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IN THIS ISSUE – “The Ghost of Josh Newman Looms Large”
SPENDING & TAXES
- Newsom Adds $4 Billion to 2019-20 Budget; Legislative Talks Begin
- Governor Pushes New Taxes & Fees
- Irony of A Deep Blue State: Wide Income Gap
- “Data Dividend”: Tech Companies Share the Wealth With Consumers
ENERGY
LEGISLATION OF THE WEEK
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.
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FOR THE WEEK ENDING MAY 10, 2019
Newsom Adds $4 Billion to 2019-20 Budget; Final Legislative Talks Begin
Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to spend $1 billion on programs to help the homeless in a $213 billion revised budget he released on Thursday.
The updated proposal unveiled builds on the $209 billion budget the governor laid out in January. It keeps in place spending to expand health coverage for undocumented immigrants and $1.75 billion to spur housing construction.
Newsom still wants to fine Californians who don’t buy health insurance and raise taxes to clean up drinking water in communities with unhealthy water sources.
His revised proposal adds $130 million for child care — mostly from taxes raised on legal marijuana sales — and doubles a proposed tax credit for families with children under 6 from $500 to $1,000. It also would eliminate sales taxes on diapers and tampons.
Newsom’s budget adds an extra $150 million in grants for communities to build programs that help the homeless, setting aside a total of $650 million for those efforts. It has extra money that would help the homeless through college programs, workforce grants and mental health resources. All together, the budget has $1 billion for homeless programs.
Following a deadly shooting at a Southern California synagogue, Newsom also added $15 million for security to prevent hate crimes at places of worship and other nonprofit organizations.
Newsom and his team are predicting a $21.5 billion surplus, up slightly from the $21 billion they predicted in January. If trends hold, the state would have a $16.5 billion rainy day fund by next year to help it weather a recession.
The budget includes $81.1 billion for education spending.
“This budget fortifies California’s fiscal position while making long-sighted investments to increase affordability for California families,” Newsom said in a written statement.
His updated proposal kicks off the final weeks of negotiations with the Legislature ahead of the June 15 deadline for lawmakers to pass a spending plan for the 2019-20 fiscal year.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article230196769.html?#storylink=cpy
Governor’s Revised Budget:
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/FullBudgetSummary.pdf
Governor Pushes New Taxes & Fees
Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed new taxes and fees to fund health care subsidies, clean drinking water and tax credits for low-income families. But state revenue outpacing even his most optimistic predictions could present a challenge for him as he attempts to raise taxes.
Last month, corporate taxes came in at $3.4 billion, much higher than the Newsom administration’s estimated $2.6 billion. Income taxes also came in ahead of projections, making up for a shortfall earlier in the year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
If the trend continues, the state is looking at another big surplus this year.
In his $209 billion January budget proposal, Newsom called for several new fees on Californians:
- A penalty forpeople who don’t buy insurance called the individual mandate to help pay for insurance for middle-income Californians
- A tax on businesses to fund abig increase to the earned income tax credit for low-income families
- Taxes on water, fertilizer and dairy toclean up drinking water
He’s also endorsed two other expensive proposals that could require additional revenue:
- A revamp of the state’s 911 system that would be funded by a phone tax
- Six months of paid family leave for newborns, an expansion to a program currently funded by a payroll tax
Newsom this week is expected to release an updated budget proposal, the May revision. Lawmakers must send him a final budget to sign by June 15.
At least two of Newsom’s tax proposals would require approval from two-thirds of the Legislature. Theoretically, Democrats have the votes to enact new taxes, with supermajorities in both chambers.
But voting for tax increases has hurt vulnerable Democrats at the ballot box in the past, most recently with the 2018 recall of Sen. Josh Newman after he voted to increase gas taxes.
“You have a newly elected class of Democrats from very moderate districts who are going to be hesitant to go up on a tax vote,” said Steve Maviglio, a Democratic strategist working with supporters of the water tax. “The ghost of Josh Newman still looms pretty large over the Legislature.”
