deliver everything he set out to win. The Democratic governor announced a special session for lawmakers to pass a penalty on excessive oil industry profits last fall and just weeks after his mea culpa for suggesting lawmakers in Sacramento were beholden to the oil industry.
Feeling the political pressure of soaring gasoline prices, Newsom railed against Big Oil for “price-gouging” and taking advantage of Californians. Standing before television cameras in Sacramento, he said lawmakers had to pass a tax on oil industry profits in order to protect consumers now and “get every dollar, every cent back in the pockets of those who were fleeced.”
But the governor’s plan ran into problems from the jump.
No other state had successfully implemented a cap and penalty on oil profits. Without a blueprint to follow, lawmakers were worried a penalty could prompt the industry to continue to raise prices in California. Newsom acknowledged that navigating uncharted territory was a challenge.
The Legislature held its first public hearing on the proposal nearly five months after Newsom introduced the idea. By then, the governor’s office had presented only an outline of a plan to lawmakers with a yet-to-be-determined cap on profits as the administration struggled to figure out how to implement his idea.
Gas prices had also begun to drop, eliminating the governor’s urgency for lawmakers to act.
Newsom scrapped his original plan in March and instead settled on demanding more transparency from the oil industry in hopes of being better able to determine the cause of price spikes. Instead of lawmakers approving a cap on oil profits, the final law gave the California Energy Commission more authority to investigate gasoline prices and the option, through a public hearing process, to penalize oil companies.
“It’s the only thing you can do,” said Susan Kennedy, a former chief of staff to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Every administration I’ve seen has dealt with gas prices through the roof and they do a study and they go after the oil companies and they do investigations on gas prices. I think I must have overseen five of them. That’s what you do because you have no control over supply and demand of oil.”
Despite falling short of his very public call for lawmakers to set a profits cap and penalty, Newsom cast his transparency bill as a major win against the oil industry.
Though Newsom presented his original penalty as imperative to protecting consumers, he acknowledged at the bill signing that “nothing is going to happen in the short term” and “prices are not going to drop immediately.” Nor is there any requirement for oil companies to pay consumers back for price spikes over the summer.
Kousser said the governor’s declaration of victory in that instance reminded him of Schwarzenegger, who served two terms as California governor from 2003-11.
“His problem, especially in his first year and a half, is he would come in with this thing… and the Legislature would just completely roll him and then he’d say, ‘Fantastic,’ ” Kousser said of Schwarzenegger. “He’d get something done and declare victory. Then he got this reputation for being like, OK, he just wants to get something so we can do whatever we want, and help take credit and be happy and that’ll all be fine.”
He said that’s also a danger for Newsom.
“It creates a sense that the governor is really not interested in the policy change,” Kousser said. “The governor might be interested in the political win. Once you get that reputation, that can hurt you.”
Newsom once again tried to jam lawmakers in May when he introduced a package of bills to speed up the process of building major infrastructure in California by limiting the opportunity for lengthy legal challenges to projects under the state’s marquee Environmental Quality Act.
Lawmakers and environmentalists criticized the late arrival of the package, the lack of time for sufficient public review of such a sweeping policy and the inclusion of Newsom’s existing plan to construct a tunnel to transport water under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to Southern California.
Kathryn Phillips, the former director of the Sierra Club California who publicly lambasted Newsom’s plan during the negotiations, said the infrastructure fight speaks to the “disdain he has for the environmental community.”
The governor often points out that his father was an environmentalist as an example of his deep roots within the movement. But Newsom “wants to be hailed as a leader of something he’s not exactly led,” she said.
“You gotta have people following you if you’re a leader,” Phillips said. “And when you just spring stuff on people, and you don’t talk to them, you’re not really leading. You’re imposing.”
Phillips also said Newsom’s desire to ram policies through is an example of his impatience with the legislative process, and in turn, disregard for public transparency and the vetting of public policy.
