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IN THIS ISSUE – “Yeah…No, That’s Going to Make People Very Angry”
State Sen. Melissa Hurtado on a governor’s water cutback order
WATER & POWER
- Water Conservation Falters; Governor’s Mandate Urged
- Massive Western Reservoir Hits Record Low; Nears Dead Pool Status
- Sites Water Storage Project Gets $2.2-Billion Loan from US EPA
- Electricity Demand to Double – Perhaps More – by 2045: Preliminary Study
POLITICS & POLICY
- “Deep Fissures” Divide CA Dems, Despite State Budget Surplus
- Last Major Republican Bows Out of Governor’s Race, Blames Recall “Circus”
- Attorney General Race is 2022 Campaign to Watch – Test of Democrat Dominance as Voters’ Crime Fears Rise
- State Tax Revenue Continues to Exceed Forecasts
- California Launches Nation’s First Online Privacy Regulator
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 service.
READ ALL ABOUT IT!
FOR THE WEEK ENDING MAR. 18, 2022
Water Conservation Falters; Governor’s Mandate Urged
CalMatters
Californians used 2.6% more water in January compared to before the drought emergency was declared, a sign that urban residents are ignoring the state’s pleas to take the drought seriously and cut back.
The increased water use in California’s cities and towns came during the second-driest January on record, as the Sierra Nevada snowpack continues to dwindle — and another dry summer looms.
The new data, which details urban water use statewide, shows that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s repeated pleas for a 15% voluntary cutback in water use are failing to reach people in cities and towns. Yet Newsom has stopped short of issuing a mandatory order.
“With the voluntary call, some areas were doing okay, others not so well. The message gets pretty garbled. With a mandate, it’s a very clear message about the need,” said Heather Cooley, research director with the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank.
Newsom spokesperson Alex Stack declined to answer whether Newsom intends to set a mandatory conservation order.
In January, the State Water Resources Control Board adopted emergency regulations allowing water providers to bar certain wasteful water uses, such as hosing down sidewalks with drinking water.
But water use nevertheless ticked up statewide in January compared to January 2020. The biggest increase was 19% in the desert region that includes the Palm Springs area and the Imperial Valley. The South Lahontan region, spanning the Sierra Nevada, mountain communities of Southern California and Death Valley, had the second highest increase, at 9%. Residents of the Los Angeles basin and San Diego County used 1.8% more water, while those in most of the Central Valley used 6 to 7% more.
The only regions that slightly reduced water consumption were the San Francisco Bay Area, which used 1.4% less, and the southern San Joaquin Valley, which used 0.2% less.
Overall, Californians from July of last year through January conserved about 6.5% statewide compared to 2020, according to state data — falling far short of Newsom’s requested 15%.
Several years into the last devastating drought in 2015, Gov. Jerry Brown authorized state regulators to order reductions from water suppliers to conserve 25% more water across California.
Now, a year after Newsom declared a drought emergency in hard-hit northwest counties, some experts say a state mandate is critical to keeping enough water in storage to survive a drought that could last a number of years.
Newsha Ajami, a longtime water researcher, said the mandate should have happened months ago, when reservoirs were low and there was no precipitation in sight. “Having a mandatory water restriction is in everyone’s benefit,” said Ajami, who is the chief strategy and development officer for research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The new state data only includes water use from urban water districts, not rural irrigation districts that serve farms.
Under the statewide mandate issued during the last drought, water suppliers were required to conserve 25% statewide — with regions assigned a certain percentage of water depending on their existing use — or face escalating consequences that could result in fines.
Californians responded: They cut their water use by 23.9% between June 2015 and February 2016, compared to the same months in 2013, according to water board staff. Cities and towns still use less water daily than they did before the last drought began: about 17% less per person.
This time, however, many water suppliers have relied on ramping up outreach and rebates rather than imposing new restrictions or fines.
Ordering California’s water suppliers to cut back further is likely to be a controversial move.
State Sen. Melissa Hurtado, a Democrat from Hanford, is skeptical that it would work.
“If we’re still not even over the (COVID-19) vaccine mandate and the testing mandate, and now you’re going to ask people to cut down on water consumption? That you should take less showers and you can’t get a new pool or whatever it may be?” she said. “Yeah, no, that’s going to make people really angry.”
Hurtado called for structural and technological changes — like developing more drought-resistant crops and fixing canals damaged by subsidence — over behavioral ones. Those, however, take time.
Water providers caution against reading too much into the low January conservation numbers: It’s harder for Californians to squeeze out additional savings during the winter, when many already cut back on watering their yards.
