For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.

IN THIS ISSUE – “Devastation of the Newborn”

GOVERNOR’S RACE & GAS TAX

TWIN CRISES: HOUSING & PUBLIC HEALTH

RESOURCES

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. 

Stay current daily!  For our focused updates via Twitter: @jrgualco / @robertjgore / @gualcogroup

READ ALL ABOUT IT!!

FOR THE WEEK ENDING OCT. 19, 2018

 

Polls: Newsom & Gas Tax Repeal Winning

The proposition to repeal the so-called “gas tax” enacted by the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown last year in order to fund transportation projects is winning by a 2-to-1 margin, according to the results of a new statewide poll released Tuesday.

But that measure, backed heavily by GOP gubernatorial candidate John Cox, hasn’t translated to Cox’s campaign as he is trailing Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, by a 52-35 percent margin.

The SurveyUSA poll, commissioned by the San Diego Union-Tribune, 10News and other media organizations, asked 762 likely voters in California last week about their thoughts on statewide issues and candidates as early voting gets underway for the Nov. 6 election.

Republicans had hoped that Proposition 6, as the effort to repeal the gas tax is called, would get more conservatives to the polls. The measure would undo a fuel tax of 12 cents a gallon and diesel fuel tax of 20 cents a gallon — money that Democrats says would help raise more than $5 billion annually toward road and bridge repair projects as well as mass transit improvements. The law also created a yearly vehicle fee ranging from $25 to $175.

Republicans, including Cox who is chairman of the Prop 6 committee, have argued that previous gas taxes and vehicles raised enough to make necessary repairs to the state’s transportation infrastructure.

Besides a repeal, Prop 6 also requires any future fuel taxes to be approved by voters.

That message appears to be sticking, with 58 percent giving support to Prop 6, versus 29 percent rejecting the repeal and 13 percent undecided.

Still, Newsom is leading the polls to replace his boss, two-term Gov. Brown. Forty percent of voters say they have a favorable opinion of Newsom, a candidate who has had much more time in the public eye in California, versus 34 percent who have a favorable opinion of Cox, a lawyer and financial adviser who hails from Chicago and now lives in Rancho Santa Fe.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sd-me-statewide-poll-20181016-story.html

USC / Dornsife poll:

https://dornsife.usc.edu/center-for-political-future/poll/

 

State Agency Helps Gas Tax Proponents, Emails Show

As the political battle to overturn California’s gas tax increase intensified, the state transportation agency coordinated frequently with the public affairs firm working to block the repeal on behalf of unions, construction companies and local government groups, emails obtained by The Associated Press show.

The California State Transportation Agency and Sacramento-based Bicker, Castillo & Fairbanks organized news conferences and other efforts to promote legislation to raise the tax to fund road and bridge repairs, which passed the Legislature in April 2017. After Gov. Jerry Brown signed it, the agency and firm continued planning events and coordinating social media posts as opponents gathered signatures for repeal.

Three ethics experts interviewed by the AP said the emails raise concerns that the agency’s relationship with the firm was too close, but none saw a clear violation of campaign laws, which prohibit the use of public resources for political campaigns.

The repeal qualified for the November ballot in June. The firm, BCF, continues to work for the anti-repeal coalition, which includes the League of California Cities and the California Chamber of Commerce.

Some communications between BCF and the state agency involved politics, according to more than 200 emails from 2017 and the first half of this year obtained by the AP through the California Public Records Act.

Last fall, the agency and firm discussed opinion pieces “targeting” U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa and three other vulnerable Republicans in Congress. National Democratic leaders see those seats as key to winning control of the U.S. House.

In January, a BCF partner, Kathy Fairbanks, communicated with the agency about designing a campaign logo for Proposition 69, a June ballot measure involving how gas tax proceeds are spent. And an undated memo shows the agency and firm also planned to coordinate efforts for several months through the primary.

Loyola Law School Professor and government ethics expert Jessica Levinson said the relationship between the firm and agency appears too close, and the exchange about the congressmen crossed an ethical line.

“I mean way over the line,” she said.

BCF and agency officials said the communications were appropriate to educate the public about the law and that they ramped down coordination when the firm took an official campaign role.

“Clearly the agency was trying to coordinate with the campaign, and they shouldn’t have,” said Bob Stern, a government ethics expert who helped write California’s campaign laws. But he added the actual amount of time government workers spent coordinating with the firm was likely minimal.

Ann Ravel, who served on the Federal Election Commission and California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, said the volume of emails raises questions about whether the agency aided one side.

“It seems like maybe it’s a little too cozy, but I wouldn’t say that it’s clearly inappropriate,” Ravel said.

