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IN THIS ISSUE – “California Is Going to Continue On, We Need the World to Join Us”

CLIMATE CHANGE

POLITICS & CALIFORNIA ECONOMY

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 OCT. 29, 2021

 

Newsom Takes Global Center Stage at UN Climate Change Conference

CalMatters

It’s what some are calling the last, best chance for world leaders to agree on how to stop catastrophic climate change, and what others say could be fruitless. Either way, California will be well represented.

The 26th United Nations climate change conference will draw global leaders to Glasgow, Scotland next week, including a 23-member official delegation from California led by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The meeting comes as the extreme impacts of climate change continue to pummel California, which saw torrential rains this week even in the midst of a devastating drought.

“The stakes are high. It’s an important issue in California,” said Ken Alex, senior policy advisor on climate and environment under former Gov. Jerry Brown and now director of Project Climate at the University of California, Berkeley. Rattling off climate impacts such as drought, flooding, sea level rise and wildfires, Alex added: “It’s very real for California. California is going to continue on, but we need to see the world join us.”

This year’s conference is the first since President Joe Biden took office and rejoined the Paris climate agreement to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution worldwide, marking a seismic shift in the national approach to tackling climate change. It also marks a fundamental change to California’s role, no longer battling a federal foe in former President Donald Trump.

“Brown did a wonderful job with the wicked man from Washington — with saying, ‘We are different from them, and we have our own policy,’” said state Sen. Bob Wieckowski, who will be attending the climate conference.

Now, the Fremont Democrat said, Newsom has to go beyond that and show concrete, short-term plans: “He has to write a new chapter on commitment.”

Though California doesn’t have an official seat at a negotiating table reserved for nations, the conference is a chance for California to burnish its reputation as a climate leader and weigh in on critical issues, such as carbon trading and methane pollution.

It’s also a chance for lawmakers, top state environmental officials and Newsom to discuss the state’s climate strategy amongst themselves, now that Newsom has survived the Sept. 14 recall election and is laying the groundwork for his 2022 reelection campaign.

“Climate-minded voters showed up by the millions for Newsom,” Ellie Cohen, CEO of The Climate Center, wrote in a Sacramento Bee commentary. And at the conference, “we’re expecting him to show up for us.”

Environmental advocates have sent Newsom off to Scotland with a wish list of action items, urging the governor to “meet the moment” by announcing more ambitious climate policies, such as stopping permits for all new oil and gas development.

Brown, who has appeared at the annual summits, himself, said Newsom has to persuade other leaders about the need for action.

“He’ll get ideas from others, and that’s good. But most importantly is to get others to do what California is doing so we’re not the outlier. We don’t want to have rules that the rest of the world doesn’t have,” Brown told CalMatters. “California’s there in an important way because we’re a carbon polluter, and we’re also a carbon problem solver.”

Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, however, is more skeptical that the conference would lead to meaningful climate action.

“What does a promise and a pledge mean in the end? Nothing,” Schwarzenegger said Wednesday at an environmental justice conference hosted by the South Coast Air Quality Management District. “It’s just over and over, year after year, they make these pledges. And they come out, they declare victory, but then nothing is getting done. And so this is what I’m worried about.”

California enters the conference with some clear climate bona fides. The state reached its 2020 goals to cut greenhouse gas pollution to 1990 levels four years early, scrubbed carbon from the electricity sector with ambitious renewable energy standards, and led the nation with clean car rules.

But California is caught in a balancing act. Despite its climate forward image, California is the seventh largest producer of crude oil in the country. And the state’s top clean air regulator has warned that California will need much greater cuts in greenhouse gas pollution to reach its goals, which the state auditor has also said California will fail to meet if it doesn’t pick up the pace.

Newsom has drawn criticism from environmental advocates for not doing more to curb oil and gas production, which disproportionately affects low-income communities of color. Last week, however, he publicly backed tougher rules for oil and gas wells, a move environmental advocates applauded, after ordering a ban on new fracking by 2024.

“Newsom does have a habit of overpromising and under delivering. But I think he has a real opportunity at COP26 to be a transformative leader,” said RL Miller, a member of the Democratic National Committee and president of Climate Hawks Vote. “People will be listening to the speeches, but equally, listening for action.”

Newsom may like to call California a nation-state, but as a sub-national government, it doesn’t have an official role in the climate negotiations.

The state has, however, had an outsized voice in international discussions about global warming — providing a clear example that economic growth and cuts in carbon emissions can happen at the same time, in the same place. In 2015, Brown joined with the leaders of 11 other states and provinces, agreeing to limit global temperatures from climbing more than 2 degrees Celsius. The Under2 Coalition says it has since grown to include 260 governments.