The recent gas tax increase and the budget surplus could be used to attack lawmakers who vote to raise taxes even higher, said Democratic strategist Andrew Acosta.
Those in vulnerable seats will likely be wary of supporting tax increases that might fail in the opposite chamber or be vetoed by Newsom, he said. They’ll probably want assurances tax increases will pass the Legislature and be approved by the governor before they vote for them, he said.
Newsom has made it clear he wants to raise taxes on water, fertilizer and dairy products to clean up drinking water for roughly 1 million Californians.
He’s also called for expanding the state’s earned income tax credit for low-income families by $1 billion by raising business taxes.
It would represent a significant ongoing cost to the state, said Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Phil Ting. Ting has advocated for expansions of the earned income tax credit, but acknowledged it could be a difficult vote, particularly in combination with other tax and fee proposals.
“There’s a lot of issues at play,” said Ting, a San Francisco Democrat.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article230101754.html?#storylink=cpy
Irony of A Deep Blue State: Wide Income Gap
Commentary from CalMatters
California, as we all should know by now, has the nation’s highest rate of poverty as measured by the Census Bureau’s supplemental – and most accurate – methodology.
The primary reason is California’s horrendously high cost of living, particularly for housing, that overwhelms the relatively meager incomes of millions of California families.
Even more troubling is a calculation by the Public Policy Institute of California, using similar methodology, that another 20 percent of Californians are living in near-poverty. Thus, about 40 percent of the state’s population, some 16 million of us, are in deep financial distress.
Two other pertinent data points: A third of Californians are enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state-federal system of health care for the poor, and 60 percent of California’s K-12 students are deemed at risk of academic failure due to poverty, lack of English skills or both.
Only a few million Californians receive welfare, so the vast majority of our poor are in working families, giving rise to another feature of California’s economic stratification – big gaps in incomes.
Jonathan Lansner, an economics writer for the Orange County Register and its sister newspapers, plumbed that phenomenon by feeding 2018 federal data on wages and salaries into a spreadsheet.
His findings, published last month, were that wages for those in the 75th income percentile “ran 72 percent greater than the median in California, a spread that topped all states ahead of No. 2 New York at 68.1 percent and No. 3 Virginia at 67.7 percent. And it was far above the 50-state median of 57 percent.”
Furthermore, Lanser wrote, “this wage gap is rising, especially in California. A decade earlier, the 75th percentile job statewide paid 66 percent more than the median wage.”
Lansner’s research underscored the irony of a deep blue state, whose politicians constantly express sympathy for the poor, having the widest income disparity in the nation, far more than those in more conservative states.
The political response to California’s income gap has largely been confined to efforts to raise incomes of the poor through such gestures as raising the minimum wage and creating a state-level “earned income tax credit” that sends checks to low-income working families. But Lansner’s data indicate that the gap is still widening and another new report implies that raising the minimum wage may be backfiring by reducing job creation.
The UC-Riverside’s Center for Economic Forecasting and Development studied recent increases in the minimum wage at the behest of the California Restaurant Association and concluded that it has markedly slowed job growth in that industry.
“Data analysis suggests that while the restaurant industry in California has grown significantly as the minimum wage has increased, employment in the industry has grown more slowly than it would have without minimum wage hikes,” the report concluded. “The slower employment is nevertheless real for those workers who may have found a career in the industry. And when the next recession arrives, the higher real minimum wage could increase overall job losses within the economy and lead to a higher unemployment rate than would have been the case without the minimum wage increases.”
Christopher Thornberg, the center’s director and author of the study, said the rapid pace of minimum wage increases “is creating certain negative consequences for smaller businesses and people who need the most help rising out of poverty.”
That captures the dilemma of California’s persistent poverty and demonstrates the unintended consequences of trying to reduce it by political decree, rather than by encouraging job creation and work-oriented education and reducing housing costs.
https://calmatters.org/articles/commentary/californias-vexing-poverty-puzzle/
“Data Dividend”: Tech Companies Share the Wealth With Consumers
With a legislative battle underway in California over a landmark 2018 law that allows consumers to control what online personal data companies collect about them and sell, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers have started work on another ambitious pursuit: putting a financial value on that information.
