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IN THIS ISSUE – “Calling Out California”

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.

READ ALL ABOUT IT!!

FOR THE WEEK ENDING JAN. 22, 2021

 

POTUS 46 on Day 1: Climate Change Actions Are “Calling Out California”

Capitol Public Radio

President Joe Biden signed 17 executive orders just hours after being sworn into office and reversed several Trump administration policies — including rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and asking every federal department “to immediately commence work to confront the climate crisis.”

“President Biden has delivered on his promises to restore science as the guide for sound decisions, and to take action on climate change,” UC Berkeley climate scientist Patrick Gonzalez said. “For example, under the worst case scenario, climate change could triple fire frequencies across much of California.”

Biden’s orders will revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, reverse decisions to reduce the size of national monuments, enforce a temporary moratorium on oil and natural gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and instruct agencies to consider reversing rollbacks to vehicle emissions standards.

Restoring California’s authority is a big deal for the state because the Trump administration limited the state’s ability to set its own standards, says Gonzalez.

“California has been a pioneer in protecting the health and the environment by making cars more efficient,” he said. “This executive order now restores the ability for California to take the lead on clean, efficient technology.”

While the orders may give California back the authority to create its own emissions standards, the Biden’s administration is telling the state to do better, according to Cara Horowitz, the co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law.

“It’s calling out California and some other states for not doing enough to meet some air quality standards, in particular ozone standards,” Horowitz said. “It’s sort of a shot over the bow telling California they can’t rest on its laurels … It’s such a change in tone and dynamic from the prior administration, and really is a breath of fresh air.”

Horowitz said the strongest indicator that Biden is serious about tackling the climate crisis is that his administration wants to put a higher value on the damage caused by climate change. That value is called the social cost of carbon, an actual dollar value assigned to each ton of carbon emitted by human activities.

That value was greatly reduced by the Trump administration.

But increasing this amount will allow agencies to accurately know the benefits of new policies that could help solve the climate crisis compared to the cost.

“The more accurate we are in pricing the costs of climate change, the better we’re going to be able to justify ambitious, appropriate levels of regulation to avoid that climate change,” Horowitz explained.

Increasing the social cost of carbon, methane and nitrous oxides — all pollutants that warm the atmosphere — allows climate change to seriously be included in new policies, regulations and projects.

Individuals are always weighing whether they should purchase an item and if it’s worth the cost. That’s what the federal government is doing, and Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh said the Biden administration is setting a standard to determine what projects and regulations to focus on.

“What the social cost of carbon does is that it allows climate change to be incorporated into the decisions that are being made in addition to a bunch of other factors,” he said.

Turning climate change into a dollar value that can be inserted into formulas is part of how  Biden wants to have data and science lead his government. The order will create a working group, which will have 30 days to publish an interim social cost of the pollutants, so agencies can begin using it when considering new regulations and rules. The final cost is due next January.

The new price tag will be a big deal for a place like California where the effects of warming temperatures — drought, wildfires, extreme weather and sea level rise — are felt by all.

It could also mean finally controlling emissions, Horowitz said.

“Part of what they’re going to do is think about how expensive it is to reduce those emissions from cars … and so the social cost of carbon will be used in that calculation,” she says.

The goal is to hold agencies and companies accountable, says Brett Hartl, government affairs director with the Center for Biological Diversity.

“There’s no charge to the polluter,” he explained. “So getting a real handle on the economic and the social costs of climate change run amok … will make it much harder for agencies in the future to make bad decisions that do have significant climate impacts.”

https://www.capradio.org/161722

 

White House “Ambitious Public Lands Agenda” Has Western Focus

Yale e-360

President Biden has an ambitious public lands agenda, radically different from his predecessor. He has pledged that on his first day in office he will issue an executive order to conserve 30 percent of America’s lands and waters by 2030, focusing on the most ecologically important areas. And his campaign website says his administration “will work with tribal governments and Congress to protect sacred sites and public lands and waters with high conservation and cultural values.”

In his boldest pledge, President Biden also has promised to ban new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters. And the incoming president has appointed the first Native American to be Secretary of the Interior, Congresswoman Deb Haaland of New Mexico, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe who has voiced her opposition to oil and gas drilling on federal lands.

In reversing the previous administration’s actions, experts say, one of the first places to start is with Trump’s executive orders. These are issued by the president with the stroke of a pen, and they have the force of law. They can be undone by an incoming administration the same way.