When the Trump administration abandoned the Paris climate accord, Brown stepped in. As a de facto climate leader, he rallied states and regions at the international summit in 2017 — warning in an interview that “Trump better get on board or get out of the way.”

“The stakes for the COP itself are very high, because the U.S. is returning to the fold,” said Alex, Brown’s climate “concierge.” “California has been very steady for a long time. But in the four years of Trump, California stuck to its guns, its economy continued. And now, we have a lot of credibility worldwide.”

All eyes should be on the U.S. and China, Brown said, calling everything else a “distraction.” Tensions between the two nations could hinder climate negotiations. “Without Xi Jinping and Biden being able to work together, then everything else will not succeed,” he said in an interview Wednesday.

“We’re not doing enough, and the national leaders, particularly China and the U.S., have to exert themselves and become more imaginative and do more,” Brown said. “The rest of the people are more cheerleading from the stands.”

He said the baton on climate change leadership has been passed from governor to governor, starting with Gray Davis, then Schwarzenegger, himself and now Newsom.

“Newsom is carrying the ball to the next level,” Brown said. “It’s been a continuous movement in the right direction, although not anywhere near where it needs to be to get the job done.”

California’s lawmakers have plans of their own for the meeting, including a session with members of the Scottish Parliament to discuss the sub-national governments’ climate efforts, Wieckowski said. Many in the legislative contingent said they were eager to bring ideas home.

“This was not a good year for climate policy legislation in the Legislature, and I’m anxious to go and see what other people are doing, and get energized by their efforts — and see if we can’t bring it back to California,” said Sen. John Laird, a Democrat from Monterey and former Natural Resources Secretary under Brown.

Environmental advocates call this meeting an opportunity to regain California’s climate ambition.

“The bloom is no longer on the rose of California’s general reputation as a leader,” said environmental advocate Miller. “California has an opportunity to reclaim its mantle as a leader, but only if Gavin Newsom starts taking seriously the process of winding down the fossil fuel industry.”

Part of the conversation at the annual summit will be establishing rules around emissions trading. But independent experts and state lawmakers have raised concerns that California’s landmark cap-and-trade program — the first in the nation to create a carbon market for all segments of the economy — might be too weak to reach the state’s greenhouse gas targets. Nearly a decade after its launch, California has not enticed any other western states to join its cap-and-trade program.

Neena Mohan, climate justice manager for the California Environmental Justice Alliance, said that climate solutions must prioritize direct reductions in emissions and called on Newsom to champion “California’s bold actions towards an oil and gas phaseout and end to neighborhood drilling, while sharing the lessons learned from the failures of cap and trade.”

As for transportation, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office said last year it remains largely unclear how effectively California’s policies are reducing climate-warming pollution from cars and trucks. The state auditor in February slammed the California Air Resources Board for overestimating the greenhouse gas cuts from clean car incentive programs. Newsom ordered the air board to come up with a plan for phasing out the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, but the regulations are still in the works.

The Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP26, is part international negotiation, part political stage and part climate palooza. Even with COVID-19 limits, about 190 world leaders and tens of thousands of others are expected to converge on Glasgow, starting Monday. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, however, pulled out at the last minute after a hospital visit.

The program lays out plenary sessions and mandated workshops, but also “innovative spaces and experiences” hosted by major corporations including Microsoft, Hitachi and the British grocery chain Sainsbury’s. Attendees can visit creative exhibits from local artists, and a showcase of electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles.

It’s like “a trade association meeting, where most of the people who work on these issues get together and get to see each other and talk to each other and reinforce each other,” Mary Nichols, the former California Air Resources Board chairperson, told CalMatters.

She has attended a half-dozen of them. “You go because everybody else is going, because it’s a good place to see people and follow up or create relationships,” Nichols said. “It’s a global problem, after all.”

This particular conference comes at a pivotal moment, six years after the landmark COP21 where 196 countries adopted the Paris Agreement. The international treaty is aimed at cutting planet-heating greenhouse gas pollution enough to limit global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius.

Global leaders have been hashing out the playbook for the Paris Climate Agreement ever since, negotiating over the role of carbon markets in curbing climate change, how to spur further greenhouse gas cuts, and ensuring funding for developing countries to cover the costs of adapting to a warming world. Though developed nations pledged to contribute $100 billion per year by 2020, they appear to have fallen short.