In December, which had record-setting storms, Californians used 15.6% less water compared to the previous year, with the greatest savings in southern parts of the state. It was the first time Californians statewide crossed the 15% water conservation target that Newsom urged residents to meet last July.
Since July, the greatest savings came from the hard-hit North Coast and the San Francisco Bay Area. The least, from the inland mountains and deserts of central and southeast California.
For some local water agencies, voluntary calls for conservation have come close to meeting their own goals, though not the state’s 15% target.
In the Bay Area, the East Bay Municipal Utility District upped its rates to fund improvements and asked residents to voluntarily cut water use by 10%.
The district ramped up rebates for replacing turf in yards and street medians, and launched an advertising campaign on streaming audio platforms and social media recommending five-minute songs for people to listen to while they showered.
It worked, to a certain extent: Water use decreased by more than 10% from July through December compared to last year, the district reported to the state. But now the savings are slipping; water use increased in February, according to water conservation manager Alice Towey.
“Clearly, it’s becoming difficult (to conserve) this time of year, when nature is normally watering our East Bay gardens,” Towey said. February was California’s second driest on record.
Farther south in San Jose, insufficient voluntary conservation prompted the local water company to institute surcharges for those who exceed mandatory limits based on 15% cuts to water used above a minimum threshold in 2019. In November, the California Public Utilities Commission approved the district’s mandate, which took effect in December.
Residents saved 20% more water in November compared to 2019 levels. With little outdoor irrigation to cut back in winter months, however, the savings evaporated in December and January.
The area lost about half of its above-ground water storage capacity due to earthquake retrofits for the region’s largest reservoir.
For Liann Walborsky, San Jose Water’s director of corporate communications, a statewide mandate would reinforce their efforts and drive home the message that conservation is critical. “I think it would just help validate all the work we’ve been doing since June,” she said.
In the aerospace hub of Palmdale in the Mojave Desert, after the area received less than two inches of rain, local water officials faced the possibility of mandatory cuts last summer. Then they bolstered their supplies enough to make it through the dry months.
The district called for 15% voluntary cutbacks to reverse increasing water use as residents weathered the COVID-19 pandemic at home, stepping up outreach and advertising for its rebate program to replace thirsty landscapes. Rebates increased by almost 70% from around $53,000 in 2020 to more than $89,000 in 2021.
In the first half of 2021, residents used about 11% more than in 2020. But the latter half ended up about 5% lower.
Still, the water district’s director of resources and analytics Peter Thompson is torn about whether it’s time for a statewide mandate.
“The momentum of having the state come out with a mandate makes our jobs easier,” Thompson said. “But California is huge. And it’s diverse in terms of the different water agencies and their available water supplies. So it makes a lot more sense to make that an individual choice for each agency.”
The state budget last year included $5.2 billion for drought response and water resiliency. Since the drought began, the Department of Water Resources has awarded more than $195 million to projects aimed at addressing shortages and bolstering emergency and longer-term supplies, including those supporting disadvantaged communities and tribes with well repairs, securing hauled water, and other efforts.
The State Water Resources Control Board tallies $9.75 billion in loans and grants for drinking water, wastewater, groundwater cleanup and stormwater capture since 2014, board chair Joaquin Esquivel said at a press conference last week.
Legislation enacted after the last drought called for urban water providers to develop water budgets based on a number of factors, including indoor and outdoor water efficiency standards. Calculating water budgets is expected to take through the end of 2023, but could pave the way for more sophisticated, targeted mandates going forward, said the Pacific Institute’s Cooley.
But urban water use is just a small part of California’s water supply problem.
Of all the water Californians use, about 20% flows through urban taps, hoses and sprinklers. Almost all of the rest is for agriculture, which pumps water from wells and also gets supplies from rivers as well as state and federal aqueducts.
More:
https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/03/california-water-use-up/
Massive Western Reservoir Hits Record Low; Nears “Dead Pool”
Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — A massive reservoir known as a boating mecca dipped below a critical threshold on Tuesday raising new concerns about a source of power that millions of people in the U.S. West rely on for electricity.
Lake Powell’s fall to below 3,525 feet (1,075 meters) puts it at its lowest level since the lake filled after the federal government dammed the Colorado River at Glen Canyon more than a half century ago — a record marking yet another sobering realization of the impacts of climate change and megadrought.
It comes as hotter temperatures and less precipitation leave a smaller amount flowing through the over-tapped Colorado River. Though water scarcity is hardly new in the region, hydropower concerns at Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona reflect that a future western states assumed was years away is approaching — and fast.
“We clearly weren’t sufficiently prepared for the need to move this quickly,” said John Fleck, director of the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program.