The legislation approved last year raised gas taxes by 12 cents per gallon and added diesel and vehicle fees to generate $5 billion annually. Proposition 6 would repeal the increase and require voters approve gas and vehicle tax increases.

The ballot measure is a centerpiece of California Republicans’ efforts to boost turnout. GOP Congress members — including House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and Orange County’s Mimi Walters — are among the repeal’s biggest financial backers.

Leaders of the repeal campaign have asked the federal government to investigate their claims that public resources have been used against them, based on emails and other documents that show local government workers discussing the repeal effort. Those documents are different from the ones the AP obtained. Opponents also circulated a video of a Caltrans contractor passing out anti-Proposition 6 fliers to drivers.

The California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans, falls under the state transportation agency.

Melissa Figueroa, the agency’s deputy secretary for communications and strategic planning, said it’s the agency’s job to inform the public about the impact of laws, and it has done so in the past, including for California’s “motor voter” registration law.

“We’re trying to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Figueroa said.

The agency communicated much less frequently with the firm and stopped coordinating social media posts once the official anti-Proposition 6 campaign started, Figueroa said.

“Prior to that point, it was more of a collaborative effort because they were not in campaign mode,” Figueroa said.

BCF partner Brandon Castillo said the coalition registered as a fundraising committee in December and officially became a ballot measure campaign in March to support Proposition 69.

BCF and other gas tax supporters routinely asked the agency for information, but they did not coordinate on creating campaign materials, Figueroa said. The agency also fulfilled numerous public records requests filed by gas tax opponents, she said.

However, an undated memo outlining agency and coalition plans from March through the primary election shows the firm and the agency coordinated the timing of announcements and events. It details plans for the state to tout new construction projects while the coalition campaigned for Proposition 69.

The agency and coalition coordinated their schedules, but the agency wasn’t involved in campaigning for Proposition 69, Figueroa said.

Castillo sent the email about op-eds focused on GOP candidates Sept. 20, 2017.

“Hey Melissa — We’re penning opeds (sic) targeting the following congressional republicans,” he wrote. He identified Reps. Jeff Denham, Steve Knight, Walters and Issa and asked Figueroa for information about projects funded by the gas tax increase in their districts.

At the time, the coalition was working to persuade California’s influential Republican congressional delegates to reject the repeal.

Several days after Castillo’s email, Figueroa suggested she or Brian Kelly, then the agency’s leader, help find an author for the piece targeting Issa, considered the most vulnerable California incumbent before he decided against seeking re-election.

Castillo responded saying coalition members were working on it and asked: “Do you have anyone in mind that could influence Republicans/Issa?”

The documents obtained by the AP don’t include further exchanges on the issue. In interviews, Castillo and Figueroa said the agency never suggested an author. Figueroa said she offered help because the op-ed would educate people in Issa’s district.

The piece ultimately was written by the mayor of Encinitas, a suburb north of San Diego, and ran the following month in the San Diego Union-Tribune. It touted projects in the district funded by the gas tax increase but didn’t mention Issa.

Levinson found the exchange surprising because it seemed to directly reference campaign activities.

“I don’t want to say it’s a smoking gun, but that is so much more explicit than I ever would have predicted they would be,” she said.

https://www.sacbee.com/article220084340.html#storylink=cpy

 

New Governor Must Address “Changing Nature of Work”

Whether confronting an increasingly automated labor market or grappling with how the gig economy is reshaping the relationship between companies and their workers, California’s next governor will have to address the changing nature of work.

That could mean rethinking how to educate Californians, remaking labor laws or considering major social safety net proposals such as a universal basic income. State government might not be able to control change sweeping the workplace, but it will have to deal with the fallout.

The coming years “will make or break California,” said Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of the state’s community college system.

“If we don’t find a way to provide the skills and education and training necessary for the majority of Californians,” he said, “there’s going to be a lot more have-nots than we have today.”

California’s economy is booming. Its 4.2% unemployment rate is a record low. But experts warn the state’s labor market is particularly vulnerable to disruption from widespread automation.

“We are seeing a pretty high percentage of our workforce in relatively low-paying, low-skilled jobs,” said Somjita Mitra, director of the Institute of Applied Economics at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

In the post-Great Recession landscape, the prospect of getting a well-paying job with just a high school degree is dim.

“The challenge in the economy right now is that the kind of jobs that are being created are either at the lowest wages or the very highest wages,” Oakley said.

The rise of automation has sparked considerable angst among American workers. A 2017 Pew poll found that 72% of adults said they were worried about a future where robots and computers can perform human jobs.

But there’s no consensus on what the future will look like. One 2013 study, which Moenius used to build his analysis, estimated that 47% of American jobs were at risk of being automated. A 2016 paper pegged that figure at a much lower 9%.

