For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.
IN THIS ISSUE – “If the Fair Political Practices Commission doesn’t clamp down on those obvious abuses quickly, it’s a toothless watchdog” State Sen. Steve Glazer
- California Leads 16 States in “Trump-Proofing” Climate Laws
- US Supreme Court Hears SF Challenge of EPA Water Permit
- Newsom Signs Gas Surplus Mandate; Refiner to Shut Down
- California’s Campaign Watchdog…Toothless?
- Musk, SpaceX Sue Coastal Commission for Rejecting Increased Launches
- “California is an Economic Powerhouse”
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) curates California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique client service.
FOR THE WEEK ENDING OCT. 18, 2024
California Leads 16 States in “Trump-Proofing” Climate Laws
NY Times
California officials have been working for months on a plan to “Trump proof” the state’s leading edge environmental and climate policies, in the event that former President Donald J. Trump returns to White House and follows through on his promise to gut them.
Whether California succeeds could impact 16 other states that follow its emissions rules, and could have global impact because the state’s market muscle compels auto makers and other companies to conform to California standards.
The strategy now being crafted in Sacramento includes lawsuits designed to reach wide-ranging settlements with industries that generate greenhouse gases, and new rules and laws that rely on state authority and would be beyond the reach of the administration.
Mr. Trump has promised to weaken every major federal climate regulation, as he did in his first term.
And he is also expected to try to blow up California’s climate policies, which have set the pace for the rest of the nation and the world. The state is requiring about three-quarters of new trucks sold there after 2035 to be zero emissions. And in a request that is pending, California wants permission from the Biden administration to enact one of the most ambitious climate rules of any nation: a ban on the sale of new gas-powered passenger vehicles in the state after 2035.
Both rules are far tougher than federal policy and could have influence beyond the United States, given California’s standing as the world’s fifth-largest economy. China and the European Union have already adopted parts of California’s car and truck tailpipe emissions reduction programs.
The Democrat-controlled state legislature passed a first-in-the-nation law requiring major companies to disclose their greenhouse emissions. It has strengthened the authority of local governments to shut down oil and gas projects in their communities. Next month, Californians will be asked to approve a ballot measure to create a $10 billion “climate bond” to pay for climate and environmental projects.
Under a provision of the 1970 Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has for decades given California a waiver that allows it to enact pollution controls that are stricter than federal regulations. Federal law also allows other states under certain circumstances to adopt California’s standards as their own.
Sixteen states have pledged to follow the California car rule and 10 states have adopted the truck rule, meaning that the California regulations would apply to about 40 percent the United States auto market.
Mr. Trump has promised to revoke the waiver. “California has imposed the most ridiculous car regulations anywhere in the world, with mandates to move to all electric cars,” Mr. Trump has said. “I will terminate that.”
At the same time, the legality of the waiver is being challenged by 17 Republican attorneys general and several oil groups in a lawsuit that may head to the United States Supreme Court.
Other top California Democrats, including Attorney General Rob Bonta, are working with the California Air Resources Board, on the “Trump-proofing” strategy.
Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said the state legislature will be ready to meet in a special session after the November election if necessary.
When Mr. Trump became president in 2017, California officials were caught flat-footed, said Mary Nichols, who was the state’s top climate regulator from 2007 to 2020 and now informally advises state policymakers. “It came as a shock,” she said.
As the Trump administration dismantled Obama-era environmental rules and then took aim at California’s policies, the state fought back, Ms. Nichols said. California filed more than 70 climate and environmental lawsuits against the Trump administration, prevailing in more than half of them.
That kind of record is not assured in the future, in part because Mr. Trump reshaped the nation’s courts, appointing more than 200 federal judges. Those appointments include three Supreme Court justices, who helped form a conservative supermajority that delivered decisions to restrict the government’s authority to regulate climate, air and water pollution. As soon as January, the court could hear the case that is challenging California’s waiver under the Clean Air Act.
State officials and lawmakers are working to try to protect California’s policies even if it loses its waiver.