Federal officials are confident water levels will rise in the coming months once snow melts in the Rockies. But they warn that more may need to be done to ensure Glen Canyon Dam can keep producing hydropower in the years ahead.
“Spring runoff will resolve the deficit in the short term,” said Wayne Pullan, regional director for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water and power in more than a dozen states. “However, our work is not done.”
Though both Lake Powell and its downstream counterpart, Lake Mead, are dropping faster than expected, much of the region’s focus has been on how to deal with water scarcity in Arizona, Nevada and California, not electricity supply.
For Glen Canyon Dam, the new level is 35 feet (11 meters) above what’s considered “minimum power pool” — the level at which its turbines would stop producing hydroelectric power.
If Lake Powell drops even more, it could soon hit “deadpool” — the point at which water likely would fail to flow through the dam and onto Lake Mead. Arizona, Nevada, California, and Mexico already are taking a combination of mandatory and voluntary cuts tied to Lake Mead’s levels.
About 5 million customers in seven states — Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — buy power generated at Glen Canyon Dam.
Sites Water Storage Project Gets $2.2-Billion Loan from US EPA
Associated Press
A long-delayed plan to build a giant reservoir in Northern California to help withstand the U.S. West’s notorious droughts got a huge financial boost on Thursday when the federal government signaled its intent to loan the project nearly $2.2 billion — about half of the cost to design, plan and build it.
The proposal would flood what’s left of the town of Sites, a tiny community with just a handful of residents nestled in a valley of the coastal range mountains in rural Colusa County. The idea has been around since the 1950s, but there has never been enough money or political will to move it forward.
But now a megadrought caused by climate change that researchers say is the worst in 1,200 years has renewed interest in the project, and efforts to move the project forward are happening quickly. It is also in line to get about $875 million from a voter-approved bond, plus another $450 million loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
And the massive loan announced Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency essentially preapproved the project and making it close to fully funding the project for the first time. Final approval of the $2.2 billion will take up to two years as federal government and project officials to negotiate the terms and sign documents.
“We’ve definitely turned the corner and we have a nice tailwind at our back,” said Jerry Brown, executive director of the Sites Project Authority overseeing and promoting the project. He is not related to the former California governor with the same name.
The project still must clear some regulatory processes before construction, including an environmental review in which the project is facing fierce resistance. Unlike most reservoirs, the Sites project won’t be connected to a river or stream for water to naturally flow into the lake. Instead, operators will have to pump water from the nearby Sacramento River.
Environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, have said the project will take too much water from the river, harming endangered salmon. Plus, they say the water from the Sites project will be more expensive for customers because of high pumping costs.
It takes a lot of water to run California, which has nearly 40 million residents. The state has a robust agricultural industry that supplies the bulk of the nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables and a diverse — but fragile — ecosystem that is home to endangered salmon species.
It hardly ever rains in the state, with nearly all precipitation coming during the winter months and early spring. California has a vast system of reservoirs that capture and store water from rain and melted snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The reservoirs then release water throughout the year for drinking, agriculture and environmental purposes while also offering recreation for local residents and tourists.
But the drought has drained those reservoirs to alarmingly low levels, forcing state and federal officials to release a lot less water. That’s been bad for the environment and forced farmers to fallow thousands of acres of crops.
When it does rain in California, it rains a lot. So-called “atmospheric rivers” that suck moisture from the Pacific Ocean can dump tremendous amounts of rain on the state in short periods. The Sites Reservoir, project officials say, would capture that extra water when it’s available.
The reservoir would hold enough water to supply about 3 million households for one year — although much of the water would be for agricultural purposes. It would be nearly twice the size of the most recent reservoir built in California, but still much smaller than some of the state’s better known lakes like Shasta and Oroville.
Project officials say a lot of the water from the reservoir would be released for environmental purposes, including increasing flows in the state’s major rivers and streams.
Brown, the Sites Reservoir’s executive director, said the project would be a “smarter tool” to “provide better management of our water.”
He acknowledged the reservoir would remove river water but said the reservoir would put it back. Plus, he said the loan from the EPA could reduce the cost of the water by about 10% for customers.
“It’s just a, kind of, different way of thinking about it,” he said. “There’s a lot of fear and distrust and we have to operate in a way that we, you know, secure trust and address the fears.”
Electricity Demand to Double – Perhaps More – by 2045: Preliminary Study
Bloomberg
California’s demand for electricity could nearly double by 2045 as the state phases out gasoline-guzzling automobiles and weans buildings off natural gas, according to a draft estimate by California Air Resources Board (CARB) consultants.