Newsom has assigned a team to work with national data scientists and legislators to create a “data dividend” — a payment that businesses would make to the state or to consumers if their personal data are sold. The concept has been discussed in Silicon Valley for years as a way to tackle growing income inequality at a time when tech companies have flourished and advances in automation have eliminated jobs.
But there is lots of debate over how it should work.
“[A data dividend] is a hard problem to solve,” said state Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys), who co-authored last year’s California Consumer Privacy Act. “I see it as a societal issue. We have the potential to monetize people’s value and ask: How do we create assets that can be enjoyed by the common good?”
Hertzberg and other state lawmakers have started their own data dividend discussions with experts — any plan crafted by the governor will require legislative approval — and at least one proposal introduced would create a legislative committee to study the issue.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and tech giants such as Google have long relied on the free trade of personal information in exchange for services. But any business can package and trade the personal data they collect from users or clients in the hidden online marketplace.
Banks, insurance providers and major retailers such as Amazon possess significant information about what people buy, watch, want or need that can be bundled and sold to third parties or used to target advertising and increase profits. No state or federal law provides consumers the right to know how much the information is worth or how much businesses pay for it.
The practices have also allowed third-party traders to compile data sets from multiple companies to create profiles about consumers that can be repackaged and resold, data scientists said.
Scandals over the practices of third-party data firms such as Cambridge Analytica, which obtained the information of tens of millions of Facebook users to help President Trump’s 2016 campaign, have led consumers to demand more privacy regulations. Last month, Facebook reported it expected to pay up to $5 billion in fines to federal regulators over privacy issues.
California took the first step to regulate the marketplace and rein in data brokers last year when state lawmakers passed a far-reaching privacy law that gives people the right to “opt out” of having their data collected and allows them to ask companies to delete it. A data dividend, data scientists said, would go further, allowing consumers to collectively leverage their power over their information.
Such a system could allow the state to redistribute the profits — or develop an entirely different system, requiring businesses to pay people for the content they upload to free platforms. For example, Instagram became a billion-dollar company with just 13 employees and the help of hundreds of thousands of people around the world who contributed their photos without compensation from the company.
“I think most people recognize that there is something unsustainable going on here, where we are concentrating more and more power and wealth in a few companies, and it is not normal power. It is power over the nature of our democracy, over our families, over our personal identities,” said computer scientist and author Jaron Lanier, who has been meeting with state lawmakers to discuss potential models for a new data dividend.
The concept shouldn’t be misunderstood as “anti-tech,” Lanier added. Drafting up a data dividend could allow the governor and state lawmakers to rethink the economy and measure the invisible labor of people, whether it’s posting content to social media platforms or contributing personal information useful in coding new tech tools, he and other experts said.
In a state that’s home to the most tech billionaires and Silicon Valley businesses that have spurred growth of the information economy, the push for a data dividend has taken hold as income inequality is acutely felt. Families that earn in the top 10% make more than 10 times as much as those in the bottom 10%, nearly double the divide in 1980, according to a 2019 study by the Public Policy Institute of California.
Newsom put legislators and tech companies on notice in his State of the State address in February that he planned to expand the state’s data privacy efforts when he praised the 2018 law, saying “companies that make billions of dollars collecting, curating and monetizing our personal data have a duty to protect it.”
“California’s consumers should also be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data,” he said.
Part of the challenge in crafting a state data dividend is that public officials have little idea what the data are worth. Companies have their own internal finance teams that place values on the data of different types of users or customers, and no state or federal agency has oversight over the private estimates.
There also is debate about how the data dividend should be structured. It could function like Alaska’s Permanent Fund, in which oil companies doing business there pay a portion of their revenues to the state, and a part of the profit goes to a savings account divided among Alaskan residents.
Or it could be a payment or reward that goes straight to consumers who give companies the right to sell the personal information collected from them. Or it could function as a state tax on the businesses, with the resulting revenue redistributed to consumers.