They plan to build upon their most successful legal gambit during Mr. Trump’s first term. In 2019, the Trump administration revoked California’s waiver — the first time the federal government had done so since the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970. The Biden administration would later restore it, but the lapse had limited impact because California had secretly struck legal agreements with four of the world’s largest automakers — Ford, Volkswagen, Honda and BMW — to reduce their tailpipe emissions according to limits set by the state.
The move blindsided and enraged Mr. Trump, and his administration in turn threatened to withhold federal highway funds from California, unsuccessfully sued the state for partnering with Quebec on its emissions reduction program, and opened an antitrust investigation into the automakers that signed on to the deal.
And the deal with automakers, which expires in 2026, endured and grew: Volvo and Stellantis have since signed on. California regulators are now talking to the companies about even stricter emissions limits, and expanding the agreement to include other automakers and possibly other states.
Ms. Nichols, the architect of the automaker deal, also said “back channel” conversations are happening about ways to forge legal agreements to reduce emissions from other industries, including electric utilities, oil companies and global corporations that have business in California.
The state is betting that companies would prefer to enter into a legal agreement that requires them to cut emissions or pay for environmental remediation rather than gamble on a court decision that could result in much higher sums. Many companies would also like to avoid the uncertainty of federal rules that change with each administration.
More than a decade ago, California launched a “climate diplomacy” relationship with China that endures. Delegations of Chinese officials have met multiple times with California Air Resources Board officials to share information and research. The meetings have borne fruit: China essentially cut-and-pasted portions of the California clean car rules — a policy move that helped drive China to the cutting edge of electric vehicle development.
California’s outreach to other countries will continue, state officials said. In addition to China, the state has influenced the European Union, which is mandating EV-only auto sales after 2035 and truck sales after 2040.
The state has served as co-chair of the International Carbon Action Partnership, an organization of economies that have established “cap-and-trade” programs, in which industrial polluters buy and sell emissions credits. Among those economies is Quebec, which has linked its carbon dioxide cap-and-trade market with California’s.
MORE (behind paywall):
US Supreme Court Hears SF Challenge of EPA Water Permit
NY Times
The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared to side with the City of San Francisco in its unusual challenge of federal water regulations that it said were too vague and could be interpreted too strictly.
The outcome could have sweeping implications for curtailing water pollution offshore and would deal another blow to the Environmental Protection Agency, which has faced a string of losses at the court over its efforts to protect the environment.
The case has given rise to unusual alliances, with the city joining oil companies and business groups in siding against the E.P.A. In arguments on Wednesday, it was the conservative justices who seemed the most aligned with a city best known as a liberal bastion.
The case poses another test of federal agency power and will be the first chance for the court to address the effect of its landmark decision last term overruling the Chevron precedent.
For decades, courts had relied on the precedent, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which held that courts should defer to federal agencies and their expertise when interpreting ambiguous laws.
Still, the case heard Wednesday, San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 23-753, is a departure from more recent challenges to the E.P.A. brought by attorneys general in Republican-led states that directly seek to curtail the agency’s power.
Instead, San Francisco sued the E.P.A. during the Trump administration, and officials have pushed back on the idea that the case is a challenge to the federal government’s ability to regulate the environment. Its challenge, the city says, aims to clarify the provisions of the city’s wastewater permit so that San Francisco can comply with the Clean Water Act.
At its core, the case is about human waste and how San Francisco disposes of it — specifically, whether the Clean Water Act of 1972 allowed the E.P.A. to impose generic prohibitions on wastewater released into the Pacific Ocean and to penalize the city.
Almost from the start, the justices appeared to wrestle with what was actually at stake in over an hour of highly technical arguments that centered on sewage discharge permits issued by the agency.
Justice Clarence Thomas asked, “With this permit, what is at bottom the problem?”
Tara M. Steeley, a deputy San Francisco city attorney, replied, “What at bottom is the problem is that permit holders don’t know what they need to do to comply.”
She added that city officials do not have clear guidance about how to comply with a federal permit aimed at determining how much wastewater can be released without running afoul of the Clean Water Act.
Under the current E.P.A. requirements, she said, San Francisco is “exposed to crushing criminal and civil penalties even when it otherwise complies with its 300-page permit.”