Load on the state’s grid will rise as a flood of electric vehicles hits roads and people swap out gas-burning stoves and hot water heaters for electric ones, according to a study prepared for CARB by Energy and Environmental Economics Inc.
The group, which presented its preliminary findings Tuesday at a California Air Resources Board workshop for scoping plan revision to help the state to meet its goal of being carbon neutral by 2045. Governor Gavin Newsom has also asked the board to study whether the state can reach that goal ten years early, in 2035.
The group presented a series of models Tuesday for zeroing out emissions by the two target years. All the scenarios call for capturing and storing some of the state’s emissions, while adding substantial amounts of renewable power to a grid that already gets about a third of its energy from wind and solar.
California’s switch to a greener grid has not always been smooth. So many gas-burning power plants have closed in recent years that the state sometimes veers close to blackouts during heat waves. Companies are plugging large-scale batteries into the grid to help, a trend the models presented Tuesday predict will accelerate.
Consulting firm’s slide deck:
https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/SP22-Model-Results-E3-ppt.pdf
“Deep Fissures” Divide California Dems, Despite Budget Surplus
NY Times commentary bv Miriam Pawel, author of “The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty That Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation.”
California is awash in money, with so many billions in surplus revenue that the state cannot enact programs fast enough. Democrats hold veto-proof majorities in the Legislature, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has a $25 million campaign war chest to fend off any token opposition in his re-election bid.
Yet all is far from tranquil in this sea of blue. Deep fissures divide Democrats, whose control of state government effectively gives them unilateral power to enact programs. As elections approach, intraparty demands, denunciations and purity tests have exposed rifts between progressives and moderates that seem destined to become more vitriolic — and more consequential. We are about to find out just how liberal California is.
The answer will shape policy as the most populous state wrestles with conflicts over seemingly intractable problems: too many homeless, too many drug overdoses, too many cars, too many guns, too much poverty. Although some dynamics are peculiar to California, the outcome will also have implications for the parallel debate swirling among national Democrats. Because if progressives here cannot translate their ideology into popular support that wins elections, it will not bode well for their efforts on a national scale.
California has long been more centrist than its popular image. The “Mod Squad,” a caucus of moderate Democratic state lawmakers, has had outsize influence for more than a decade. As the Republican Party became increasingly marginal, business interests that had traditionally backed Republican candidates realized they could have more influence by supporting conservative Democrats. That paradigm accelerated with the shift to a system in which the top two finishers in a primary advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation. Designed to promote more centrist candidates from both parties, it often results in face-offs between two Democrats.
A contest emblematic of the California divide is unfolding in Los Angeles. From a crowded field of mayoral candidates, the two most likely to advance offer a stark contrast: Representative Karen Bass, a stalwart liberal embraced for both her politics and her background in community organizing, and the billionaire developer Rick Caruso, who has sounded the familiar refrain that it’s time for a businessman to clean up the failures of the political class. In a bow to the overwhelmingly Democratic electorate, Mr. Caruso, best known for his high-end shopping malls, recently changed his registration from no party preference to Democrat — even though the race is nonpartisan. For her part, Ms. Bass has called for freeing up more police officers for patrol (and hiring replacements for administrative duties) and equivocated on abolishing cash bail, positions that alarmed some of her natural allies.
It is hard to know just how much the pandemic, on top of the Trump years, has scrambled the political calculus. We have traffic jams at the ports that rival those on the roads, restaurant tables where cars once parked, hotels that catered to tourists now sheltering the homeless. Anger over closed schools and mask mandates has triggered a record number of recalls (most notably the landslide that recalled three San Francisco school board members, on which progressives and moderates agreed). In the far northern county of Shasta, a group including members of a local militia won control of the board of supervisors by recalling a Republican ex-police chief who had not been sufficiently anti-mask or pro-gun. A prominent anti-Trump Republican consultant called the vote a “canary in a coal mine” for the direction of his state party.
If mask and vaccine mandates have become the litmus test for the far right, the left has chosen as its defining issue a far more complex — but seemingly unattainable — goal: single-payer health care. When a bill (with an estimated price of more than $300 billion a year) made it to the Assembly floor, progressives threatened to deny party support to any Democrat who voted no. Far short of the necessary yes votes, the sponsor, Ash Kalra of San Jose, a progressive Democrat, pulled the bill rather than force a vote that could be used against his colleagues. He was pilloried as a traitor by activists.
