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IN THIS ISSUE – “We Don’t Have to Choose Between Healthy Ecosystems and a Healthy Economy”
Gov. Newsom announces water conservation guidance
DROUGHT
- Drought Conservation Measures Take Hold
- Water Management Agreement Reached With Urban & Ag Districts
POLITICS & POLICY
- State Agencies Mandating Return to Work
- “Job-Killer” Bill List to Test Legislature’s Left-Leaning
- “This Should Not Be a Partisan Issue,” But It Was – Example of Legislative Maneuvering
- Counties & Cities Oppose Ballot Measure to Restrict Tax Increases
- California Labor Discontent Rising
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.
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FOR THE WEEK ENDING APR. 1, 2022
Drought Conservation Measures Take Hold
CalMatters
As a dry summer looms, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered water suppliers across California to step up their local drought responses, but fell short of requiring water rationing or setting a statewide conservation target.
Despite pressure from experts urging a strong mandate, the order leaves the exact conservation measures up to the urban water providers and major water wholesalers that supply the vast majority of Californians.
It does not affect agricultural water providers, or the small water systems that are especially vulnerable to drought.
Newsom also ordered state water regulators to consider banning irrigation of decorative lawns at businesses and other institutions.
California’s water watchers said that the order wasn’t enough.
“I would have liked to see a more directed statewide mandate that would have taken into consideration regional per capita water-use levels,” said Newsha Ajami, chief strategy officer for research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “However, I am glad to see he is initiating efforts to curb outdoor water use and banning non-functional turf.”
Water systems, however, applauded Newsom for leaving water conservation up to local agencies.
“The Governor’s Order recognizes the diversity of California communities and their water supply conditions,” Jennifer Pierre, general manager of the State Water Contractors association of public water agencies, said in a statement. “Ordering agencies to exercise their specific plans strikes that important balance of statewide needs and local action.”
Under the order, which will require emergency regulations that are expected to take effect mid-June, local water suppliers must act as if their water supplies have dipped by at least 10 to 20%.
Each agency has spelled out what actions this degree of reduction — called a stage two water shortage — will trigger in their required Water Shortage Contingency Plans. This could include cutting the number of days when outdoor irrigation is permitted.
“That’s what we’re aiming towards: That everyone has a clear message of the need to conserve, but tailored locally based on the experiences of those suppliers,” said Jared Blumenfeld, California’s secretary for environmental protection.
Already, 41% of 385 water suppliers have reached or surpassed this level of shortage, administration officials said.
That includes San Jose Water, which supplies thousands of customers in the heart of Silicon Valley. Under a stage two water shortage, it would cut irrigation to three days a week — but it’s already reached stage three and cut customers back to two days of outdoor watering a week.
“Our current restrictions are already more restrictive than what the governor announced,” said Liann Walborsky, director of corporate communications for San Jose Water.
State officials tally 55 water providers — or about 14% of the water systems reporting their conservation efforts to the state — that have not yet activated their water shortage contingency plans.
Many are in Southern California, according to state data, including the Yorba Linda Water District in Orange County. Stepping up local conservation to the level Newsom called for will require increased customer outreach and education, expanded rebate programs, and a requirement for customers to promptly repair leaks. It does not include mandatory conservation measures.
“A mandate to conserve would need to come from the state. Then, (Yorba Linda Water District) would enact the level of the plan that matches the mandate,” said Alison Martin, the water district’s public affairs manager — who noted it’s currently raining in Yorba Linda.
Many residents, particularly in cities and towns, appear to be ignoring the state’s pleas to take the drought seriously and cut back: In January, Californians used nearly 3% more water statewide compared to before the drought emergency was declared.
Overall, from July through January, Californians cut back by less than 7% statewide compared to 2020, according to state data.
The increase came during the second-driest January on record, despite Newsom’s call in July for Californians to voluntarily cut back water use by 15% percent.
Over the past several weeks, administration officials have made appearances across the state, live-streaming the same request against backdrops of drought-tolerant landscaping: urging Californians to conserve water as another dry summer looms.