Much more:

https://e360.yale.edu/features/on-u-s-public-lands-can-biden-undo-what-trump-has-wrought

 

Biden Order Supports California Air Quality Standards

Sacramento Bee

President Joe Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office directing his government to revise fuel economy standards, a stark reversal from the Trump administration that for years battled California’s effort to maintain a strict cap on emissions from cars.

Transportation emissions are the single largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

The new policy is one of 15 executive actions Biden took in the Oval Office just hours after his inauguration, and is part of a larger order directing his administration to “roll back President Trump’s environmental actions in order to protect public health and the environment.”

In a separate action, Biden brought the United States back into the Paris climate agreement, a global pact to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The Trump administration argued that a national tailpipe standard should be set and that California should be required to follow it — a position that California regulators fought aggressively in the courts due to the lower standard proposed by the Republican administration. The Trump team argued their standard would make new cars cheaper, giving Americans an incentive to buy newer, safer vehicles.

Now the newly inaugurated Biden administration plans a quick reversal of Trump’s policy, “directing agencies to consider revising vehicle fuel economy and emissions standards” to ensure “that such standards cut pollution,” Biden administration officials said of the president’s executive order.

Former Trump administration officials hope the lengthy rulemaking process they took to reach their standard, known as the Safer Affordable Fuel Efficient (SAFE) rule, will make it difficult for the Biden team to reverse course.

But the automotive industry already seems to be accommodating to the new Biden era. Days after Biden was declared the victor in the 2020 presidential election, General Motors Corp., America’s largest automaker, announced it would break with the Trump administration’s effort and side with California by dropping out of litigation over the rule.

Environmental groups lauded Biden’s early actions on Wednesday, including Greenpeace and the Center for Biological Diversity.

“It’s great that President Biden will make it a top priority to issue new clean cars standards. His challenge will be making them as stringent as they will need to be to prevent severe climate change and its devastating consequences,” said Dan Becker, Safe Climate Transport Campaign director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The first step Biden should take, he said, is to “restore California’s Clean Air Act authority to protect its own people with tough clean air rules.”

In a Tuesday letter to Biden, California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked the new president to let California continue setting its own car pollution standards.

Newsom’s Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Jared Blumenfeld said California has served for the last four years as an “environmental backstop,” working to lower emissions even as the Trump administration rolled back environmental regulations.

“For decades, California has led the nation in crafting ambitious and innovative clean car standards,” he wrote in a statement. “Thankfully, on day one of the Biden administration, the President has reinforced and validated California’s role in setting strong zero-emission vehicle standards.”

With Biden in the White House, California’s posture switches from offensive to defensive. In his Tuesday letter, Newsom pledged that his state will help Biden implement a Democratic policy agenda.

With his executive order on emissions standards, Biden is also helping Newsom with his agenda, which includes a push to ban sales of gas-powered cars in California by 2035.

“In the past few years, the White House abdicated its responsibility on key issues like climate change, wildfires, and infrastructure,” Newsom wrote. “Having a true partner in the White House – and an Administration aligned with so many of our values – is a game-changer for Californians.”

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article248635370.html#storylink=cpy

 

After a Visit to Earlimart, VP Harris Seen as Strong Ally to Fund Drinking Water for Disadvantaged Communities

Sacramento Bee

A month before she began campaigning for the second-highest political position in the United States, now-Vice President Kamala Harris briefly turned her attention to a small town with a big drinking water problem.

“Utterly unacceptable that in 2020, we still can’t guarantee clean water to communities across America. It’s a fundamental human right,” Harris said in a July 9 tweet about the town of Earlimart in California’s Central Valley. “We have the solutions to address this crisis. Congress just needs to act.”

Residents in the majority-Latino town had contaminated tap water after a 50-year-old well failed. They joined roughly 1 million other Californians with toxic tap water. People of color, including in farmworker communities and historically Black communities, are disproportionately affected.

Harris recognized that fact and has explicitly linked access to drinking water to racial inequality.

During the wave of Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality, she partnered with civil-rights leader Dolores Huerta to co-author “a fight for racial justice,” a call-to-action to address drinking water access and affordability.

“(In) 2020, the United States remains divided between those with the privilege of having clean, running tap water and those who don’t,” the op-ed stated. “As we reckon with systemic racism, our fight for safe and affordable water cannot be disentangled from the fight for justice.”

The women called for a $1 trillion investment in water infrastructure to meet the country’s needs in the next 25 years, to address disparities remaining after a long history of decisions that failed certain residents.

“Racism is fueling disparities in access to safe water,” Harris and Huerta wrote in the July 2020 the op-ed, published by The Mercury News.