A study in 2017 posited that between 23% and 44% of work hours in the United States will be automated by 2030 — particularly in jobs with a high degree of repetition such as machinists, office support and retail sales. But that study also said jobs would be added in the future, especially among care providers such as surgeons and nurses, and construction workers.

Artificial intelligence — computers performing tasks typically done by humans — takes many forms. Computer vision, which allows machines to glean information from what they see, can be used in agriculture to give crops water and pesticides based on a plant’s needs.

Virtual assistants such as Siri or Alexa are being used in hotels, standing in for concierges or front desk assistants. Self-driving vehicles could upend the country’s transportation and logistics sectors, but it’s not clear how quickly those cars and trucks will be widely deployed.

“Depending on who you talk to, that’s a couple of years away or 30 years away,” said Stephen Baiter, executive director of the Oakland Workforce Development Board.

It’s one thing for a technological breakthrough to be invented, and it’s another to see businesses adopt that technology on a large scale. Experts predict the impact on jobs will not be a sudden thunderclap — more like a rolling wave.

The level of upheaval could vary by region. Moenius’ research found the Bay Area — home to Silicon Valley and highly educated workers — faces relatively low risk of job loss. The threat is higher in Fresno and Orange County.

But the swath most susceptible to automation in California spans Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario. According to Moenius, it is the fourth most vulnerable metropolitan area in the nation, just behind other service-industry-heavy cities such as Las Vegas.

 

During World War II, the Inland Empire city of Fontana was home to Kaiser Steel, the Pacific Coast’s first steel mill, and was a crucial cog in the state’s vast shipbuilding industry.

But the steel jobs had withered by the 1980s — Fontana, like the rest of the region, became a bedroom community outside of Los Angeles. It clawed its way back from the Great Recession due in large part to warehouse and logistic jobs, and the service industry.

Now, on the campus of California Steel Industries Inc., the successor to Kaiser Steel, the Inland Empire is trying to reinvent itself again.

The Chaffey College Industrial Technical Learning Center, or InTech, is touted as the first public-private partnership in the state community college system. Originally envisioned as a place where companies could train their workers for more advanced jobs, the program now primarily serves participants who are unemployed or underemployed in other fields.

Training programs range from basic construction to more advanced skills like computer numerical control, which enables automated operation of machines. The center is run by the local community college, but participants don’t earn college credits. Instead, they receive certifications that are offered based on input from local industry partners.

“Everything we do is designed by industry, for industry,” said Sandra Sisco, the center’s director.

For employers who need workers trained in HVAC repair, InTech teaches that. For companies that need employees skilled in additive manufacturing, or 3-D printing, InTech teaches that too.

Joanna Farias, 23, attended InTech two years ago for an electrical boot-camp class. Now, in addition to her aerospace engineering studies at Cal Poly Pomona and her internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she’s returned to teach 2-D and 3-D design. And she won’t rule out returning as a student to pick up a new skill.

“You have to keep coming back to centers like these to get training and get updated,” she said.

Training centers and community colleges are likely to be the front-line defense against a changing labor landscape.

Since 2014, the community college system has received more than $240 million per year for career and technical education to prepare students for jobs. Last year saw the creation of an online-only community college, geared toward working adults who want to learn new skills.

The proposal received pushback from educators at traditional schools.

“Generally speaking, our academic institutions feel reluctant to place a high value on employability. Traditionally, our attitude has been: We prepare students to be better citizens, deeper thinkers,” said Oakley, the community college chancellor.

“That’s all very true,” he added. “But we have also become a proxy for employability so we have to realize much more acutely the importance of job preparation in our curriculum.”

Much of the attention has centered on a gulf in the labor market. Companies continue to seek workers with college degrees. But in California, 8 million workers between the ages of 24 and 62 ended their studies in high school. To close that gap, some advocate more emphasis on certificates and other types of credentials that show off a worker’s specific skills.

“We should focus on what an employee can do, not just their background or pedigree or educational attainment,” said David Marsh, who manages the Rework America Task Force at the Markle Foundation.

Others fear that deemphasizing degrees could exacerbate inequality.

“You end up stratifying your workforce,” said Lande Ajose, executive director of California Competes, a higher-education advocacy group. “You end up with people who have wealth or privilege who continue to get four-year degrees, and everyone else ends up with some kind of degree that is less than that.”

More here:

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-pol-ca-next-california-work/#nws=mcnewsletter

 

Water Matters to New Administration

Commentary from CalMatters

All Californians make water decisions, from the length of our shower, to how we water our plants and irrigate farms, to how we manage runoff from our roofs. But when it comes down to it, California’s governor is our single most important water leader.