The tour appears to have been laying the groundwork for a water conservation mandate, but one far more complicated than the mandate former Gov. Jerry Brown issued during the last drought, which called for water suppliers to cut back by an average of 25% statewide.
“A mandate that identifies a reduction target I think is an easier message for people to understand,” said Heather Cooley, research director with the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank.
Still, she said, there are benefits to tying Newsom’s conservation order to water providers’ existing plans for weathering dry spells: “They should be able to get started on it immediately.”
The news comes on the heels of the driest January and February on record. Historically dry conditions prompted California water regulators to cut deliveries from the state aqueduct to 5% of requested supplies, down from 15%.
Though rain and snow quenched the parched state Sunday and Monday, severe drought nevertheless continues to clutch nearly all of California. Across the San Joaquin Valley, North Coast, and the deserts of California’s southeast, extreme drought remains entrenched.
As of last week, reservoir storage had dropped to just 69% of average across the state, and the dwindling snowpack shows little hope of substantially refilling them in the dry months ahead.
Newsom’s order is more nuanced than the statewide conservation mandate that former Gov. Jerry Brown issued at the height of the last drought in 2015.
Under Brown’s mandate, water suppliers were required to conserve 25% statewide, with each assigned a specific conservation target depending on their existing use. Those that failed to conserve enough faced escalating consequences that could include fines.
This time, Newsom has taken a more localized approach, instead ordering water providers to activate stage two of their water shortage contingency plans.
Urban water suppliers are required to submit these plans for drought and other water shortages every five years, and they spell out how water systems will respond when their supplies dwindle.
Water systems step up their planned responses in six stages, depending on the severity of the water shortage. A stage one shortage reflects a 10% hit to the system’s water supply, and could trigger a range of actions including calls for voluntary conservation. A stage six shortage reflects a catastrophic cut to 50% of the system’s supply, and could trigger requirements to reduce water use by half including bans on landscape irrigation.
Governor’s Order: https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/March-2022-Drought-EO.pdf
Water Management Agreement Reached With Urban & Ag Districts
Associated Press
California would pay farmers not to plant thousands of acres of land as part of a $2.9 billion plan announced Tuesday aimed at letting more water flow through the state’s major rivers and streams to help restore the unique habitat in one of North America’s largest estuaries.
The agreement between state and federal officials and some of California’s biggest water agencies, would result in about 35,000 acres of rice fields left unused — or about 6% of the state’s normal crop each year, according to the California Rice Commission.
The result, combined with other measures, would be up to an extra 824,000 acre feet (1 billion cubic meters) of water each year flowing through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. One acre foot of water is more than 325,000 gallons, which is usually enough to supply two average households for one year.
The money will come from the state and federal governments and the water agencies themselves, which for the first time have agreed to tax themselves to help pay farmers — who often have more senior water rights — not to plant some crops.
“We don’t have to choose between healthy ecosystems or a healthy economy, we can choose a path that provides for both,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said. “This is a meaningful, hard-earned step in the right direction.”
Some environmental groups disagreed. The extra water announced Tuesday would be about half of what state regulators in 2018 said was needed to fully protect the environment, according to Doug Obegi, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
In addition, the agreement was negotiated privately between the Newsom administration and some of the state’s biggest water agencies. Environmental groups, Native American tribes and other communities were left out.
“It’s a fundamentally illegitimate and exclusionary process, and it’s not surprising that the results are bad for fish and wildlife. The old adage, ‘If you are not at the table, you are on the menu,’ comes to mind,” Obegi said.
Most of California’s water comes from rain and snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada, the vast mountain range that spans the eastern edge of the state. That water once flowed unimpeded, creating vast wetlands that fostered a rich environment for birds, fish and large predatory mammals like bears and mountain lions that sustained Native American communities.
Today, all but about 5% of those wetlands are gone, consumed by a complex system of dams and canals that diverts much of the water into large reservoirs. Those reservoirs are then used for drinking water in the state’s major cities and irrigation for Central Valley farmers who supply most of the nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables.
The agreement the state announced Tuesday seeks to build back some of that ecosystem by letting more water flow through the rivers to create an additional 28,300 acres of additional habitat for animals.