Olaf Groth, an author and managing partner of Cambrian Group, an advisory think tank that designs tech strategies, policies and applications, said it could make sense to have a “data trust fund” instituted by the state and accessed by entrepreneurs and researchers who study or train in artificial intelligence.
Or, “You could say to the big digital companies — Google, Amazon and their Chinese equivalents — that they have to pay a small percentage of their revenue to their customers who are leaving these data footprints,” Groth said. “But the amount of dividend any customers would receive, given how many customers there are, would likely be too tiny to matter much.”
Dominique Shelton Leipzig, co-chair of the international law firm Perkins Coie’s Ad Tech Privacy and Data Management practice, said that in developing a data dividend, legislators and the governor will have to consider the entire internet ecosystem and all its smaller players, including bloggers, entertainment companies and students.
Putting limits on the free exchange of personal information could hinder small businesses and entrepreneurs that rely on advertising and donations and also hurt internet users, she said.
“The reason there is so much content is available to consumers globally is because it is ad-supported,” she said.
The discussions are likely to coincide with another fight this year over the state’s privacy law: Business groups want to narrow the scope of regulations for employers, while privacy advocates are working to expand protections for consumers and enforcement against violators.
Privacy advocates absorbed a major defeat last month as the Privacy for All bill, which would have created an “opt-in” option for consumers and require businesses to get permission before collecting their personal data, was shelved.
Six other industry-backed privacy bills remain, including proposals that would exempt insurance companies and agents from California’s privacy law and allow companies to collect some personal data on employees and consumers needed for loyalty programs, gift cards and discounts.
Sen. Henry Stern (D-Los Angeles) pulled back another bill that would have amended the state’s privacy law to allow targeted advertising by small businesses and nonprofits seeking customers or potential donors. His other proposal to establish a joint legislative committee to study putting together a data dividend moved out of a Senate committee last month.
Stern said the joint committee would allow legislators to analyze how Facebook and other tech companies could give back to the economic, media and political landscapes they have upended.
A data dividend is more than a tax, he said.
“To me, it’s not only about the individual relationship with the internet: What is the selfie worth and are you getting enough for it?” he said. “It’s more of collective look at it: What is the broader public cost and is tech taking a proper equity stake?”
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-gavin-newsom-california-data-dividend-20190505-story.html
Is Water As Green as Solar & Wind?
When California embarked on its quest to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as a global model to stave off climate change, its first target was the state’s electric power industry.
A series of ever-tightening decrees required utilities to shift from coal, natural gas and other carbon-based sources to a “renewable portfolio,” eventually reaching 100% non-carbon sources by mid-century.
The acceptable alternatives were specified in law, dominated by windmills, solar panels and geothermal wells. But for purely political reasons, the list omitted two power sources that are both free of greenhouse gases and renewable: large hydroelectric dams and nuclear plants.
The environmental groups that were agitating for an assault on greenhouse gases disliked nukes and hydro for other reasons and, in effect, would not accept their inclusion in a renewable portfolio. They saw nuclear power as dangerous because of the uncertain safety of handling and storing spent fuel rods and dams as injurious to wildlife habitat.
Nuclear power is now out of the picture, since one of the state’s two major nukes, San Onofre, is now shut down and the second, Diablo Canyon, is ticketed for closure.
However, California has dozens of dams, most of them along the western slope of the Sierra. They and out-of-state hydropower facilities generate about 15% of the state’s power demand, and excluding them makes absolutely no sense.
That nonsensical policy is underscored by a quirk in the state’s renewable-portfolio laws. Hydropower is legally excluded from the 2030 goal of a 60% reduction in carbon-based power, but it can be legally included in the 2045 goal of a 100% reduction.
Legislation now pending in the state Senate would restore, ever so slightly, some rationality to the renewable portfolio by allowing two irrigation districts in the San Joaquin Valley, Modesto ID and Turlock ID, to include power from their jointly owned Don Pedro Dam on the Tuolumne River.