The Working Families Party, which has pushed for progressive priorities in the New York State Legislature, recently established a branch in California in hopes of having similar influence and endorsing and supporting progressive Democrats. The group’s state director, Jane Kim, a former San Francisco supervisor who lost the 2018 mayoral race to the moderate London Breed and then helped Bernie Sanders win the California primary, argues that the state’s electorate is more liberal than its elected officials, who are beholden to the influence of large corporate donors.
Still, in the 2020 general election — with a record-setting turnout — voters defeated almost all ballot initiatives that were priorities of the progressives, opting not to restore affirmative action, nor impose higher taxes on commercial and industrial properties, nor abolish cash bail, nor expand rent control.
In the arena of criminal justice, where voters and lawmakers have consistently made progressive changes in recent years, the growing concern about crime (some justified by data and some not) will soon test the commitment to move away from draconian sentences and mass incarceration. The conservative Sacramento district attorney, Anne Marie Schubert, is running for state attorney general on the slogan “Stop the Chaos,” tying her opponent, the incumbent Rob Bonta, to what she calls “rogue prosecutors” like the progressive district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco, who are targets of recall campaigns.
It is hard to know just how much the pandemic, on top of the Trump years, has scrambled the political calculus. We have traffic jams at the ports that rival those on the roads, restaurant tables where cars once parked, hotels that catered to tourists now sheltering the homeless. Anger over closed schools and mask mandates has triggered a record number of recalls (most notably the landslide that recalled three San Francisco school board members, on which progressives and moderates agreed). In the far northern county of Shasta, a group including members of a local militia won control of the board of supervisors by recalling a Republican ex-police chief who had not been sufficiently anti-mask or pro-gun. A prominent anti-Trump Republican consultant called the vote a “canary in a coal mine” for the direction of his state party.
If mask and vaccine mandates have become the litmus test for the far right, the left has chosen as its defining issue a far more complex — but seemingly unattainable — goal: single-payer health care. When a bill (with an estimated price of more than $300 billion a year) made it to the Assembly floor, progressives threatened to deny party support to any Democrat who voted no. Far short of the necessary yes votes, the sponsor, Ash Kalra of San Jose, a progressive Democrat, pulled the bill rather than force a vote that could be used against his colleagues. He was pilloried as a traitor by activists.
The Working Families Party, which has pushed for progressive priorities in the New York State Legislature, recently established a branch in California in hopes of having similar influence and endorsing and supporting progressive Democrats. The group’s state director, Jane Kim, a former San Francisco supervisor who lost the 2018 mayoral race to the moderate London Breed and then helped Bernie Sanders win the California primary, argues that the state’s electorate is more liberal than its elected officials, who are beholden to the influence of large corporate donors. Still, in the 2020 general election — with a record-setting turnout — voters defeated almost all ballot initiatives that were priorities of the progressives, opting not to restore affirmative action, nor impose higher taxes on commercial and industrial properties, nor abolish cash bail, nor expand rent control.
In the arena of criminal justice, where voters and lawmakers have consistently made progressive changes in recent years, the growing concern about crime (some justified by data and some not) will soon test the commitment to move away from draconian sentences and mass incarceration. The conservative Sacramento district attorney, Anne Marie Schubert, is running for state attorney general on the slogan “Stop the Chaos,” tying her opponent, the incumbent Rob Bonta, to what she calls “rogue prosecutors” like the progressive district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco, who are targets of recall campaigns.
Last Major Republican Bows Out of Governor’s Race, Blames Recall “Circus”
Politico
Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s camp confirmed to POLITICO that he would not contest Newsom’s reelection push this year. With that, every high-profile Republican who ran to replace Newsom in last year’s recall has bowed out of the 2022 contest.
In a statement Thursday night, Faulconer said it was “not the right time” to run for governor and that “the lingering effects of the circus that unfolded toward the end of last year’s recall make it extremely difficult to relaunch the type of campaign I would want to run.”
Faulconer’s decision, a day before the deadline for candidates to file, completed a sweep of top recall candidates who declined a rematch. Their broad reluctance speaks to Newsom’s perceived staying power after he crushed the recall by double digits in September.
Conservative talk show and top replacement candidate vote-getter host Larry Elder removed himself from the running months ago, and businessperson John Cox — Newsom’s 2018 opponent — did the same more recently. Assemblymember Kevin Kiley is running for Congress. Former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner has not sought a second act in California politics.
Any Republican facing Newsom would face an uphill battle given California’s profoundly Democratic electorate and Newsom’s massive warchest. A Faulconer aide said the former mayor would not run unless he could line up tens of millions of dollars in support — a tall order in a state where dispirited conservative donors often send their money elsewhere.