“We’re never going to be able to build it back exactly like it was,” said Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “But there’s a strong discipline in science about reconciliation ecology, about recreating enough of that mosaic that we can get functioning ecosystems back. That’s the optimism, that’s what’s in this voluntary agreement announcement today.”
California’s water is governed by a complex water rights system that is based on seniority. In the past, state and federal regulators would make the rules for how much water farmers and others could take out of the rivers. That prompted lots of lawsuits from water rights holders that would sometimes take decades to resolve.
This time, state officials are trying something different. Instead of making the rules themselves, they sought to negotiate voluntary agreements with water agencies. The goal was to get everyone to agree up front on what the rules would be to avoid lengthy, expensive lawsuits.
The negotiations have dragged on since 2016, but state officials say the agreement announced Tuesday is a breakthrough. The agreement still must go through a lengthy regulatory review process before it can become official. But it includes some of the state’s biggest water agencies, including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California that provides drinking water to 19 million people, and Westlands Water District, the largest agricultural water district in the country.
“The governor said kind of day one to us as a team, ‘We need a different way of thinking about water in our state. We just we have to end these crazy management by litigation. We have to end the water wars,’” said Jared Blumenfeld, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency. “This is a really huge, big step in moving the system.”
But it doesn’t include everyone. State officials acknowledged on Tuesday they likely would not get everyone to sign on to the agreements. Those that don’t sign on would have to go through the traditional regulatory process.
For Regina Chichizola, executive director of Save California Salmon, the agreement exemplifies “California’s commitment to maintaining its archaic and undemocratic water rights laws.”
“These laws were created during a time when people of color and women could not vote or own land, and California policy supported the genocide of native people,” she said. “These agreements seem to also put the needs of large landowners and crop exporters above fish and cities despite our drying climate.”
Agreement:
State Agencies Mandating Return to Work
Sacramento Bee
California state departments are getting serious about forcing employees who have been working remotely for two years to return to their offices. The Public Employees’ Retirement System ordered most employees back for three days a week this month. The Department of Industrial Relations and some Caltrans divisions plan to bring employees back for two to three days per week in April. The State Water Project is saying May.
The orders come after coronavirus infection surges repeatedly delayed earlier return-to-office plans. Some employees are resisting going back to the office, saying they have performed at least as efficiently working from home and should be able to continue to do so.
“I like that I can focus,” said Ray Cervantez, 74, a Department of Industrial Relations deputy labor commissioner who works in Los Angeles. “I don’t have distractions from loud conversations in the next cubicle. I’m just able to focus in private better.”
Several unions representing telework-eligible state employees are fighting rigid in-office requirements, calling them arbitrary and unnecessary. They want more flexibility, including full-time telework when it makes sense.
“Telework has worked over the last two years,” said Ted Toppin, executive director of the Professional Engineers in California Government. “Setting mandatory days in the office without demonstrating any need or operational need, that sort of thinking has gone the way of the dodo bird. It’s not necessary to deliver for California taxpayers.” Department representatives have said it’s important for employees to come into the office to monitor their work, resume tasks that were put on hold, preserve office cultures, build relationships and collaborate.
“Ultimately, our compensation is paid from a trust fund and we need to ensure full-time work is assigned and performed,” CalPERS spokesman Joe DeAnda said in an email. “That’s our fiduciary obligation.”
Union leaders are pointing to pandemic directives from Gov. Gavin Newsom to help make their case. Newsom said early in the pandemic that the state would offer permanent telework options for employees, citing savings on leased building space and reductions to traffic and air pollution.
Most state employee unions have negotiated agreements that provide monthly stipends of $50 for employees designated as remote-centered and $25 for those designated office-centered.
The debate now is over how much time employees who prefer remote work must spend in offices. A state policy template published in October said all eligible state employees were “authorized to participate to the fullest extent possible” in telework, so long as their performance wasn’t diminished.