Governors control, if anyone does, the major state regulatory, water delivery project, and planning bureaucracies, with staffs of thousands and budgets of billions. Governors are involved in crafting, passing, and implementing water legislation. And governors react to, bring, and defend court actions regarding water.

This is no easy task. Water policy and management are highly decentralized and complex across the state, local, and federal levels. A governor’s interest and actions are often needed to bring these diverse decision-makers and stakeholders together.

California’s two recent governors, Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger, have been unusually skilled. Both responded effectively to urgent floods and droughts in ways that also brought long-term improvements.

The next governor will face similar water problems. And he will see opportunities, expectations, and pitfalls along the way.

Here are five major water problems that the next governor will contend with:

  • Implementing the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act will come to involve most major state water agencies, as well as most water users and local water agencies. The issue of depleted groundwater is connected to surface water and environmental problems. That means the state will need a more unifying framework for water accounting, data, modeling analysis, and integrated management across California’s many water agencies and interests.
  • Our native ecosystems and fishes are under threat. Managing ecosystems is the most troubled, ineffective, and fragmented area of water management in California. State agencies lack coordinated authorities and adequate resources and accountability to accomplish this difficult goal.
  • The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the hub of California’s water supply system, is degrading, especially with sea level rise and a warming climate. Proposals for water diversion tunnels, habitat restoration, and levee improvements will require government support and gubernatorial leadership.
  • Rural residents in parts of California have unsafe drinking water supplies. This problem has become intractable because of insufficient state and regional leadership.
  • Overall, the effectiveness of state government in water and environmental problems has decayed. Growing diversity of state responsibilities, inadequate development of agency talent, declining budgets, and ever-growing bureaucratic burdens are all to blame.

The governor must develop and deploy state agency staff effectively, and improve staff technical capability and organization across agencies.

The new governor will have a rich toolbox of legal authority, expertise, and resources for addressing these and other water problems. An effective recent innovation is the governor’s California Water Action Plan.

This 30-page plan identifies a range of specific gubernatorial priorities and actions, with identified agency responsibilities and deadlines. This single plan has been more effective at galvanizing interagency actions than the many individual agency and program plans.

Developing science-based solutions for water policy and management is another important enterprise crossing agencies, including universities and local government. Some initial efforts on data and science coordination are underway, but much more is needed.

By appointing capable and ambitious leaders willing to work together, reinforced by central leadership, the new governor can build on the successes of recent administrations.

Floods, droughts, and lawsuits give each governor opportunities to show effectiveness and to make strategic improvements, particularly if an administration is properly prepared.

https://calmatters.org/articles/commentary/my-turn-how-the-next-governor-can-address-our-water-crises/?utm_source=CALmatters+Newsletter&utm_campaign=ca7061b703-WHATMATTERS_NEWSLETTER&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_faa7be558d-ca7061b703-150181777

 

California: Home of 7 of 10 Most Expensive Housing Markets

SALINAS, Calif. (AP) — Middle-school English teacher Maryam Powers doesn’t take vacations. To earn additional money, she picks up an extra period of teaching when she can and mentors new hires. But to afford the mortgage on a $330,000 three-bedroom home she purchased in Salinas in 2015, Powers still must rent out the master bedroom for $800 a month.

“I work, work, work, work, work. I take every extra pay job I can do, and I never quite get ahead,” said Powers, who shares the home with her boyfriend and their two young children.

Powers’ family is reflective of many in this California city just inland from the tourism-rich Monterey Peninsula and an hour’s drive south of Silicon Valley. It’s surrounded by farmland that produces most of the world’s lettuce and inspired hometown author John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”

Salinas — known as “Salad Bowl of the World” — is one of America’s least affordable places to live, exemplifying a housing crisis that plagues California’s rural and urban areas alike. Salinas families earn a median income of $69,000, while the region’s 90,000 farmworkers bring in far less. They face a median home price of nearly $550,000 and two-bedroom apartments costing roughly $1,800 a month, according to Zillow.

Frustration is mounting over expensive housing, and some Californians hope a November ballot measure on rent control provides relief.

California politicians can’t ignore the issue as they try to balance people’s needs in a state that’s home to extreme riches and the world’s fifth-largest economy but also places like Salinas, where multiple generations pack single-family homes, people turn backyard sheds into illegal bedrooms and families worry over how to pay their bills.

Residents know rent control isn’t the best long-term solution — economists widely agree it cuts down on building — but they’re eager to help their struggling neighbors.

“Our rents are too high. Something needs to be done,” said Noelia Verwulf, a Salinas resident who helped form a group called Viviendas Para Todx or “Housing for All” that’s holding community forums, registering people to vote and advocating for housing-related ballot measures. “It’s a temporary fix.”