“Paris set the destination — limiting warming well below 2 degrees, aiming for 1.5 degrees —  Glasgow must make it a reality, ” the COP26 organizers wrote.

https://calmatters.org/environment/2021/10/california-climate-change-conference-newsom/?utm_source=CalMatters+Newsletters&utm_campaign=f8572a2fb1-WHATMATTERS&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_faa7be558d-f8572a2fb1-150181777&mc_cid=f8572a2fb1&mc_eid=2833f18cca

Governor’s media release:

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/10/25/california-governor-newsom-to-attend-united-nations-climate-change-conference-to-call-on-global-community-to-end-reliance-on-oil/

 

Extreme Weather Impacts: “If I Was the California Tourism Industry, I’d Be Really Worried”

NY Times

As climate change continues to ravage our planet, those who like to explore it — as well as the travel industry that supports them — are inevitably affected, too. Especially precarious and popular California.

And yet no one seems prepared.

In 2019, California was the No. 1 state in visitor spending in the United States, according to Visit California, the state’s tourism agency, with tourists bringing in $145 billion to the state economy.

It was an unprecedented amount. Travelers splurged at Napa wineries and San Francisco restaurants, San Diego surf-side hotels and Sierra slope-side resorts, Airstreams in Yosemite and yurts in Joshua Tree, stargazing in Los Angeles, whale-watching in the Channel Islands — and don’t forget Disneyland! California tourism saw 10 consecutive years of record growth — until the pandemic. In 2020, revenue plummeted 55 percent.

Now, as travel emerges, pent-up demand has many small towns from Ojai to Oakhurst rocking. This mixed-up moment may not be a fair gauge of what’s to come. What is to come? According to Visit California, a full recovery and then some — $157 billion tourist dollars by 2025.

And yet: Wildfires consumed 4.2 million acres of California in 2020, and roughly 2 million so far this year alone. Severe drought forced quaint Mendocino inns to beg guests to conserve water. South Lake Tahoe was evacuated. In Death Valley, two hikers died in August from extreme heat, as did a family of three hiking southwest of Yosemite. This week’s welcomed rain came hard and fast, causing flooding, power outages and rockslides. All of this will continue in California’s future.

Though little research has been done on climate change’s long-term effects on tourism in the United States, much less in California, many scientists see the poorly managed forests through the trees.

“Places that are already hot are going to get hotter,” said Tamma Carleton, an assistant professor of economics at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. We’re going to see extreme heat paired with impacted water supplies, and that will make it really hard for visitors to enjoy the activities they’re there to do, she explained. “Who wants to go wine tasting or hiking if you’re baking?”

Perhaps reticence goes hand in hand with livelihoods. California’s tourism sector employed 1.1 million people in 2019, according to a report by Dean Runyan Associates, a tourism research firm. “Leisure and hospitality” is one of the top 10 drivers of California’s enormous economy — below industries like finance, manufacturing and health and education, but above the construction sector, according to a 2019 ranking of gross state products provided by the economist Troy Walter.

Visit California has said little publicly about climate change. At a trade show appearance in September, the president and chief executive, Caroline Beteta, briefly discussed the “natural phenomenon” of wildfire. She emphasized that while the fires in Tahoe resulted in mass evacuations, the flames didn’t infiltrate the “tourism corridors.”

One of the state’s hottest tourism spots, Napa County, drew 3.8 million visitors in 2018 (and some $50 million in occupancy lodging taxes), according to Visit Napa Valley, the region’s tourism group. But it’s getting hotter.

Instead of four days of extreme heat each year, it will see 36 — a ninefold increase — by the end of the century, projected Lisa Micheli, founder of the Pepperwood Foundation, a Sonoma County climate research preserve (which has burned, twice, since 2017). Roughly 42 percent of Napa County was consumed by fire in 2020: land, vineyards and some 1,500 structures were lost, including one luxury hotel (Calistoga Ranch) and much of another (Meadowood). More power shut-offs, rising electricity bills, decreasing water supply, increasing infernos: These are problems that will only persist, Dr. Micheli said. “Whatever is stressed now, is just going to get worse.”

The science is way behind, said Marshall Burke, an associate professor at Stanford University who studies the social and economic impacts of environmental change. “The rate of change has been so dramatic. If I was the California tourism industry, I’d be really worried.”

And yet, it seems, it often isn’t. In Napa, the luxury hotel operator Auberge Resorts, which already operates two resorts in the region, is opening a third there, and another in arid Santa Ynez. And from Auberge to Airbnb to fully booked destination-wedding planners, not many cared to discuss how climate change will affect business.