“Systemic barriers, including redlining, disinvestment, unregulated pollution and neglect of Tribal water rights stand in the way of safe and affordable water for millions of people, particularly Black, Indigenous and communities of color,” they said.

Water and wastewater systems are crumbling across the country, from arsenic-laden water in Pixley, California to Fountain, Colorado where wastewater was leaching into a river, and lead poisoning from old pipes in Flint, Michigan.

Federal funding for drinking water infrastructure drastically declined over the last half-century. According to a state report released in February 2020, “the percentage of federal support in infrastructure spending for water utilities has fallen from over 30% in the 1970s to less than 5% in 2015.”

As a California senator, Harris proposed the Water Justice Act, a bill to invest $220 billion in drinking water infrastructure and establish a $10 billion program to help states offset expensive water bills in low-income communities.

Californians’ need for financial assistance has only grown in the six months since that op-ed was published.

With record-breaking unemployment and reduced working hours because of the pandemic, residents’ water bills have piled up. The State Water Board estimates Californians owe an estimated $1 billion water debt. Families are at risk of having their water shutoff or liens placed on their homes.

Old infrastructure is failing to deliver clean water and the pandemic could postpone potential fixes, according to a State Water Board report released Tuesday. Reduced revenue exacerbates the financial strain on small water systems that don’t have a customer base that can pay to build costly water treatment plants to filter out contamination.

Californians — mostly low income, many Black, Latino or Native American — can’t afford to pay for water that many can’t safely drink.

With Harris now sworn in as vice president, will she follow through with equitable solutions?

Advocates who work to bring clean and affordable drinking water to Californians are optimistic, but cautiously so.

“California just sent one of our own to the White House,” said Jonathan Nelson, policy director with Visalia-based Community Water Center.

The organization is pushing water justice as a key part of the recovery from COVID.

Water is basic PPE — you can’t wash your hands without running water. Meeting the huge need for building water infrastructure will lead to jobs, often in the very same communities most hit by the COVID-19 economy, Nelson told The Fresno Bee.

“Drinking water investments is a channel, a pathway to economic recovery, especially in smaller and rural communities,” Nelson said.

Advocates are looking for federal assistance in two forms:

  • Economic assistance for low-income residents faced with unpaid water bills
  • Massive investment in water and wastewater infrastructure

Michael Claiborne, an attorney with Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability, said he is optimistic following the inauguration.

“I think there is at least the possibility that the federal government could invest in drinking water and wastewater infrastructure,” Claiborne said. “I think it’s necessary. It’s definitely needed.”

In addition, he pointed out that President Joe Biden has proposed an additional $5 billion for water and energy assistance to renters as part of a broader $30 billion rental assistance program.

The last relief package Congress passed in December included $638 million for grants to states and Indian Tribes to assist low-income households pay water bills or for systems to reduce charges. California expects to get about 10% of that.

California’s water crisis didn’t happen overnight. Both Nelson and Claiborne said it won’t be solved quickly.

“‘Will Harris be a champion for water justice?’ I think that’s the question,” Nelson said. “She certainly understands it, and she has an opportunity to be a champion for water justice.”

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article248643865.html?ac_cid=DM369519&ac_bid=-782607608#storylink=cpy

 

Unemployed Californians & Water Utilities Face Record Unpaid Bills

Sacramento Bee

In a time of record-breaking unemployment as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Californians owe an estimated $1 billion in unpaid water utility bills. With reduced revenue, dozens of water utilities are at risk of financial emergency.

The State Water Board estimates at least 1.6 million households have an average of roughly $500 in water debt — a crisis that could, though unlikely, lead to a wave of families facing water shutoffs, liens on their homes or other collection methods. That’s according to the results of a statewide survey of residents and water systems released Tuesday morning.

“The inability to pay for water bills, the kind of debt we’re seeing in households, has real impacts,” said State Water Board Member Laurel Firestone.

Board Chair Joaquin Esquivel said his panel will work with the Legislature to find remedies, both short- and long-term.

Data show Black and Latino households are disproportionately affected. All households that owe more than $1,000 are in the L.A. area, but families across the state have unpaid bills for water and wastewater services.

“People that were already hurting, low income and Black and Brown communities are those who have been impacted more overall, and by water debt,” said Max Gomberg, a manager with the State Water Board.

While Governor Newsom issued an executive order in April that stopped water shutoffs during the public health emergency, water advocates like Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability warn that lawmakers must act swiftly to prevent shutoffs once the emergency order is lifted.