Four of the 11 ballot measures facing California voters, including rent control, relate to housing. One would authorize $4 billion in bonds for affordable housing.

The Salinas metro area is one of seven in California that ranks in the top 10 least affordable in the United States, according to an analysis of 2016 census data by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Sprawling Los Angeles, wealthy Santa Barbara and rural Redding also make the list, highlighting the near inescapability of the crisis.

The federal government considers housing unaffordable if it eats up more than a third of a family’s income. More than half of California renters and nearly a third of homeowners spend that much or more.

Salinas residents call the divide between the inland city of 157,000 and wealthier coastal cities such as Monterey the “lettuce curtain.” More than 70 percent of Salinas is Hispanic or Latino, according to census data, and about 80 percent of the region’s farmworkers live there year-round.

To save money, Powers, 39, and her boyfriend, Jean-Paul Varagnat, rented out the master bedroom of someone else’s home — an arrangement she repeated at her own house to afford her $2,300 monthly mortgage.

Varagnat watches their 2- and 3-year-old daughters to avoid $1,000 in monthly child-care costs and takes classes at night toward an engineering degree.

“I knew I was never going to be wealthy, but I didn’t think it was going to be quite this difficult,” Powers said.

There are mixed reactions in Salinas to Proposition 10, the ballot measure that would scrap a law restricting rent control on single-family homes and properties built after 1995 and open the door for new local rules about how much landlords can increase rents.

Democrat Anna Caballero, who represents Salinas in the state Assembly, opposes the measure but said she understands why the city’s angry residents support it.

It feels like “the only thing you can do to get the attention of people who own rental housing units is to do something drastic,” she said. “It’s the wrong solution, but I understand why they grabbed it because it looks like a solution.”

Caballero is running for the state Senate this November in the top swing district, a seat now held by a Republican who’s reached term limits. If Caballero wins, Democrats could get back a supermajority that gives them power to raise taxes without Republican support and furthers the party’s grip on power in California.

Interviews with roughly two dozen Salinas residents reveal a general belief that local, state and national politicians lack a grip on the reality of the region’s housing crisis. Few said it would motivate them to vote for a different party, instead calling it one of many issues that revealed a need for fresh voices.

Verwulf’s 20-year-old daughter, Victoria, said housing — not the midterm election — drove her to activism.

“We don’t get to go to school and get involved in community organizing and activism because it’s interesting and it’s trendy,” she said. “We have to do it now to survive because this is our life. This is our reality.”

Carissa Purnell, director of the Alisal Family Resource Center that helps Salinas’ low-income and farmworker families navigate housing struggles, say children sleep on crates that their parents use to pick strawberries because they don’t have beds.

“The things that are happening in our families are all stemming from these housing situations that we’ve created for each other, and the fact that no one is calling it out is frustrating,” Purnell said.

Purnell’s center is in east Salinas, a neighborhood of tightly packed, ranch-style homes. Cars overflow driveways and spread onto lawns, while garages brim with boxes that can’t fit in cramped living areas.

https://www.apnews.com/5ab03512959a42779442e7caa69d1dec

 

LA Mayor’s Homeless Shelter Plan Draws Heated Crowd

For four hours, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti took the heat from a crowd in Venice. Locals booed, catcalled and criticized the city’s plans to build a 154-bed homeless shelter on an abandoned Metropolitan Transportation Authority yard in the heart of the seaside community.

It was Garcetti’s first town hall to discuss his Bridge Home program, which seeks to put a temporary shelter in each of the city’s 15 council districts.

L.A. voters have committed more than $1 billion to providing housing for homeless people, whose continued presence on the streets has emerged as a critical issue both for the city and for Garcetti as he considers a run for president in 2020. But exactly where to put that housing — temporary and permanent — has become a vexing and emotional issue in recent months.

Proposed homeless shelters in Koreatown, Sherman Oaks and San Pedro have sparked anger and accusations that City Hall is ignoring residents’ wishes as officials pick sites. And many have looked to Garcetti for leadership to balance the need for housing with community concerns about blight and crime.

The moment came in Venice, where the mayor listened as residents vented and tried to make his case for shared sacrifice.

“The easy thing to do politically is to walk away,” Garcetti said several times, adding, “We can’t afford to walk away from homelessness.”

Residents unloaded at Wednesday night’s standing-room-only event, describing a culture of lawlessness in Venice that they said is fueled by homelessness. Frustration bubbled over as locals took turns at the microphone, talking about feces and drug needles in the alleys and beaches.

Some said the new shelter would attract more vagrants to the area. Others questioned why anyone would leave the shelter — a free home in one of the most desirable and expensive parts of the city — and move into permanent housing in another neighborhood.