She estimated that the city faced $10 billion in penalties from the federal government over the issue.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared skeptical of the city’s arguments. She focused on the practical matter of how much feces should be permitted to be released into the ocean.
“I’m sorry, no one’s asking you to shift on a dime,” Justice Sotomayor said. “What they’re asking you to do is to become responsible for doing what’s necessary, not on a dime, but — nothing in the E.P.A. works on a dime — but to take the steps necessary to control situations that develop.”
But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh appeared receptive to the city’s concerns, expressing skepticism toward the arguments raised by Frederick Liu, an assistant to the solicitor general, who contended that the E.P.A. does have the power to issue broad guidelines.
Justice Kavanaugh questioned whether the federal government was going after San Francisco “based on the past when they didn’t know what the relevant limitation on them was and seek retroactively, without fair notice, huge penalties, including criminal punishment” based on unclear standards.
MORE (behind paywall):
Newsom Signs Gas Surplus Mandate; Refiner to Shut Down
Sacramento Bee & Politico
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a bill that could force oil refineries in the state to hold onto a minimum amount of fuel — a policy he aggressively pushed lawmakers to pass in a special session as a way to prevent future spikes in gasoline prices.
The new law will require the California Energy Commission to study the effects of having a mandate and allow the agency to force companies to meet certain criteria before starting non-emergency maintenance work on the state’s nine refineries.
The commission could penalize companies as much as $1 million a day for not following the new rules. Newsom ordered the session after it was clear lawmakers were not going to approve the measure by an Aug. 31 deadline, when their work was supposed to finish for the year.
During the special term, Republicans and some Democrats questioned the effectiveness of a potential mandate and also the need to pass it now, saying lawmakers could have voted on the measure next year.
“Even if, in theory, it stops price spikes, it still doesn’t bring them down,” Nicalous Assemblyman James Gallagher, the top Republican in the body, told reporters. “The problem is the price is too damn high, right now.”
And, said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, “There could be collateral damage. If oil companies have to maintain higher levels (of product), they may have to build new tanks and new infrastructure and rotate through that.”
That would mean new costs, costs likely to be passed on to consumers, De Haan said. California has long had the nation’s highest gasoline prices. The average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline Tuesday was $4.68, according to AAA, the nation’s highest. The national average was $3.20.
The State Building and Construction Trades Council of California also opposed the bill due to a concern that refineries could be more unsafe for workers if companies don’t have as much say on when they conduct maintenance.
Lawmakers tried to address some of the worries about the new law by requiring the commission to protect the health and safety of workers and to only implement a minimum fuel requirement if it determines that doing so will save customers more money than it will cost.
Newsom, during a press conference after signing the bill, said lawmakers would do more on the issue of prices at the pump in the future. “There’s a deep understanding that this is not the final word as it relates to the issue of gas prices in the state of California. Quite the contrary.”
Newsom also took swipes at oil companies and the Western States Petroleum Association trade group for what he said were “mistruths” about the bill in recent weeks. “They’ve been manipulating you, they’ve been lying to you, they’ve been playing you.”
Newsom has accused companies of spiking their profits by not keeping more gasoline on hand ahead of maintenance work. The state’s Division of Petroleum Market Oversight estimates refinery maintenance last year caused a price spike that cost Californians up to $2.2 billion.
“Today’s press conference was not about solving California’s real challenges—it was a political performance,” said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the petroleum association’s CEO. “Instead of offering real solutions, the Governor chose to demonize an industry that powers California’s economy and fuels the daily lives of millions.”
The trade group argued the bill could actually raise prices by forcing refiners to hold onto more gasoline than it might otherwise. It also criticized the bill for giving the unelected energy commission the power to instill and oversee a potential mandate. Members of the commission are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate.
Phillips 66 on Wednesday said it would close its refinery near Los Angeles.
The closure would knock out about 8 percent of refining capacity in a state that barely produces enough of its special-blend gasoline to meet demand from its 31 million gas-powered vehicles.
Phillips 66 spokesperson Al Ortiz told Politico in an email that the announcement was not in response to Newsom signing the law. He said the company would work with California to maintain and maybe even increase gas supplies, but didn’t say where the new fuel would come from. Ortiz added that the company is not exiting California, noting its remaining San Francisco refinery and other facilities.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article293950449.html#storylink=cpy
California’s Toothless Campaign Watchdog?