Newsom’s 2022 opponents will include Republican state Senator Brian Dahle; GOP Navy veteran Shawn Collins; and independent Michael Shellenberger, who has gained attention for his arguments that progressive governance exacerbated San Francisco’s homelessness crisis.
Politico
Californians are more anxious about crime than they’ve been in years, and their mood is threatening to undercut the state’s leftward swing by pushing liberal prosecutors out of office.
Left-leaning district attorneys in San Francisco and Los Angeles could both get ousted this year. But no liberal prosecutor’s fate is more crucial than that of state Attorney General Rob Bonta, who was considered a rising progressive star a year ago when Gov. Gavin Newsom hand-picked him to be California’s top law enforcement official.
In a year when Newsom is on the ballot, Bonta’s fight to stay in office could be the most consequential contest in the deep-blue state — a bellwether of Democratic voters’ commitment to criminal justice reform.
California conservatives seeing a rare path to a statewide office are amplifying a sense of lawlessness and pinning the state’s crime problem on policies that reduced sentencing and incarceration. Meanwhile, as U.S. murders in 2020 rose at the greatest rate in decades and jumped again the next year, the national GOP has made the rise of violent crime a centerpiece of its case against President Joe Biden and vulnerable House Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.
“If you’re an elected official or you want to be an elected official, you need to address the crime issue,” said Darry Sragow, a longtime Democratic strategist who recently conducted a series of Los Angeles focus groups that found stark voter malaise. “It reflects a sense among voters in this neck of the woods that society is just falling apart, and that their elected officials are unwilling or incapable of solving the problem.”
Polls capture a 9-point jump since 2020 in the share of California voters who see violence and street crime as a problem — now 64 percent — and a 16-point rise in the share who say Newsom is doing a poor job addressing the issue.
Bonta’s opponents — Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, a Republican-turned-independent, and former U.S. Attorney Nathan Hochman, a Republican — have seized on that shift.
“People as I go up and down the state feel more insecure and more afraid than they have in the last two, four, six, eight years,” Hochman said in an interview. “This is Republicans’ best shot in a generation to win state attorney general.”
Schubert publicized to supporters and social media followers her visit to a troubled San Francisco neighborhood where open-air drug dealing is rampant, framing her campaign as a response to “chaos.” In his ads, Hochman has circulated images of Los Angeles railroad tracks littered by detritus due to organized train thefts while deriding progressive prosecutors as the “Let ‘Em Go Guys.”
“The Democrats were pushing the envelope a bit with their success in the 2020 election, and this is sort of an action-reaction,” said Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies chief pollster Mark DiCamillo. “The swing groups have swung back, and that’s kind of what happens in politics: It’s a pendulum going one way and then the other.”
Bonta declined to be interviewed for this story. His campaign spokesperson, Nathan Click, pointed to the attorney general’s work with local law enforcement to dismantle retail theft rings, oversee gang takedowns and curb gun violence by cracking down on firearms manufacturers.
Over the course of several election cycles, California voters have elevated progressive reformers, lightened criminal penalties and supported lawmakers who passed a host of police accountability laws — a reversal from the prevailing policies of the 1980s and 1990s, when state legislators layered on tougher laws that swelled prison populations to the point that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 ordered California to incarcerate fewer people.
Bonta stood firmly in the reformers’ camp during his time in the state Legislature, pursuing policies like ending cash bail and abolishing for-profit prisons. Progressives coalesced behind the Bay Area lawmaker last year as other candidates jockeyed for the attorney general appointment, a seat opened by Xavier Becerra’s move to the Biden cabinet.
One of Bonta’s first acts in office was to launch an independent review of a 2020 police shooting in Vallejo that killed Sean Monterrosa. He also opened a public rift with the statewide California District Attorneys Association by accusing the local DA of “a failure to act.”
But a different tone is reverberating throughout California politics and nationally as Democrats ratchet up their law-and-order rhetoric under pressure from the right — a marked shift from the 2020 summer of racial reckoning and the elevation of the “defund the police” movement.
Biden urged more money for police officers during his first State of the Union speech last week, repudiating the “defund the police” rallying cry. Similarly, Newsom sought hundreds of millions of dollars to combat retail theft after the brazen looting of Louis Vuitton and other luxury shops in California last year made international news.
Rep. Karen Bass, a progressive Democrat running for mayor of Los Angeles, has called for more city police officers. San Francisco Mayor London Breed has condemned “the reign of criminals who are destroying our city.”
As Bonta strives to stay in office, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón face well-funded and fervent recall pushes. San Francisco voters decide on Boudin’s fate in June. A recall campaign targeting Gascón has not qualified for the ballot, but it has drawn some $2 million and won the nearly unanimous endorsement of a Los Angeles prosecutors’ union that has long opposed Gascón’s agenda.