After shushing the audience repeatedly; asking for respect that was sometimes granted, at other times not; then fielding dozens of questions that devolved into angry rants, Garcetti sat and listened.

The mayor, joined by Police Chief Michel Moore and Westside Councilman Mike Bonin, stayed until after 10:30 p.m., when the last person who wanted their ear had left.

As he travels the country, Garcetti’s broader message is that he’ll be a unifying force amid “false divisions” created by President Trump and the Republicans. He’ll fly to Minnesota this weekend to speak at a state Democratic Party event and attend a fundraiser; he has traveled to five other states in the last month and a half, a spokesman said.

But Wednesday’s town hall was a reminder of the street-level criticism Garcetti faces at home over homelessness and quality-of-life issues like crime and filth. Garcetti has pledged to end street homelessness in a decade and maintains that the Bridge Home program could be key to getting people into housing.

Aides to the mayor, who are accustomed to hustling him away from events to keep on schedule, said he had instructed them to stand back as he fielded questions.

“You know your truth better than anyone else,” Garcetti told one resident after she complained about the neighborhood’s decline. He also talked about a homeless man who lives on his block in Windsor Square and the encampments he saw in Hollywood, which he represented as a city councilman.

Critics say the proposed site for the Venice shelter — a former Metro bus yard that spans more than 3 acres — would put an unfair burden on the neighborhood because of its size. They also argue that it is close to three schools and residences.

Bonin picked the site because it has the largest concentration of encampments on the Westside, his spokesman said. The temporary shelter would run for three years, with residents staying for an average of two to six months.

Residents wearing white T-shirts that read, “I live in Venice. I wasn’t bused in,” said in myriad variations that they think a homeless shelter will only attract more indigent people to Venice, aggravating the piles of trash, drug abuse and crime they already attribute to the neighborhood’s many homeless encampments.

“There is a difference between homeless people who are down and out and transients who want to come to the beach to party,” longtime resident Dara Lasky said late in the evening, setting off a round of chanting, “Not in Venice.”

Marie Hammond, a 30-year Venice resident, told politicians that residents regularly have their bikes stolen and later see homeless people selling off bike parts. “It’s rubbing it in our face,” Hammond said.

Others attacked the shelter’s planned location, within walking distance from Westminster Elementary School, where the event was held.

“You’re putting the most volatile people next to the most vulnerable,” one speaker said.

A smaller number of people who came to support the shelter shouted back, “They’re already here.”

Bonin, who faced the most acute criticism, echoed that view, defending the Venice location as necessary to meet the purpose of the shelter program.

If the purpose of the program is to reduce homeless encampments, he said, the logical place to put a shelter is near the encampments.

When Garcetti rolled out the Bridge Home program this spring, he said he would advocate for each proposed shelter to ensure residents’ support. He also told reporters he didn’t anticipate the shelters would get the kind of pushback seen in places including Orange County, where residents have fought the opening of homeless facilities.

Facing opposition, Garcetti strained to win over the Venice crowd. He said his program’s first shelter, which opened this month near downtown’s Olvera Street, is working to get people off the street. One new shelter resident tearfully told him that his bones no longer hurt because he has a bed, Garcetti said.

Garcetti posted a video on social media at the end of the town hall and said “over a dozen” people have been put into permanent housing since the shelter near historic El Pueblo launched. “That’s a faster pace than we’d seen,” Garcetti said.

Spokesman Alex Comisar clarified Thursday that five people living at the shelter have been matched with housing units and will eventually leave, but he said no one has moved out. One person from the street has been matched with permanent housing, and seven people were placed with other shelters, Comisar said.

One resident suggested Garcetti’s feedback was satisfying, while other residents left saying the shelter was being forced upon them.

There are no announced plans to take the old Metro yard off the table. Comisar said Thursday the mayor is “strongly supportive” of the sites selected by the council members.

“He is working actively with every council district to move these sites forward to meet our goal,” Comisar said.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-venice-shelter-town-hall-20181018-story.html?utm_source=CALmatters+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a0a4b35953-WHATMATTERS_NEWSLETTER&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_faa7be558d-a0a4b35953-150181777

 

Congenital Syphilis, a California Epidemic: “Devastation of the Newborn”

Jeffrey Klausner has seen the damage congenital syphilis can do to newborns, and it makes him a little sick.

“It’s one of the horrible outcomes,” said Klausner, an infectious disease professor at UCLA’s medical school. “You have devastation of the newborn.”

It’s not just the neurological harm the illness causes, or the infant deaths or stillborn deliveries, he said, but the fact that it’s all preventable—with a single antibiotic shot.

About two decades ago, congenital syphilis was all but eradicated in California, the most populous state. But in the past six years, the number of cases has jumped from 33 to 283—almost a tenfold increase. It’s the highest number of cases in any state and accounts for the third-highest rate per live birth, behind Louisiana and Nevada.