Union representatives say that means full-time telework for employees whose jobs can accommodate it. “To say someone should be in an office for two or three days a week contravenes the policy,” said Toppin, whose union represents about 14,000 employees. Toppin said the state’s engineers can do the vast majority of their work remotely on computers — including designing bridges, roads and water facilities and making sure schools and hospital building plans comply with seismic safety standards.
But several offices that employ his members, including Caltrans divisions, the Air Resources Board and the State Water Project, are telling employees they must soon start spending one or more days per week in their offices, according to emails.
Toppin said the union plans to request formal meetings, known as meet-and-confers, with “every department that has a permanent telework policy that is inconsistent with the statewide policy.”
Tim O’Connor, the president of the California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment — known as CASE — said state attorneys are “uniquely situated” to be able to perform their work remotely, particularly since courts incorporated remote hearings during the pandemic. The union represents about 4,600 employees across 105 different state agencies, departments, boards and offices. O’Connor said around a half-dozen offices seem to have embraced full-time telework, while a few are insisting attorneys in at least some divisions spend two or three days per week in offices, including Caltrans and the State Teachers’ Retirement System.
“A two-day schedule would appear to be arbitrary given that we’ve successfully worked remotely for the last two years and fulfilled every requirement that we need to as attorneys,” he said.
O’Connor said the union has filed grievances when formal and informal discussions over telework have failed, and will continue to fight in-office requirements the organization views as arbitrary.
He said he expects telework policies to be a big factor in employees’ decisions to stay in their departments or to move. “It’ll increase attrition in those agencies that have the more antiquated, obsolete policies, and it’ll help those agencies that are out on the cutting edge,” he said.
The biggest union representing telework-eligible state employees is SEIU Local 1000. The union represents 100,000 employees, including a unit of about 56,000 employees in administrative, fiscal and administrative roles.
The union under president Richard Louis Brown was advocating for the state to increase monthly telework stipends to $100, from the state’s proposal of $50. The union’s represented employees are not receiving telework stipends now. Brown recently was suspended and is engaged in an internal power struggle to try to regain his leadership powers.
Bill Hall, a board member who was selected as chairman of the union’s board in a recent meeting, said the organization has recently re-engaged with the state on telework. “Local 1000, through the vice president of bargaining, Irene Green, is reestablishing a relationship with the state so that we can return to the table and have discussions,” Hall said.
All state departments seem to be offering some amount of telework to employees whose jobs can accommodate it. Some state department representatives have told employees they need to transition to hybrid schedules for reasons ranging from oversight to office culture.
Department of Industrial Relations Director Katie Hagen announced in a March 18 email to employees that they would be required to return to offices for two days a week starting April 18.
Hagen cited a low statewide positive test rate for the coronavirus of 1.3%, coupled with the department’s employee vaccination rate of 86%. She said in her email that the return plan would help the department address “any operations that may have been on hold,” along with backlogs.
She added that the return plan would also help “ensure team cohesion, connectivity to each other, and connectivity to DIR’s mission.”
CalSTRS spokeswoman Rebecca Foree said the retirement system “considered the lessons we learned during the pandemic and decided on a schedule of 2 to 3 days of working in the office” starting April 1.
“CalSTRS’ leadership believes collaboration efforts and overall culture improve when we are able to interact in person,” Foree said in the email. “We are committed to a blended work environment for the long-term.”
Caltrans spokesman William Arnold said the department is transitioning to a hybrid work program April 1, but isn’t setting a department-wide requirement for days in the office. Decisions are up to managers based on “workload, operational need and job function,” Arnold said in an email.
Department of Water Resources spokeswoman Margaret Mohr said in an email that the department is not setting a blanket requirement for days in-office, but said that some divisions, including the State Water Project, require more days in-office due to the nature of the job.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article259922965.html#storylink=cpy
“Job-Killer” Bill List to Test Legislature’s Left-Leaning
CalMatters commentary from Dan Walters
California is a deep blue state, markedly and proudly hewing to the left of the nation’s political centerline.
California’s Legislature, utterly dominated by Democrats, leans a little further to the port side of the political scale.
That said, there are ideological fault lines within the Democrats legislative supermajorities, some fairly obvious, others faint. Their existence explains why outcomes are not always as predictable as one might think, given one-party domination.