The strategy does provide a major advantage for Newsom, however: It limits time for opposition to mount and for lawmakers to water down the proposal through public hearings or stall as a negotiating tactic to leverage their own priorities. Legislative leaders have similarly introduced and passed controversial bills in the final days of the session.
“The governor is not interested in jamming the Legislature,” said Angie Wei, Newsom’s former legislative affairs secretary. “He’s interested in solving the big problems facing California. When your policy is done, it’s time to go. You can’t let the calendar hold you back.”
The governor has repeatedly commented on the limited time he has left at the helm of California government and his concern about having regrets for not doing more when his term ends in 2026.
“I want to actually deliver, not just on goals and ambitions, but on projects,” Newsom said when asked this month about shoehorning legislation. “And so I’m in a different mind-set. There’s a sort of hard-headed pragmatism. You know, let’s get moving.”
Negotiations over the infrastructure package held up a budget deal between Newsom and lawmakers for weeks in Sacramento.
The governor threatened to veto the Legislature’s state budget unless lawmakers approved his infrastructure plan, an action that could have turned the Democratic infighting into a rare public spectacle.
Legislative leaders held out and ended up winning protections for disadvantaged communities. Newsom won many of the provisions he originally wanted to speed up projects, but dropped the Delta tunnel from the proposal.
Former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, who stepped down from his post leading the lower house this summer after the budget deal, said lawmakers are to blame for the way in which Newsom forces policies upon them. The Legislature created a power imbalance when they left the state Capitol during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, and allowed Newsom to run state government and enact policy alone.
“That carried over,” said Rendon (D-Lakewood), who was worried at the time about relinquishing power to the governor. “The Legislature weakened itself by not showing up and that relationship between the branches has never been the same. We love to piss on the administration and Gavin, but that’s something that was our fault. It was never rectified.”
State Cash Flow Results Mixed for June
Dept. of Finance
California real GDP grew by 1.2 percent in the first quarter of 2023 on a seasonally adjusted annualized rate basis, following 2.4-percent growth in the fourth quarter of 2022 and annual growth of 0.4 percent in 2022.
California’s real GDP was 5.3 percent above its pre-pandemic (fourth quarter of 2019) as of the first quarter of 2023, compared to 5.6 percent for the U.S.
California’s personal income increased by 0.7 percent in the first quarter of 2023 and was 3.6 percent above the first quarter of 2022. Gains were driven by increases in wages and salaries and property income, offsetting declines in transfer payments. California’s share of U.S. personal income was 13.6 percent, down from 13.8 percent both in the fourth quarter of 2022 and the 2019 average.
MONTHLY CASH REPORT
Preliminary General Fund agency cash receipts for the entire 2022-23 fiscal year were $954 million above the 2023-24 Budget Act forecast of $167.627 billion and were $1.156 billion above forecast in June.
Monthly cashflow reflects the expected impact of delayed payment (as much as $42 billion) and filing deadlines for Californians in most counties to October 16.
Notably, excluding withholding, personal income tax receipts were $1.332 billion below forecast in June. While June is historically an important month for personal income and corporation tax, cash results from these two revenue sources—with the exception of withholding—are not reliable due to this year’s delayed tax deadlines.
The extent of the variance relative to the forecast caused by taxpayers’ behavior differing from assumptions is unknown.
Personal income tax withholding, after subtracting $173 million that shifted from May to June due to a processing delay, increased by 12.4 percent year-over-year in June, its highest growth since December 2021. Personal income tax withholding receipts were $929 million above forecast for the fiscal year.
Personal income tax cash receipts for the entire 2022-23 fiscal year were $801 million below the forecast of $95.828 billion and were $430 million below forecast in June. June withholding was $902 million above forecast and includes $173 million in withholding revenue that was shifted from May to June due to a payment processing delay resulting from a bank merger. Refunds remained high in June and were $384 million above the forecast. Estimated payments, final payments, and other payments were cumulatively down $960 million relative to forecast for the month and down $830 million for the fiscal year.