California owns the dubious distinction of having about a third of the nation’s congenital syphilis cases. Thirty infected babies were stillborn in the state last year, the most on record since 1995.

“It is shameful,” Klausner said. “These are statistics we see among the poorest countries in the world.”

Many countries have virtually eradicated the illness by making sure pregnant women are screened and treated for syphilis. The World Health Organization set a benchmark—50 cases per 100,000 people—that it expects 80 percent of the world’s countries to meet by the end of the decade. California does not hit that standard.

“This is a failure of the public health system,” Klausner said.

Congenital syphilis is a debilitating disease, passing to unborn babies through the placental wall. Symptoms at birth can include meningitis, anemia, enlarged liver and spleen, pneumonia and mental retardation.

Why is the dramatic spike in congenital syphilis occurring in California, the sixth-largest economy in the world, with a dramatically expanded health system? The answer is complicated.

“We see some parts of the state where it’s more prevalent,” said Heidi Bauer, chief of STD (sexually transmitted disease) Control for the California Department of Public Health.

She’s referring to the Central Valley, particularly Kern County, where a high number of cases have been recorded. That area is strongly affected, she said, by “high rates of poverty, homelessness and substance abuse,” Bauer said. “It’s a variety of things.”

California law requires syphilis screening for all pregnant women at their first prenatal visit. But in more than half of the state’s congenital syphilis cases, women didn’t get prenatal care until the third trimester, if at all. Almost half of the pregnant women whose babies had syphilis acknowledged using methamphetamine in the year before their diagnosis, and 13 percent said they had exchanged sex for money or drugs in the year before their diagnosis.

“In Kern County in particular, there’s lots of meth use. Lots of transactions to get drugs,” said Jennifer Wagman, a UC San Diego professor who’s researching the cause of the congenital syphilis spread.

Syphilis has been an issue in the LGBTQ community, but it barely existed in the heterosexual community, and it’s unusual to see a sexually transmitted disease cross over to heterosexual women, she said.

“We’re seeing a mixing up of partnerships in that subset” of poor female drug users in the Central Valley, Wagman said. “So we’re seeing these higher rates in these pocket communities, where there are gaps in the health-care system and gaps in access to care.”

Another contributor, she said, is that California as a whole has a higher rate of all sexually transmitted disease than most other states. Over the past five years, rates have climbed 45 percent in California, with a record number of more than 300,000 cases in 2017.

In addition, “we are seeing more women who are unstably housed, and many with substance-use problems,” Bauer said. “Many of them have had children removed from them in the past.”

Women with previous congenital-syphilis births who’ve had those children taken from them may be reluctant to get any health care at all, fearing the authorities will take the next baby, Bauer said. So some women bear more than one child with congenital syphilis.

She said the state concentrates on reaching women who have been incarcerated or those in the sex industry, because they’re at greater risk for drug use, unprotected sex and infection. The state also reaches out to substance-abuse treatment centers and providers of homelessness services, trying to get women tested for sexually transmitted diseases even before any pregnancy.

But to Klausner, that’s a band-aid approach. Other states and countries do more comprehensive screening and treatment, he said, with close local monitoring of pregnant women to make sure they are screened, provided with the test results and helped with access to treatment. That process takes manpower, and California is hamstrung by too low a budget, he said.

California’s last budget for prevention of sexually transmitted diseases was about $11 million. The state added $2 million in the current spending plan, but only for a single year.

“That’s a joke,” Klausner said. “Epidemics go up exponentially. That’s a spit in the ocean.”

Advocates had pushed for an ongoing $10-million-a-year increase.

Wagman said the state needs to fund a large-scale investigation to figure out why congenital syphilis is rising and how to fix the problem.

“Most of my work has been in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily in Uganda,” she said, “…and there is no congenital syphilis in Uganda because they’re so actively monitoring it” through testing and follow-up. But many doctors in California think of congenital syphilis as a disease that’s been eliminated, she said.

“I don’t think anyone expected this to go on the way it has,” Wagman said. “Everyone’s trying to figure out what the next steps are.”

Klausner said he can answer that one.

“It’s not a medical problem at all; it’s a public health problem,” he said. “We need surveillance, response and intervention. Syphilis is eminently controllable.

“The reality is, if you don’t make it a priority, what’s going to stop it?”

https://calmatters.org/articles/congenital-syphilis-california-babies-statistics/?utm_source=CALmatters+Newsletter&utm_campaign=eb2162e658-WHATMATTERS_NEWSLETTER&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_faa7be558d-eb2162e658-150181777

 

NOAA Predicts Warm Wet Western Winter

A mild winter could be in store for much of the United States this winter according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. In the U.S. Winter Outlook for December through February, above-average temperatures are most likely across the northern and western U.S., Alaska and Hawaii.