A prime example of that unpredictability is what happened, or didn’t happen, on legislation to overhaul medical care by having the state assume total control over its provision — a long-standing holy grail for the Democratic Party’s progressive activists.
The state Senate had passed a version of the single-payer legislation in a previous session, but it was bottled up in the Assembly. Last year, a new version, Assembly Bill 1400, moved fairly easily through Assembly committees to reach the floor, but when the Legislature reconvened in January, it ultimately died there without a vote.
“I don’t believe it would have served the cause of getting single payer done by having the vote and having it go down in flames and further alienating members,” the bill’s author, San Jose Democrat Ash Kalra, told disappointed supporters later. He added that the measure, needing 41 votes to pass, was short by “double digits.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had been a strident advocate of single-payer health care while campaigning for the governorship, didn’t make any effort to secure votes for it in the Assembly and most members were apparently unwilling, in an election year, to vote for something that would require an immense tax increase to implement.
The demise of AB 1400 was, among other things, another win for the California Chamber of Commerce’s “job killer” list, an annual exercise by the state’s business community to identify and block legislation that it considers to be the most onerous.
For a quarter-century, the list has served as a guide to the Capitol’s ideological temperature because it generally includes the highest-priority legislation of those on the left, such as labor unions and environmental and consumer protection advocates.
Although the Legislature has trended to drift leftward since the list was first issued in 1997, the chamber and its allies have rung up an impressive kill ratio. Typically, several dozens bills are placed on the list and it’s rare for more than one or two to be passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor.
In 2021, for instance, 25 bills were targeted, and just two made it to Newsom’s desk. He vetoed one and signed the other, Senate Bill 62, which eliminates piece work payment for garment industry workers.
The chamber’s 90%-plus record in stopping bills it designates as “job killers” faces another test this year. It has issued a preliminary list of 11 bills with more to be added later.
The 2022 list includes a new “wealth tax” on the state’s richest residents, a bill that would allow workers to refuse to perform their jobs if they feel unsafe and an extension of the California Environmental Quality Act’s mitigation provisions to effects on disadvantaged communities.
The latter two, along with several others, would expand opportunities for lawsuits to enforce their provisions — thus renewing the annual jousting between business groups and personal injury attorneys over who can sue for what action, dubbed “tort wars.”
Fundamentally, the fate of bills on this year’s list will be another indicator of just how far left the Legislature is willing to go.
“This Should Not Be a Partisan Issue,” But It Was – Example of Legislative Maneuvering
Sacramento Bee
Tempers rose in the Assembly Transportation Committee on Monday, as lawmakers discussed Rocklin Republican Assemblyman Kevin Kiley’s AB 1638, a bill to suspend the state gas tax, amounting to approximately 51 cents per gallon.
“This should not be a partisan issue,” Kiley said in his opening remarks introducing the bill. Oh, but it was.
After hearing from lengthy public comment — both for and against the bill — Assemblyman Alex Lee, D-San Jose, introduced a motion to gut and amend Kiley’s bill, turning it instead into a vehicle fuel windfall profits tax on California refineries. Lee later tweeted about his proposal, writing, “Fossil fuel corporations are reaping record profits & have continued to take advantage of global events to jack up prices. The windfall profits tax I introduced on fossil fuel corporations would return their excess profits back to hardworking Californians.” The committee then defeated a motion, by Assemblyman Vince Fong, R-Bakersfield, to table Lee’s motion, and then defeated a second motion to consider Kiley’s bill as written. Kiley, who tried to withdraw his bill, expressed disgust with the process. “This is your government folks, right here. Absolutely disgraceful,” he said.
He was joined by fellow Republicans Fong; Laurie Davies, R-Laguna Niguel; and Janet Nguyen, R-Huntington Beach. Republicans argued that Kiley’s bill was being “hijacked.” “That is completely asinine,” Fong said. Davies said that she is “disgusted by this process,” while Nguyen said she is “beyond shocked, offended and appalled.” Committee Chair Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, came out in fiery defense of Lee’s amendment.