CalMatters
Plagued by what some staff called an “enormous” backlog, California’s campaign watchdog has sometimes taken years to resolve cases — exposing violations or exonerating politicians only after they left office or won an election, a CalMatters analysis has found.
While the agency has worked to expedite enforcement, advocates, officials and past and current commissioners say delayed actions can diminish public trust in the state’s ability to prosecute corruption effectively.
“If the FPPC doesn’t really clamp down on those obvious abuses quickly, then it’s a toothless watchdog,” said state Sen. Steve Glazer, an Orinda Democrat who has championed laws to tighten campaign ethics regulations.
The lag in enforcement could leave some voters in the dark in upcoming elections. As of last week:
- On the November ballot, 20 of the 305 candidates for the state Legislature, U.S. House and U.S. Senate have an open case against them, commission data shows.
- Two of the state’s eight constitutional officers are now under investigation — Gov. Gavin Newsom for late filings and Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara for allegations of “laundered campaign contributions” — and both won re-election as their cases were pending.
- Seven of the eight top constitutional officers — all but Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis — have had past violations, ranging from improper disclosures to illegal campaign contributions, according to commission enforcement records.
The commission, created by California voters through a 1974 ballot measure following the Watergate scandal, has policed campaign and ethics violations statewide and in local races for 50 years. The backlog was an open secret among staffers and commissioners, with some senior counsels arguing in 2022 the problem had existed for “at least 20 years.”
Over the past decade, the agency has seen its caseload wax and wane, peaking in April 2020 at 1,874 unresolved cases, staff reports show. Among cases resolved between 2017 and 2023, 15% took more than two years to close, with the longest lasting almost seven years, according to a CalMatters analysis of data obtained through a public records request.
The agency has added staff, expanded programs to educate political candidates and streamlined enforcement of minor cases while freeing up resources for more serious violations, said commission Chairperson Adam E. Silver.
In 2022, it adopted a policy directive to cap the carryover caseload at 625 each year and mandated a 75% reduction in cases opened before 2023, causing the backlog to plunge, he said.
“So long as that continues, then I would say the problem of cases building up and having a ‘backlog’ that grows and grows and grows, that’s resolved,” Silver said in an interview.
But some were concerned the agency may have become more lenient as it closed cases more quickly. Last year, the commission issued the lowest dollar amount of penalties and the highest percentage of warning letters — a method reserved for low-level offenses with minimal public harm — in the past decade, according to commission reports. Four in five cases where violations were found resulted in a letter.
Delays could create a sense that “there’s justice denied,” said commission vice chairperson Catharine Baker. “If you act too slowly, if there isn’t a resolution, potential bad actors aren’t brought to any real significant justice, and the public can’t have faith that the rules are being enforced — that there is someone watching the henhouse.”
Some open cases have also lasted years. Newsom, for instance, has been under a previously unreported investigation since 2021 for late disclosure of behested payments — donations to a person, nonprofit or a state agency at the behest of the public official that ethics experts say can be another avenue for special interests to curry favor. Another probe for potential campaign reporting violations has also been open since 2021, commission records show.
Officials are required by state law to disclose behested payments that total $5,000 or more from a single donor in a year, and upon meeting that dollar threshold, the official must report the payments within 30 days.
Between 2019 and 2021, Newsom’s office failed to file 17 behested payments totaling more than $14 million on time, including one filed more than a year after the due date, according to records obtained by CalMatters via a public records request.
In emails to the commission, Newsom’s staff blamed the delays on donors notifying the governor’s office of the payments after filing deadlines. They also said the governor takes his “reporting obligations very seriously” and submitted the documents within days of discovering the payments.
Lara — who accepted money in 2019 from donors with ties to insurers his agency oversaw — has been under investigation for two years for allegations of laundering campaign donations, records show. Between 2021 and 2022, insurance companies funneled $122,500 through the leadership fund of the California Legislative LGBTQ caucus — where Lara served as vice chairperson and remains an ex-officio member — to support Lara, according to a complaint filed by Carmen Balber, executive director of the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which has also faced criticism for not disclosing its donors.