Meanwhile Schubert and Hochman have sought to link Bonta to the state’s two embattled DAs. Bonta endorsed Gascón and contributed to his campaign; in the Legislature he worked with Boudin’s office on legislation to compel prosecutors to recuse themselves from police shooting cases if they received campaign funds from the officer’s union.
“Rob Bonta is aligned with those policies and those types of candidates,” Schubert said. “People need to understand that what’s happening in San Francisco and what’s happening in Los Angeles, that Rob Bonta is aligned with those types of ideologies.”
District attorneys wield far greater influence than the attorney general over whom to prosecute and what sentences to seek. But Schubert and Hochman argue Bonta should have used the power of his office to rein in progressive prosecutors, particularly after Gascón ordered a sweeping set of changes that barred prosecutors from imposing various sentencing enhancements, seeking the death penalty or life without parole, charging juveniles as adults and attending parole hearings. (Gascón has since modified some of those orders.)
Bonta’s spokesman Click deflected a question about whether Bonta supports Gascón and Boudin.
“AG Bonta is focused on keeping Californians safe,” Click said in a statement, “not political attacks from election opponents.”
Bonta has also shown signs of recalibrating. During a talk last week, he stressed the need to “repair our broken criminal justice system” and “rebuild trust between our communities and law enforcement,” familiar talking points. But he also said voter-approved initiatives to lessen penalties and increase parole may have undermined public safety.
“I know that some folks are wondering if there is causation between those propositions and what we’re seeing today, and there may be,” Bonta said, adding he was open to “tweaks and changes” to “address an unintended consequence or, at base, to keep people safe.”
Criminal justice reform advocates argue that California is a far safer place than it was decades ago during the tough-on-crime era.
Anne Irwin, whose organization Smart Justice California has been a critical hub of political support for reformers, acknowledged that “people are definitely concerned about crime, more so than they were a few years ago,” a mood exacerbated by pandemic anxiety. But said she believes most Californians remain committed to moving away from incarceration and harsh punishment, seeking instead to address “root causes” like poverty and mental illness.
But voters are reacting to more recent trend lines, such as a spike in some types of violent crime. Homicides in California soared by 30 percent between 2019 and 2020.
“That increase in the number of homicides, it is the biggest one-year increase we’ve seen since 1960,” said Magnus Lofstrom, a criminal justice policy director at the Public Policy Institute of California.
Bonta’s allies point out that violent crime has risen across the state and the country, undercutting the argument from his political foes that the issue is specific to San Francisco or Los Angeles. Irwin said Schubert should “focus on her own backyard” of Sacramento, where the violent crime rate has also soared.
“Schubert is trying to blame progressive DAs in two places for really vexing societal problems, but nearly every community in California is facing the same problems no matter who is the DA,” Irwin said.
Schubert’s lack of party affiliation could buoy her in a statewide general election, but it could undermine her ability to advance beyond the June primary, from which only the top two candidates advance. Republican voters who toe the party line may instead gravitate toward Hochman or Eric Early, a Republican candidate with fewer resources.
Law enforcement unions, however, have contributed heavily to and endorsed Schubert, who left the Republican Party during the Trump presidency. Schubert gained fame in recent years for efforts that resulted in the cold case arrest and conviction of Joseph James DeAngelo, one of the state’s most notorious serial killers in the 1970s and 1980s.
“People are getting frustrated. They want to see results,” said San Francisco Police Officers Association acting President Tracy McCray. McCray said the union backed Schubert because she was best positioned to send “a strong message from the top on down, from the state level down to the local level, saying we cannot continue to have brazen crime happening in our communities.”
State Tax Revenue Continues to Exceed Forecasts
Dept. of Finance
MONTHLY CASH REPORT
◼Preliminary General Fund agency cash receipts for the first eight months of the 2021-22 fiscal year were $17.534 billion above the 2022-23 Governor’s Budget forecast of $117.301 billion. Cash receipts for the month of February were $1.682 billion above the forecast of $7.946 billion.
◼Of note, $6.265 billion of the total additional revenue through eight months is due to higher-than-expected Pass-Through Entity (PTE) elective tax payments under the corporation tax, a 2021 state tax change designed to allow some taxpayers to reduce their allowable federal tax liability starting with their 2021 tax returns. Every dollar received from the PTE elective tax paid generates a dollar of personal income tax credit. While the amount of PTE elective tax payments can be tracked in monthly cash reports, the extent to which taxpayers will reduce their personal income tax payments to reflect the elective tax credits cannot be determined until more complete tax return data for 2021 are available. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that a portion of this $6.3 billion may overstate the amount of overall revenue strength to date.