Senate Bill 386 is being carried by Sen. Anna Caballero, a Democrat from Salinas who was elected just last year and represents the region served by the two districts.
It would save their 200,000 power customers some money by reducing otherwise mandatory power purchases from solar and wind generators. Under current law, they would be required to purchase more power than they actually need to serve their customers.
However, environmental groups are campaigning hard to persuade senators to reject the measure. This week, one environmental coalition sent a letter to senators demanding rejection of the bill.
“Rolling back our own climate progress is not the model that we should be setting for other states or the country,” said Jiggy Athilingam, a co-founder of the group, Indivisible CA: StateStrong.
Standing behind the dozens of environmental groups opposing SB 386 are solar and wind generators who, for obvious reasons, don’t want any changes in laws that require utilities to purchase their power regardless of need or cost.
The opponents fear that if Modesto and Turlock can count their hydropower, other utilities, both private and public, will attempt to follow suit with their own bills.
That would certainly be a logical possibility, and why not?
If the goal of achieving shifting California to 100% “renewable” power is legitimate, there’s no logical reason to exclude hydropower from existing dams, especially since it can be included in 2045 anyway.
Excluding power from any new dams or enhancements of existing dams should be sufficient to mollify SB 386’s opponents.
https://calmatters.org/articles/commentary/excluding-hydropower-makes-no-sense/
Proposed Huge Lithium Mine Raises Moral Dilemma
A small Cessna soared high above the Mojave Desert recently, its engine growling in the choppy morning air. As the aircraft skirted the mountains on the edge of Death Valley National Park, a clutch of passengers and environmentalists peered intently at a broiling salt flat thousands of feet below.
The desolate beauty of the Panamint Valley has long drawn all manner of naturalists, adventurers and social outcasts — including Charles Manson — off-road vehicle riders and top gun fighter pilots who blast overhead in simulated dogfights.
Now this prehistoric lake bed is shaping up to be an unlikely battleground between environmentalists and battery technologists who believe the area might hold the key to a carbon-free future.
Recently, the Australia-based firm Battery Mineral Resources Ltd. asked the federal government for permission to drill four exploratory wells to see if the hot, salty brine beneath the valley floor contains economically viable concentrations of lithium. The soft, silvery-white metal is a key component of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and is crucial to the production of electric and hybrid vehicles.
The drilling request has generated strong opposition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Defenders of Wildlife, who say the drilling project would be an initial step toward the creation of a full-scale lithium mining operation. They say lithium extraction would bring industrial sprawl, large and unsightly drying ponds and threaten a fragile ecosystem that supports Nelson’s bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and the Panamint alligator lizard, among other species.
“It’s a tricky question,” said Lisa Belenky, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We shouldn’t export the sacrifices to Bolivia and Argentina, for example, which have massive lithium mines … We also think that Panamint Valley is not the right place for it.”
“A lithium mine would destroy these spectacular panoramas,” drilling opponent Tom Budlong said recently as he and fellow activists buzzed over the Panamint Valley in a chartered Ecoflight aircraft.
The battle could be a fierce one. Lithium is expected to play an increasingly important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, and has been designated by the Trump administration as a mineral essential to the economic and national security of the United States. In addition to powering countless laptops and cellphones, lithium-ion batteries may also play a role in guarding against power line wildfire ignitions.
The only functioning lithium mine in North America is about 150 miles away in Clayton Valley, Nev. Most of the lithium used for batteries now comes from the so-called Lithium Triangle of South America — a region that includes the world’s largest salt flats.
For dyed-in-the-wool environmentalists, the brewing war over lithium mining poses a moral dilemma as it seemingly pits them against efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Constructed with the world’s lightest metal, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries allow vehicles to run on power generated by wind turbines, solar panels, hydroelectric dams and other clean-energy sources. In California alone, officials hope to see as many as 5 million such zero-emission vehicles on state highways by 2030.
Drilling opponents also acknowledge that the burden of producing lithium should not just fall on nations with less restrictive health and safety regulations and environmental safeguards.