Additionally, El Nino has a 70 to 75 percent chance of developing. “We expect El Nino to be in place in late fall to early winter,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “Although a weak El Nino is expected, it may still influence the winter season by bringing wetter conditions across the southern United States, and warmer, drier conditions to parts of the North.”

El Nino is an ocean-atmosphere climate interaction that is linked to periodic warming in sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. During the winter, typical El Nino conditions in the U.S. can include wetter-than-average precipitation in the South and drier conditions in parts of the North.

https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/winter-outlook-favors-warmer-temperatures-for-much-of-us

 

“Refugia” Regenerate Forests

Forests have burned in spectacular fashion this year. From Californiato ColoradoPortugal to Greece, photographers have captured terrifying images of infernos soaring into the sky and spreading to the horizon.

The fires left scenes of ashen destruction, but they did not wipe out everything. Scattered about the ravaged landscapes were islands of trees, shrubs and grass that survived unharmed.

It’s easy to overlook these remnants, which ecologists call fire refugia. But they can be vital to the long-term well-being of forests. These havens shelter species that are vulnerable to fires. Afterward, they can be starting points for the ecosystem’s regeneration.

“Those trees are lifeboats,” said Meg Krawchuk, a fire ecologist at Oregon State University.

Writing recently in the journal BioScience, Dr. Krawchuk and her colleagues argued that it’s urgent to better understand fire refugia, because they may be seriously threatened in future decades by climate change. Without them, many species may become threatened and the surrounding ecosystems may take longer to recover from wildfires.

Over the years, ecologists have called fire refugia by many names: fire shadows, unburned islands, skips, stringers. But only in the 1990s did the scientists start to pay serious attention to the ecological role that fire refugia play in forests and grasslands.

In the Pacific Northwest, for example, fires burn through forests every year, yet some fire refugia remain unharmed for centuries. Trees that are vulnerable to fire, such as Western hemlock and Pacific silver fir, thrive in these shady sanctuaries. And these trees shelter animals, such as the northern spotted owl, that struggle to survive in fire-prone forests.

These untouched islands may be essential even for species that normally live outside them. As the fire burns, animals seek shelter inside refugia. As the forest slowly regenerates, they can return to refugia for food or nesting.

For early studies of fire refugia, ecologists hiked through forests and grasslands, inspecting islands that withstood surrounding flames. Now researchers are scrutinizing fire refugia from space. With nearly 50 years of satellite data, they’re starting to piece together the recent history of these sanctuaries.

After a fire wipes out a forest, fire refugia stand out as green jewels scattered across the blackened land. Depending on the forest, up to 25 percent of it may survive in refugia, Dr. Krawchuk estimated.

Sometimes a forest refugium survives a particular blaze thanks to luck. “We might have a change of wind, it cools down at night, and the fire might not grab that patch of forest,” said Arjan Meddens, a fire ecologist at the University of Idaho and lead author of the BioScience review.

But when researchers look at satellite images from other years, they see that some refugia are different. “There are some places in the landscape that seem to avoid fire time and time again,” said Dr. Krawchuk.

“The most interesting thing is why,” she added. “What makes that green spot stay that way?”

There are probably many factors at work. In the Northern Hemisphere, the north sides of mountains favor refugia. The plants there get less sunlight that their south-facing counterparts. They often hold more water in their trunks and roots, and they grow in moister soil that can tamp down fires.

Fire refugia don’t have to endure for centuries to be ecologically important. Even a fleeting shelter can be important for local biodiversity.

In their review, Dr. Meddens, Dr. Krawchuck and their colleagues argue that short-lived refugia have a lot in common with ancient stands of old-growth forests.

“We tried to tie this all together and say, ‘It’s all the same idea,’” said Dr. Meddens. “We can start to think about these things in a more organized way.”

Today, fire refugia face many pressures, such as invasive species and outbreaks of pests. But in the future, climate change may pose a far bigger threat.

Global temperatures are rising. In many places, this has led to heat waves and droughts, which can turn plants into fuel. In years to come, refugia may become rarer as fires become more intense.

Ecologists still don’t know enough about fire refugia to come up with a broad strategy for preserving them. “That requires identifying where they are and why we think they’re important,” Dr. Krawchuk said.

If researchers can reach agreement on that, she said, they build an atlas of fire refugia from satellite images and ground-based studies. “That would be sort of the Holy Grail,” Dr. Krawchuk said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/science/wildfire-biodiversity.html?emc=edit_ca_20181016&nl=california-today&nlid=8082316620181016&te=1