Lara told CalMatters last month he was not in touch with the agency and referred questions to his campaign attorney. The attorney, along with other groups named in the investigation, did not respond to a CalMatters inquiry.
Former state Assemblymember Bill Brough spent campaign cash on family cell phone plans, hotel stays and a trip to a Boston Red Sox game, according to the commission, which didn’t conclude his case until last year, three years after he left office.
Even he complained: “I just wanted to go on with my life,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
A three-year investigation into state Assemblymember Diane Papan wrapped in May, resulting in a warning letter for improper reporting of contributions when she ran for San Mateo City Council in 2020, according to records obtained by CalMatters. Papan’s campaign provided records to the agency in 2021, but the staff waited three years before reaching back out — so long that Papan’s attorney, former FPPC enforcement chief Gary Winuk, questioned the lack of action in an email to the staff, and one witness the agency interviewed said he no longer remembered details of the contributions in question, records show.
Former commission chairperson Ann Ravel said while some cases are complicated and time-consuming, late filings of behested payments and campaign finance forms should be easy cases to close. “We know there are deadlines,” Ravel said. “If they cannot monitor that, what are they monitoring?”
Even with complex cases, Ravel argued, swift resolution is possible. Right before the November 2012 election, the agency under her leadership forced Koch Brothers-associated groups to disclose $11 million in illegal spending on a pair of propositions through an emergency ruling from the California Supreme Court. The groups were fined $1 million a year later.
“That transparency was so important to the public, to the press, in order for there to be fairness in the system and also for people to have trust in government,” she said.
But speed is not all, Silver argued. “Just because you are spending a lot of time on one case doesn’t make it a waste of time,” he said. “It could have the effect of limiting complaints and violations in the future.”
Delays create loopholes for officials willing to chock up the penalties as the cost of winning an election, said McMorris of California Common Cause, who likened the state campaign finance laws to “a tube of toothpaste under pressure.”
“There’s multiple holes in it. You plug one, those bad actors immediately go find the other hole that they can exploit,” he said. “It diminishes public trust in the democratic process and in our representatives.”
And for public officials who “inadvertently” made a mistake or who are innocent, the lengthy probe is “like a sword hanging over your head” even after leaving office, said Glazer, the state legislator.
State Treasurer Fiona Ma — who was fined $11,500 earlier this year for failing to disclose more than $860,000 in payments in her 2018 campaign — said the yearslong investigation meant extra costs to retain her treasurer and attorney.
“I’m just going to have to pay a fine at some point, so just send me the bill,” Ma, a 2026 candidate for lieutenant governor, told CalMatters. “But you know what? This is … the cost of doing business in elected office. It just is. Everybody gets fined, just how much.”
Anecdotes of backlogs and delays reached Baker before she was appointed to the commission in 2021, she said. And early in her tenure, she quickly noticed how old cases were by the time staff presented them for commission decisions.
“I said ‘Look, there’s a problem. It’s severe. And we must do something,’” Baker said in an interview with CalMatters, joined by Wierenga, the spokesperson. “If we don’t, our tenures on this commission … will be partly a failure.”
The influx of complaints and referrals from state and local agencies contributed to the backlog, Baker said. Over the past decade, the number of complaints and referrals has generally crept up and surged in election years, peaking in 2022 with 3,103, compared to a low of 1,205 in 2015, according to the CalMatters analysis.
Lawmakers also assigned the agency more duties over the years, Baker and Wierenga noted. Wierenga said the agency’s caseload jumped in 2015 when the California Secretary of State began referring campaigns that failed to file a $50 annual fee. The commission received 2,460 referrals on May 1, 2015 — almost five times the number of referrals from all other agencies combined that year, he wrote in an email. In 2021, the enforcement of the law was transferred back to the Secretary of State.
Laws increasing disclosure of donors in campaign ads — including a 2018 law that regulated the text, color and font size — added more work for the commission, Wierenga said.