Corporation tax cash receipts for the entire 2022-23 fiscal year were $975 million above the forecast of $29.019 billion and were $1.128 billion above forecast in June due to PTE payments. June refunds were $215 million higher than projected. Excluding PTE payments, net corporation tax revenues were cumulatively down $276 million relative to forecast for the fiscal year.
Sales and use tax cash receipts for the entire 2022-23 fiscal year were $61 million above the forecast of $34.688 billion and were $122 million above forecast in June.
JOBS
California’s unemployment rate rose to 4.6 percent in June 2023 as the labor force increased by 13,600 while civilian household employment rose by 7,900, and the number of unemployed workers increased by 5,700.
California added 11,600 nonfarm payroll jobs in June 2023, driven by gains in private education and health services (7,000), leisure and hospitality (6,800) and construction (6,000). The largest job loss was in trade, transportation, and utilities (-7,600), followed by other services (-1,100), manufacturing (-600), and professional and business services (-100).
BUILDING ACTIVITY & REAL ESTATE
Year-to-date, California permitted nearly 100,000 units on a seasonally adjusted basis in May, down 2.3 percent from April and down 18.8 percent from May 2022. May permits consisted of over 50,000 single-family units (up 7.1 percent from April, but down 30 percent year-over-year) and over 49,000 multi-family units (down 2.1 percent from April 2023 and also down 2.8 percent year-over-year).
The statewide median sale price of existing single-family homes increased to $838,260 in June 2023, up 0.3 percent from May 2023 but down 2.4 percent from June 2022. Sales of existing single-family homes in California totaled 277,490 units (SAAR) in June 2023, down 4.1 percent from May 2023, and down 19.7 percent from June 2022. Year-to-date through June 2023, sales volume averaged 273,568 units (SAAR), which was 32.9 percent lower than during the same period in 2022.
https://dof.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/352/2023/07/July-2023-Finance-Bulletin-final.pdf
Maverick Dem Legislator Calls for Better Results from Spending:
“Good intentions & Lots of Money Not Enough to Fix the Golden State”
CalMatters commentary from Dan Walters
Steve Glazer is a former political consultant who served as mayor of Orinda before
being elected to the state Senate in a 2015 special election.
Glazer is a Democrat who usually votes with others in the party’s overwhelming Senate majority. However, Glazer has a rare maverick streak, not unlike that of his one-time boss, former Gov. Jerry Brown.
Glazer has most often displayed that tendency in clashes with labor unions, his party’s most important ally, but it extends to other aspects of governance.
This month, just as the Legislature began its month-long summer recess, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed by Glazer highlighting his party’s inability to effectively use its unfettered political power on California’s knottiest issues.
Glazer cited the state’s newly enacted, $310 billion state budget, describing it as “a reflection of our values, dedicating spending to getting homeless people off the street, supporting schools, keeping public transit afloat and treating mental illness,” but adding, “as many Californians know, we’ve already spent billions of dollars on the same problems – with very little to show for it.
“Our failures are evidence that good intentions and lots of money are not enough to fix what ails the Golden State,” Glazer continued. “To make our progressive beliefs mean anything, the Legislature must ensure that the money we spend is actually improving the lives of the people we say we are committed to helping.”
Glazer cites the state’s chronic housing shortage and homelessness levels, mental health programs and California’s embarrassingly low public school achievement as examples of issues that have festered for years without noticeable progress.
“Democrats know that hundreds of our schools are failing and far too many kids are unable to read, write or do math at grade level,” Glazer declared. “And we know that those struggling students are disproportionately low-income children of color. But that issue gets almost no attention from Democrats in the Capitol, who have made no recent efforts to discover why schools are falling short and what can be done to improve them.”
Glazer’s overall theme is something that’s rarely mentioned in California political circles: competence, or the lack thereof. The Democrats who control virtually every lever of political power in California tend to measure achievement by how much money they spend on a particular problems, rather than outcomes.
That’s very evident in California’s highest-in-the-nation level of homelessness. The state has spent upwards of $20 billion on programs meant to reduce the amount of unhoused Californians, but the numbers continue to climb as Gov. Gavin Newsom and local government officials squabble incessantly over who should be accountable.