Michael Claiborne, an attorney with Leadership Counsel, said the threat is simple: “the moratorium will be lifted, and shutoffs will resume. And a lot of these families that have high debt now are going to lose access to water.”

Families are forced to forgo food or medical services to pay the water bill, Firestone said. Residents could lose their homes. And they’re at risk of the threat to health and human dignity, if the water is shut off, and potentially losing custody of their children.

Running water is a basic tool for preventing the spread of COVID-19. It’s also considered a human right in the state of California. But in some places, it’s really expensive.

Residents in parts of the state, including parts of the San Joaquin Valley were already cost-burdened by disproportionately high water bills even before the pandemic – with more than 50% paying more than 2% of their household income just for water by some estimates.

High water bills show up even when the water is undrinkable due to contamination.

Residents in Cantua Creek, for example, pay more than $100 a month in the summertime for water that they can’t drink.

California currently offers no financial assistance to help residents cover their water bills. Assistance is available to help cover electric and gas bills.

Water systems also face dire consequences, data show, particularly those that serve a small base of customers.

With reduced revenue from customer payments, water systems without reserves may struggle to cover the costs to provide basic services and will likely resort to delaying infrastructure improvement projects for safe, clean drinking water.

An estimated 20% of water systems have less than 60 days of cash on hand, an indication they’re at high risk of financial collapse. Among the financial impacts to water systems is potentially downgraded credit ratings, which in turn could increase the cost of loans for large capital improvement projects.

The survey showed what some already knew: that small water systems were struggling financially even before the pandemic.

Many of those same systems fail to provide their customers with clean water, as they are overburdened with contaminated groundwater and aging infrastructure. Without reserves or cash on hand, water systems can’t replace a broken well, for example.

The pandemic exacerbates and underscores the problem.

Senator Bill Dodd (D-Napa) recently introduced two pieces of legislation to address these issues.

  • SB 222 would establish a Water Affordability Assistance Fund and affordability assistance program to provide financial assistance for drinking and wastewater services to low-income ratepayers facing economic hardships.
  • SB 223 would strengthen and extend existing programs that protect low-income households facing or losing water service due to non payment. The bill would expand a program created under SB 998 to include small water systems.

“The affordability crisis has become even more intense,” Dodd told The Fresno Bee. “I saw it firsthand when I was in the Assembly representing Lake County. It was just atrocious how much water bills were, and people are living on social security, the bare minimum.”

The bigger picture, he said, is that this occurs across the state, particularly in the Central Valley.

Funds for these bills could come from a combination of state, federal and possibly philanthropic sources, Dodd said. Congress in December passed an appropriations bill that included a $900-billion package for pandemic relief.

It included $683 million nationwide for utility bill assistance and California’s share will be about $62 million, according to Dobb’s staff. To access the federal aid, state legislators have to appropriate those funds.

Additional federal assistance could be on the way, as President-Elect Joe Biden has said he would push for another package to include funding for utility relief.

Dodd said he expects to see a bipartisan push to establish the Water Affordability Assistance Fund.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article248604950.html?ac_cid=DM367906&ac_bid=-806166608#storylink=cpy

 

California v. Trump – 110 Lawsuits:

So Far, AG Becerra is 23-5 with a $41-Million Legal Bill

CalMatters

California has spent $41 million over the past four years fighting the Trump administration over its regulations and rollbacks involving climate change, immigration, consumer rights and more.

During Donald Trump’s presidency, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed lawsuit after lawsuit, challenging the various federal agencies that set new national policies.

The costs are “almost entirely” personnel hours, which include work by Justice Department attorneys, legal secretaries, paralegal analysts and special agents, a Department of Justice spokesperson said. Also included were costs of printing, travel and facilities. It’s unclear if there were any outside consultant or expert witness costs, too.

“From Day 1, our team at CA DOJ has protected our public lands, natural resources and environment from four years of attack from the White House,” Becerra said in a statement the day before Trump left office. “It will take time to unwind the havoc the Trump Administration has wrought.”

California filed 110 lawsuits against the Trump administration. The attorney general’s office won 23 and lost five. Six are on hold, and 76 are pending. So far, that’s an 82%-18% win-loss rate over the Trump policies that state officials contested.

The cost of the litigation is a little more than 1% of the Justice Department’s total budget for the four years. Since the lawsuits are ongoing, the expenses will continue to add up. Compared with fiscal year 2016-17, the $3.7 million spent by the attorney general’s office tripled to $11.3 million in 2017-18 and nearly $12 million in 2018-19. By fiscal year 2019-2020, it reached $16 million.