◼Personal income tax cash receipts to the General Fund for the first eight months of the fiscal year were $10.019 billion above the forecast of $81.162 billion. Cash receipts for February were $947 million above the forecast of $4.45 billion. Withholding receipts were $77 million below the forecast of $7.074 billion. Other cash receipts were $264 million above the forecast of $946 million. Refunds issued in February were $777 million below the expected $3.49 billion. Proposition 63 requires that 1.76 percent of total monthly personal income tax collections be transferred to the Mental Health Services Fund (MHSF). The amount transferred to the MHSF in February was $17 million higher than the forecast of $80 million.
◼Sales and use tax cash receipts for the first eight months of the fiscal year were $1.299 billion above the forecast of $20.637 billion. Cash receipts for February were $1.522 billion above the month’s forecast of $2.717 billion. February cash receipts include a portion of the final payment for fourth quarter taxable sales.
◼Corporation tax cash receipts for the first eight months of the fiscal year were $8.115 billion above the forecast of $10.346 billion. Cash receipts for February were $119 million above the month’s forecast of $343 million. Estimated payments were $119 million above the forecast of $199 million, other payments were $20 million above the $223 million forecast, and Pass-Through Entity (PTE) elective tax payments were
$59 million above the $0 forecast. Total refunds for the month were $79 million higher than the forecast of $78 million.
JOBS
◼California’s unemployment rate held steady at 5.8 percent for the third consecutive month in January 2022, compared to 3.8% nationally. California’s civilian employment increased by 109,000 and civilian unemployment saw a small increase of 9,200 people. California added 53,600 nonfarm jobs in January 2022, bringing the percentage of jobs recovered to 82 percent, compared to 86.9 percent for the nation for that same month. Eight sectors added jobs: trade, transportation, and utilities (26,600), educational and health services (11,500), professional and business services (7,100), manufacturing (3,400), information (2,900), leisure and hospitality (2,300), other services (900), and construction (200). Two sectors shed jobs: government (-800) and financial activities (-500), while mining and logging remained unchanged.
BUILDING ACTIVITY & REAL ESTATE
◼California permitted 107,000 units on a seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR) basis in January 2022, up 2.3 percent from December 2021, but down 14.5 percent from January 2021. January 2022 permits consisted of 68,000 single-family units (up 23.4 percent from December 2021 and up 4.2 percent year-over-year) and 39,000 multi-family units (down 21.3 percent month-over-month and down 34.8 percent year-over-year).
◼The statewide median price of existing single-family homes increased to $771,270 in February 2022, up 0.7 percent from January 2022 and up 10.3 percent from February 2021. Sales of existing single-family homes in California totaled 424,640 units (SAAR) in February 2022, 16.7 percent below the 15-year high 509,750 units in December 2020, but 0.7 percent higher than the February 2020 pre-pandemic level of 421,670 units.
https://dof.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/Forecasting/Economics/Documents/Mar-22.pdf
California Launches Nation’s First Online Privacy Regulator
NY Times
Ashkan Soltani, the head of California’s new online privacy regulator, needed help launching the first agency of its kind in the United States. So he called the state’s Horse Racing Board.
Mr. Soltani asked Scott Chaney, the executive director of the racing board, which oversees roughly 10 racetracks, about the ins and outs of running a small agency in California’s sprawling state government. They discussed how to handle remote work and hiring in the pandemic. Mr. Chaney also offered advice for navigating the public sector.
Mr. Soltani is “literally inventing a state department,” Mr. Chaney said. “He’s almost inventing it from the ground up.”
Mr. Soltani faces the daunting task of overseeing the first government body in the United States with the sole job of regulating how Google, Facebook, Amazon and other companies collect and use data from millions of people. The office, the California Privacy Protection Agency, will be a more than 30-person group with a $10 million annual budget to help enforce the state’s privacy law, which is among the most stringent in the country.
But first the agency has to be built — and Mr. Soltani, 47, a privacy expert who once served as the Federal Trade Commission’s top technologist, has to overcome the lack of precedent. So he has reached out to groups not exactly adjacent to what his agency will be, like the racing board and others, for help navigating his new position.
He has already encountered challenges. He and his colleagues have received reams of feedback from industry lobbyists. They face questions from privacy activists about whether their budget is substantial enough to police the world’s largest companies. The board discussions need to be open to the public. And in the coming months, they must translate the feedback they have received into hard rules.
More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/technology/california-privacy-agency-ccpa-gdpr.html