The implosion of the Employment Development Department that allowed fraudsters to pocket tens of billions of dollars in unemployment insurance payments, while legitimate claims were delayed, is another stark example. So is the state’s chronic inability to design and implement technology.
Recently, CalMatters reported that California has spent $600 millions on programs meant to prevent former prisoners from committing new crimes after release but has not tracked whether they have succeeded.
“The state does not collect data on whether parolees who participate in the program have found jobs or whether they are returned to prison for another crime,” reporter Byrhonda Lyons wrote after spending year investigating the issue. “What state data does show is that only 40% of participants completed at least one of the services they were offered.”
As shocking as that lapse sounds, we shouldn’t be surprised because, as Glazer points out, the state’s political leadership – those in his own party – are prone to spending money on a problem without accountability that ensures results.
Is the Tech Sector Slowdown Slowing Down?
CalMatters
After a slump, is California’s tech sector starting to perk up?
In 2022 and in early 2023, titans including Google, Meta, TikTok and Amazon said they were laying off thousands of employees. The layoffs followed a massive hiring spree during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, when tech profits were skyrocketing, said Sean Randolph, senior director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.
Randolph: “These companies, by and large, had hired more people than they needed in anticipation of high growth…So what we’ve seen mostly over the last, say, 18 months has been sort of a correction, a scaling back.”
And yes, as the East Bay Times reported, LinkedIn cut almost 200 Bay Area employees.
But overall, tech layoffs have waned in recent months, according to the TrueUp layoff tracker.
The surge in interest in generative AI — tools like ChatGPT that can create new text, images or data — could also be a boon to Bay Area tech companies. Of the 13 generative AI companies with $1 billion or more in funding, seven had headquarters in the Bay Area as of May, according to data compiled by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.
There are other positive signs. The information and business and professional services industries — which include most tech workers — have seen net job growth in the past few months in the Bay Area, offsetting layoffs, said Somjita Mitra, chief economist at the state Finance Department. Statewide, applications to start businesses were about 8% higher in the first half of the year, compared to the first half of 2022, she said.
The tech industry’s booms and busts affect the state’s budget too. Tech workers tend to earn large salaries, which California taxes at higher rates than low wages. And they often receive bonuses or hold shares of their company that, when sold, get taxed as personal income. They also spend money in ways that bolster the economy — whether that’s going out to eat or attending a Barbenheimer double feature.
Sacramento Bee
Barbie’s plastic is fantastic – and malleable, apparently, for a whole range of political causes. The summer blockbuster, directed by Sacramento born-and-raised Greta Gerwig, debuted on Friday. Whether it’s her spunky, innocent character or glittering Malibu Dreamhouse, she’s proven an irresistible canvas for politicians and interest groups to project their messages.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office tweeted “4 ways Barbie embraces California values.” The thread made sure to mention that Mattel, the company that makes Barbie dolls, was founded in a Los Angeles garage.
Sen. Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco posted a Tiktok riding Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in hot pink stilettos. “Did someone say BARTbie?” text on the video reads. And the Assembly Democrats posted a TikTok featuring their Barbies and Kens.
The Tax Foundation, a think tank generally critical of high taxes, wrote about all the California taxes Barbie would have to pay on her Dreamhouse, shopping sprees, income for the 200+ jobs she’s held and fuel for her pink convertible.
They argued that “she might just call ‘cut!’ on her LA scene” and “set her GPS for a more tax-friendly state” due to the state’s taxes.
Though Barbie and her Malibu Dreamhouse give California politicians a special connection, the movie drew the attention of politicians nationwide. Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer dressed up a mini-me Barbie in a matching fuschia suit and posted videos and pictures of the doll signing bills, cruising a pink convertible around the Capitol and delivering a speech from a tiny podium. “Come on Barbie, let’s go govern,” she tweeted.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article277548558.html#storylink=cpy
State Resource Managers Enlist Beavers in Climate Change Battle
Associated Press
For years, beavers have been treated as an annoyance for chewing down trees and shrubs and blocking up streams, leading to flooding in neighborhoods and farms. But the animal is increasingly being seen as nature’s helper in the midst of climate change.