The Inyo County drilling sites are overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which, under federal law, is obligated to not only preserve public lands, but make them productive as well. The BLM must set aside some lands for mining and wilderness, for wildlife and off-road vehicle riders alike.
But environmentalists say the agency is tilting too far toward the needs of commercial interests and away from the long-term health of the public’s natural resources. They worry approval of the plan could trigger a “white gold rush” across the deserts of Southern California. Already, nearly 2,000 lithium claims have been staked across 30,000 acres of public land administered by the BLM in California.
In a formal response to the drilling proposal, a dozen environmental organizations expressed concerns about the effects on ground and surface water if exploration leads to an industrial-scale mine.
The environmental assessment “does not include mapping of floodplain boundaries, nor any hydrologic modeling or analysis,” the response read. “There is no discussion of the risks to cross contamination from the deep brines to the freshwater aquifer, and the drill site reclamation practices do not appear to have taken this risk into account.”
Among those who have spoken against the plan are officials at Death Valley National Park.
A large mining operation would have “significant water requirements,” Death Valley National Park Supt. Mike Reynolds wrote in comments filed with the BLM. Reynolds said water in the area flows downhill from the park to the mine sites on the valley floor. “This water would normally help support wildlife within the local ecosystem,” he wrote.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is expected to make a final decision on Battery Mineral Resources’ request later this year.
Battery Mineral Resources failed to respond to repeated requests for comment on the proposal. However, an environmental assessment of its exploratory project concluded it would be safe, prevent significant environmental harm and abide by state and federal regulations.
As of April, the company reported anticipated costs of more than $7 million for exploration, claim maintenance fees and payments to a geology consultant in Arroyo Grande.
The Panamint Valley shares many of the geological features seen in profitable lithium-brine deposits in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Nevada: arid climate, an active fault, a basin encircled by rock mountains, and underground brine pools heated by geothermal activity.
Lithium brine deposits account for the majority of world’s lithium production. The process involves pumping water from aquifers and placing it in a succession of large evaporation pools. Over time, the lithium becomes more and more concentrated and can be separated from the water and processed.
In addition to Panamint Valley, lithium mining claims have been staked in portions of the Amargosa Basin near Beatty, Nev., which includes stretches of the Amargosa River, which was listed earlier this year as a National Wild and Scenic River.
Although environmentalists fear a run on lithium, one expert said it was no simple task to open a mining operation. A years-long effort to establish one at Imperial County’s Salton Sea has yet to bear fruit.
“On the face of it, extracting lithium from brine seems simple – pump it out of the ground, and then divert it into evaporation ponds that leave behind heaps of dried product ready for shipping,” said Brian Jaskula, a U.S. Geological Survey expert on mining.
While lithium-ion batteries currently dominate the electric vehicle market, they face competition from an array of new, more affordable and environmentally safe technologies in development, said Parans Paranthaman, group leader of the chemical sciences division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
“Lithium-ion batteries, which were developed in 1991, are the most viable in the near term,” he said. “But beyond lithium, there will soon be zinc, sodium, magnesium and potassium batteries, among others.”
Freeway to Fork – Bill Legalizes Roadkill Fresh Off the Grille
Let’s get the jokes out of the way first.
“Meals under wheels.”
“Bumper crop.”
“Gravel-tenderized meat.”
Chances are state Sen. Bob Archuleta has heard most of them. A Los Angeles County Democrat, he has a bill advancing through the Legislature that would allow Californians to “salvage” recently deceased wildlife from the sides of the state’s roads and highways.
The eyebrow-raising (and for the squeamish, stomach-churning) effort has been the butt of “many jokes here in the Capitol and even in my own hometown” of Pico Rivera, he acknowledged.
But jokes aside, he insists, “this bill is dealing with very serious issues.”
It would allow outdoorsy and culinarily courageous Californians to engage in a very particular form of roadside dining, so long as they apply for a state permit after-the-fact. Proponents say that wildlife and highway regulators could then use the data to identify roadkill hotspots and help reduce human-wildlife collisions.