“I’m a little appalled and shocked that you all are appalled and shocked by this,” Friedman said, adding that the committee was just following longstanding procedure in amending the legislation. Friedman decried Kiley’s bill as “trickle down politics,” and said that nothing in the bill as originally written would guarantee even a penny of savings for gas consumers. She also acknowledged that while the Democrat-controlled committee could simply vote the bill down as originally written, but added that the Democrats are trying to help make it a better bill. Ultimately, the committee voted 8-4 on a party line vote to pass the bill as amended. Kiley responded to the committee decision with a tweet, writing, “The Supermajority just rejected my gas tax suspension bill and instead passed a tax *increase* so bad no one would put their name on it. I wish I were making this up.”
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article259864500.html#storylink=cpy
Counties & Cities Oppose Ballot Measure to Restrict Tax Increases
Sacramento Bee
The California State Association of Counties and the League of California Cities have teamed up to oppose a proposed ballot measure that would restrict voter input by making it more difficult for local voters to pass measures that fund local services and infrastructure.
“This deceptive initiative would undermine the rights of local voters and their elected officials to make decisions on critical local services that residents rely upon,” said CSAC Executive Director Graham Knaus in a statement. “It creates major new tax loopholes at the expense of residents and will weaken our local services and communities.”
“This far-reaching initiative would retroactively cancel measures that were already passed by local voters — effectively undermining their rights to decide what their communities need,” said Carolyn Coleman, executive director and CEO of the League of California Cities in a statement. “In many cases, this will result in devastating cuts to critical services like fire and emergency response, law enforcement, parks, libraries, and resources to support unhoused residents.”
Joining those two groups in opposing the proposed measure, which is currently being circulated for signatures, are groups including California Professional Firefighters, SEIU California and the California State Council of Laborers.
California Labor Discontent Rising
CalMatters
On the surface, California’s economic recovery from the pandemic is looking rosier and rosier — but underneath, worker discontent is brewing.
Nursing home workers this week held events across the state — including a vigil at the Capitol — to honor California’s nearly 10,000 nursing home residents and employees lost to COVID-19. And, alongside Democratic lawmakers, they’re set to unveil a proposal to create a Skilled Nursing Facility Quality Standards Board that would allow workers to help set statewide staffing and wage standards.
The plan evokes another controversial bill making its way through the Legislature that would permit the state to negotiate wages, hours and work conditions for the entire fast-food industry.
And it follows a February poll from SEIU Local 2015 — which represents California long-term care employees — that found half of nursing home workers are likely to leave their current position in the next year. A whopping 86% cited staffing levels and wages as their top concerns.
SEIU 2015 Executive Vice President Arnulfo De La Cruz: “Long-term care workers have been on the front lines protecting our communities throughout the pandemic, but they are quitting in droves due to lack of fair pay and protections.”
Nursing home workers aren’t the only ones putting their foot down.
Tens of thousands of Central and Southern California grocery workers voted to authorize their union to call a strike against supermarket chains Ralphs, Albertsons, Vons and Pavilions if a new contract deal can’t be reached, the United Food and Commercial Workers said Sunday.
Sacramento City Unified School District campuses are expected to remain closed today with thousands of employees continuing the strike that started Wednesday. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond tried to bring the district and unions together for a Friday meeting, but the district refused his invitation.
And negotiations resumed between Chevron and the 500 oil workers who went on strike last week at its Richmond refinery.
Given the state’s shrunken labor force, employee dissatisfaction and “ongoing employer complaints of the difficulty of finding workers,” it’s “surprising” that California posted such massive job gains in February, said Michael Bernick, a former director of the state Employment Development Department and an attorney at Duane Morris.
The Golden State added a whopping 138,100 nonfarm payroll jobs last month — accounting for 20.4% of the nation’s new jobs — as its unemployment rate fell to 5.4%, EDD announced Friday. That’s significantly lower than its revised January rate of 5.7%.
Though it’s higher than the national jobless rate of 3.8%, California no longer has the country’s highest unemployment rate: It’s now tied with Alaska for the third-highest, behind New Mexico and the District of Columbia.