California recently changed its tune and is embracing the animals that can create lush habitats that lure species back into now-urban areas, enhance groundwater supplies and buffer against the threat of wildfires.
A new policy that went into effect last month encourages landowners and agencies dealing with beaver damage to seek solutions such as putting flow devices in streams or protective wrap on trees before seeking permission from the state to kill the animals. The state is also running pilot projects to relocate beavers to places where they can be more beneficial.
The aim is to preserve more beavers, along with their nature-friendly behaviors.
“There’s been this major paradigm shift throughout the West where people have really transitioned from viewing beavers strictly as a nuisance species, and recognizing them for the ecological benefits that they have,” said Valerie Cook, beaver restoration program manager for California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. The program was funded by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration last year.
The push follows similar efforts in other Western states including Washington, which has a pilot beaver relocation program, Cook said. It marks a new chapter in Californians’ lengthy history with the animals, which experts say used to be everywhere, but after years of trapping, attempts at reintroduction, and then removal under depredation permits, are found in much smaller numbers than they once were — largely in the Central Valley and northern part of the state.
It is unknown how many beavers live in California, but hundreds of permits are sought by landowners each year that typically allowed them to kill the animals. According to the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, the beaver population in North America used to range between 100 million and 200 million but now totals between 10 million and 15 million.
Kate Lundquist, director of the WATER Institute at the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, said she expects California’s changes will lead to fewer beavers killed in the state and a growth in wetland spaces. She said she believes the past three years of drought and devastating wildfires contributed to the state’s shift on beavers.
“There has been increased motivation to identify and fund the implementation of nature-based climate smart solutions,” she said. “Beaver restoration is just that.”
Beavers live in family units and quickly build dams on streams, creating ponds. The pools help slow the flow of water, replenishing groundwater supplies, and can also stall the spread of wildfires — a critical issue for a state plagued by fires in recent years, said Emily Fairfax, professor of environmental science and management at California State University, Channel Islands.
“You talk to anyone who has lived near beaver ponds. They’ll tell you: These things don’t burn,” said Fairfax, who has researched beavers and the ponds they build.
The animals are not a protected species but help create habitat that is critical for others such as the coho salmon, which is listed under the Endangered Species Act. Young salmon grow and thrive in beaver ponds before heading to the ocean, which gives them a better shot at survival, said Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, which has long pushed for California to try to resolve problems with beavers without killing them.
Officials at the California Farm Bureau said they were studying the change and have not yet taken a position on it.
California will continue to issue depredation permits as needed, but the state wants people to try other solutions before resorting to killing the animals, officials said. Those could be wrapping trees with wire mesh or using flow devices on streams to control beaver pond levels to prevent flooding.
In some cases, it may involve relocating beavers to places that want them. Vicky Monroe, statewide conflict programs coordinator for California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, said her office has long received requests from groups that want beavers, but the state didn’t have a mechanism to legally move them until recently.
California has planned two pilot relocation projects, including one to bring beavers back to the Tule River. Kenneth McDarment, a councilmember for the Tule River Indian Tribe, said the tribe started seeking ways to reintroduce beavers nearly a decade ago due to drought and hopes to see them relocated later this year.
“We’re going to give these beavers a chance to do what they do naturally in a place where they’re wanted,” he said.
The state is also hoping to educate people about the benefits of beavers.
Rusty Cohn, a 69-year-old retired auto parts businessman, said he knew little about the animals before he spotted chewed trees on a walk through the Northern California city of Napa in a region better known for winemaking than the critters. He later observed beavers building a dam on a trickling stream, converting the area into a lush pond for heron, mink and other species, and became a fan.
“It was like a little magical place with an incredible amount of wildlife,” Cohn said. That was eight years ago, he said, adding that beaver sightings in that spot are becoming rarer amid increased development, but he can still find them on streams throughout Napa.