It would make California the most populous of a string of states—including Western ones such as Montana, Idaho and Oregon—to permit such highway harvesting.
For progressives, there’s the added selling point of not letting good meat go to waste—an argument that has won over many environmentalists and even one of the most zealous of animal protectors, PETA.
While roadkill cuisine may not yet be mainstream, it appears to have joined the ranks of bug eating and dumpster diving as a counter-cultural dietary choice once associated with extreme poverty—but now earning the respect of eco-conscious foodies. As High Country News recently observed, “stereotyped hillbilly eating roadkill has been replaced by an environmentally and food conscientious middle-class urbanite.”
Plus, roadkill is nothing if not free range—to tragic excess.
While the bill has no formal opposition and has unanimously cleared the Senate’s Natural Resources and Water Committee, not everyone in the room was won over.
Judie Mancuso, founder of the animal rights advocacy group Social Compassion In Legislation, argued we “should be protecting the animals, not worried about hitting and eating them.”
“It seems insane, I’m sorry,” she said.
Other groups have raised concerns that the bill could enable poaching, jeopardize traffic safety and lead to food-borne illness.
For decades California law has banned hungry drivers from pulling over to gather bumper-battered wildlife. That’s for safety reasons, but it’s also an artifact of the state’s strict hunting laws. If you want to take a deer out of the wild (or off a highway shoulder), you need a deer tag. No exceptions.
Under state law, “unlawful possession of wildlife” carries a fine of up to $1,000 and a six-month jail term. But California Fish and Wildlife officials say roadkill reapers aren’t likely to receive that maximum sentence and that it’s a “very uncommon” citation.
Even so, Archuleta and a coalition of wildlife conservationists and hunting advocates want to make that exception for only a handful of big, meaty animals including deer, elk and wild pigs. (With apologies to squirrel connoisseurs, all other critters are off the menu.)
Under the proposal, the state would launch a pilot program in 2022 that would allow people who accidentally hit one of those animals, or come across one on the side of the road, to cart the animal home as long as they apply for a free permit within 24 hours. Applicants could file their permit on an app that would also include information on how to properly dress the carcass and avoid foodborne illness. They would also be allowed to “dispatch” animals that have been wounded, but not killed.
At the request of California Highway Patrol, interstates are exempt.
Archuleta was born and raised in the swath of east Los Angeles County he now represents, where the vast majority of roadkill wear collars. If he seems an unlikely legislator to rally to the cause highway foraging on his own accord, that’s because he didn’t.
Instead, the proposal arrived on his desk thanks in part to Rennie Cleland, a retired game warden with California Department of Fish and Game. Cleland teamed up with the California Deer Association, a hunting and conservation group, and the California Rifle and Pistol Association, the state’s National Rifle Association affiliate, to find a legislator open to the idea.
Cleland, more than most, has a passion for roadkill salvage.
As a state worker, he said he helped start a program to deliver a “perfectly good meat source” to local churches and families in need, first in Sonoma County, then in his native Siskiyou. By his own accounting, he helped distribute 37,000 pounds of meat in total—though not without the occasional intervention of public health officials, who forced him to stop delivering the meat to charities. State officials shuttered the program entirely after Cleland retired.
He said he is motivated by principle: A hunter who shoots an animal is required to make an effort to retrieve it.
“It’s against the law to wantonly allow an animal like that to go to waste,” he said. By the same token, seeing large game animals being left to rot alongside the side of the road “always stuck in my craw as a game warden,” he said.
But some groups, including the California Fish and Game Wardens’ Association, have raised concerns about the bill’s unintended consequences. By allowing salvagers to apply for a permit after collecting the animal, the law could give the poachers a ready-made excuse when caught with a contraband carcass: “I swear, officer, I just found it on the side of the road!”
Proponents insist wildlife law enforcement will be able to tell if an animal has been hit by a car. And there are simpler methods of poaching that don’t involve reporting an illegal kill to the state.