The justice department calls it money well-spent. In a case won against the Department of Energy for delaying four energy efficiency standards, state officials say the victory will generate $8 billion in energy savings for consumers over the next 30 years.

“It’s not just a lawsuit for the sake of filing a lawsuit,” said Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University in Wisconsin and an expert on U.S. attorneys general. “There are some really important policies that are linked to them and policies that hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars are at stake.”

In 2017, shortly after the Trump administration put immigration enforcement conditions on certain law enforcement grants, Becerra responded with a lawsuit. The administration “cannot manipulate federal grant fund requirements to pressure states, counties or municipalities to enforce federal immigration laws,” he said.

Two years later, after the Ninth District Court of Appeals upheld an injunction in the case, the federal government had to award California $57 million.

“We have paid for all the work that we’ve done in essentially one action — defending these … grants,” Becerra said.

California also stopped the 2020 U.S. Census from including a question about immigration status.

One of the state’s biggest victories was saving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program, which protects more than 640,000 immigrants brought to America as children from deportation.

Several lawsuits were filed to block the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to end DACA. California, Maine, Maryland and Minnesota argued that the administration did not offer a sufficiently detailed justification for ending it. The cases were folded into one, led by the Regents of the University of California, and the Supreme Court concluded that the attempt to rescind DACA was “arbitrary and capricious.”

https://calmatters.org/justice/2021/01/california-cost-trump-lawsuits/?mc_cid=bb390d5b90&mc_eid=2833f18cca

 

State Senate Republicans Elect Moderate Leader; Oust Trump Backer

Sacramento Bee

California Senate Republicans ousted Bakersfield Sen. Shannon Grove as their leader on Wednesday, capping a brutal two months for the caucus after it lost two of its 11 seats and Grove echoed conspiracy theories about the November election online.

Sen. Scott Wilk of Santa Clarita, who narrowly won his own reelection campaign to hold on to his Antelope Valley seat, will take on the leadership role, spokeswoman Eileen Ricker confirmed to The Sacramento Bee. Wilk is considered a more moderate member of the caucus who occasionally votes across the aisle.

Grove, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, has stirred controversy within her party in recent weeks after posting several dubious claims online about the election results and the deadly insurrection at the Capitol two weeks ago.

The Army veteran and former Assemblywoman also wrote on Twitter Nov. 8 that she still believed “@realDonaldTrump⁩ will be President fo(r) the next 4 years.”

“#EXPOSETHECORRUPTION #USA” Grove wrote, including a Biblical photo that a spokesman said represented the former leader’s “faith that our candidates can prevail in many of these races.”

“Patriots don’t act like this!!! This was Antifa,” Grove then wrote in a Jan. 6 tweet, which she later deleted. Grove was quoting a pro-Trump attorney’s claim that rioters who stormed the federal building were not supporters of the former president, but rather members of the disorganized left-wing movement.

Grove’s caucus was also the only Republican body to lose members this year, after the state Assembly gained a seat and the Congressional caucus flipped four districts in their favor.

Former Senators Ling Ling Chang of Diamond Bar and John Moorlach of Costa Mesa lost their re-election bids in two of four competitive Senate races. Wilk faced a tough contest defending his increasingly purple district, and the caucus fought to elect Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh to keep the Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles Counties’ Senate District 23 seat red.

“It’s not unusual for leadership to be questioned after losing an election cycle,” said GOP consultant Rob Stutzman. “If someone like Sen. Wilk were to become leader, that would be an encouraging sign because he’s someone who’s proven to be a Republican who can win very competitive races.”

https://www.sacbee.com/article248636745.html#storylink=cpy

 

Newest California Export Trend – College Students

Sacramento Bee

The number of young adults leaving California to attend college rose nearly 70% over the last decade, with the sharpest jumps in migration coming in years when tuition and fees increased at public universities.

About 42,200 first-time, degree-seeking Californians left for out-of-state, four-year colleges in 2018, up from about 25,200 in 2008, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Department of Education. By comparison, about 18,600 students left other states to attend a four-year college in California.

Four states — Oregon, Arizona, Hawaii and Idaho — drew more than 10% of their first-time students from California in 2018.

Four colleges drew more than 1,000 first-time California undergraduates in 2018: The University of Oregon; The University of Arizona; Northern Arizona University and Grand Canyon University.

At The University of Oregon, close to 30% of first-time undergraduates are from California.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article248508920.html#storylink=cpy