Additionally, staff responsible for parsing out complaints and referrals worth investigating sometimes opened cases when they shouldn’t have, especially under the pressure of high caseloads, Lindsay told the commission in January. Inexperienced staff also lacked understanding of the law, leaving the manager scrambling to train them, according to a 2022 memorandum by unit manager Tara Stock.
Burdensome red tape — including layers of reviews and approvals required to escalate a case — and a digital recordkeeping system that’s hard to navigate compounded the problem, staff said. In a 2022 letter, staff described the system as “slow, cumbersome, and sometimes, downright tedious.”
Some lawmakers and ethics advocates — while bemoaning slow enforcement — argue the agency is chronically understaffed and underfunded. The department’s budget and its number of employees, however, have steadily climbed — from $11.8 million and 66 employees in fiscal year 2017-18 to $19.6 million and 109 employees this year, according to state budget records.
The increases were largely tied to additional duties, however, and the agency’s base funding is not adequate, argued McMorris of California Common Cause. Elected officials may lack the political will to dedicate more money to the agency, or to expand the agency’s authority, McMorris said.
“You are essentially asking the politicians who are being policed by this agency to increase the budget for policing,” he said. “There’s a tendency to do the least amount and only do it when there’s a scandal or evidence that something’s being exploited.”
MORE:
https://calmatters.org/politics/elections/2024/10/campaign-finance-california-fppc-enforcement/
Musk, SpaceX Sue Coastal Commission for Rejecting Increased Launches
Wall Street Journal excerpt
Elon Musk’s space company sued regulators in California after officials rejected a request to allow more SpaceX rocket launches, claiming the decision was politically motivated.
In a 284-page lawsuit, filed Tuesday in California’s central district, SpaceX accused regulators of overreaching their authority and violating Musk’s right to free speech.
The lawsuit marks the billionaire’s latest volley in a long-running feud with the Golden State.
The California Coastal Commission, a state agency that regulates development along the state’s coastline, Thursday rejected a request by the U.S. Space Force to give SpaceX permission to launch up to 50 rockets a year from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara.
Speaking at the meeting, commissioner Gretchen Newsom referenced Musk’s social-media posts about the upcoming presidential election and accused him of spreading falsehoods about Hurricane Helene.
“Right now Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet,” said Newsom, who has no relation to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The commission rejected the request by six votes to four.
“Rarely has a government agency made so clear that it was exceeding its authorized mandate to punish a company for the political views and statements of its largest shareholder and CEO,” SpaceX said in its complaint.
Newsom claimed Musk harbored an anti-California agenda, saying the CEO had enjoyed billions of dollars in state subsidies while threatening to relocate his companies to Texas due to “bigoted beliefs against California’s safeguards and protections over our transgender community.”
She also questioned SpaceX’s commitment to workplace safety, referencing fines the company has received and citing allegations of injuries at the company’s facilities.
The commission’s vote doesn’t necessarily mean that SpaceX won’t be able to increase its launch rate from California. SpaceX is a major government contractor, launching payloads of the Pentagon and selling satellite services to national-security and other federal agencies, according to military officials and commission documents.
As such, military officials believe SpaceX launches from the California base are considered a federal agency activity.
“We are assessing the outcome from Thursday, and it is too soon to comment on launch cadence beyond the current capacity constraint,” Col. Mark Shoemaker, commander of the Space Force unit that oversees Vandenberg, said in a statement.
“California is an Economic Powerhouse”
Public Policy Institute of California
- In 2023, California’s GDP was about $3.9 trillion, comprising 14% of national GDP ($27.7 trillion). Texas and New York are the next largest state economies at 9% and 8%, respectively.
- California’s economy ranks 5th internationally, behind the US, China, Germany, and Japan. On a per capita basis, California’s GDP is greater than all of these countries.
- California’s economy has grown relatively slowly in recent years, averaging 2.3% per year between 2020 and 2023, compared to 3.9% on average over the previous four years. By comparison, Florida (4.6%) and Texas (3.9%) grew faster than California since 2020.
- Over the long term, California’s economy has grown faster than the nation overall (111% vs 75% over the past 25 years) and faster than other large states except for Texas (128%). On a per capita basis, California’s economic growth outpaces all other large states over the long term.