Still, Visit California is starting to think about global warming. “Climate change impacts California in profound ways,” Ms. Beteta later wrote in an email. At a recent board meeting the group designated a board liaison, she noted, “to help navigate the industry’s approach to sustainable tourism and sound practices in destination stewardship.”

Palm Springs is one of the few sunny tourist destinations in the U.S. climate scientists have studied. Francesca Hopkins, an assistant professor of climate change and sustainability at University of California, Riverside, released a paper last year that looked at how climate change will affect snowbird season in the Coachella Valley. Conclusion: rather dramatically. (“And no one cared!” Dr. Hopkins said.)

Daily temperatures between Thanksgiving and Easter have historically averaged below 86 degrees Fahrenheit, but going forward, research showed that there will be far fewer days that fall below that “pleasant” threshold. Palm Springs will become uncomfortable, on both ends of snowbird season, she projected, pushing those average daily temperatures toward 96 degrees, and almost doubling the number of extreme heat days.

More tangibly, the probability of having a high-heat day during April’s Coachella Music Festival will increase. Dancing in the desert in 105 degrees? “Even young people could experience heat stroke,” Dr. Hopkins said. “They’ll move the date.” Eventually, she said, people will start to think: “Why go to Palm Springs if it’s so miserable, when I can go to Monterey?”

Most research that has been done on climate change and U.S. travel destinations centers on ski resorts — which, facing decreasing snowpacks and truncated seasons, have had no choice but to assess their future. The number of low-snow years has spiked in the last 30 years, said Geoffrey Schladow, director of the Tahoe Environmental Research Center at University of California, Davis.

“It’s the extremes that will hurt the ski industry,” he said. Extreme lows like on March 29, 2021, when the Sierra snowpack measured 89 inches — well below the 142-inch historic average.

Snow itself has declined as a fraction of the total precipitation in Tahoe, to 33 percent in 2020 from an average of 52 percent in 1910, according to “Tahoe: State of the Lake Report,” research published this year by U.C. Davis. In other words: We’re seeing rain in winter, when it should be snow. “Given that we are at an elevation of over 6,200 feet, have hosted the Winter Olympics and have a snow-based economy, this is a dramatic fall,” Dr. Schladow said. The number does not have to drop to zero, he explained, for Tahoe to no longer be a snow-based economy.

For many out-of-state skiers who must book visits in advance, Tahoe has become too unreliable to bother. Jonathan White, 47, of Boston had a ski trip planned several years ago for Squaw Valley (now Palisades Tahoe). “Lack of snow caused us to bail, and actually just go to Stowe,” he said of the resort in Vermont. (Imagine: New England skiing being better than out West.) Now, if the investment manager wants to ski deep powder, Utah is his destination. The state’s snow, he said, is “much more predictable, when thinking about Western ski trips for our East Coast crew.”

Royal Gorge Cross-Country Resort, Tahoe’s largest — and, at 7,000 feet, highest — Nordic area, has been feeling it. Unlike its alpine sister property, Sugar Bowl, Royal Gorge is “100 percent reliant on Mother Nature,” said Jon Slaughter, the executive director of marketing for the privately owned properties. “It’s scary,” he said, but they’ve been doing all they can, including investing in snow-making machinery for Sugar Bowl and creating “low-snow” cross-country trails: super-smooth, packed tracks the resort can open with just 2 feet of snow compacted to a 6-inch base. The goal is to increase the miles of these low-snow trails in the coming years.

Still, not a lot of U.S. ski destinations “have a climate action plan, or have even done a risk assessment,” said Daniel Scott, research chair in climate and society at the University of Waterloo. In Canada, the Whistler resort has heavily marketed itself as a summer playground — to the point that summer visitors now outnumber winter. A wise idea for Tahoe’s dozen-plus ski resorts, too. Except, wait, wildfire.

California is often presented in the media as an object of disaster, as Tom Hale underscored to me. Mr. Hale is the founder of Backroads, the Berkeley-based travel company, which has been operating biking and outdoors-oriented trips in the United States and 54 other countries for four decades. It deals with fallout from it all, from hurricanes in Baton Rouge to floods in Berlin. As we all know, climate change is not a state or country specific issue.

And in California, 2021 has been Backroads’ best year yet; 2022 is booked nicely, too.

“I don’t see natural disasters having a permanent impact on demand,” Mr. Hale said. “Unless the whole state is on fire — which is not the case. As much as newspapers make it out to be.”

Still, he acknowledges there have been some differences.

“Wine country used to be our bread and butter,” said Mr. Hale, “but we’ve seen a decline in bookings in the last five years.”

A Utah State University study, published in September, found that changing climate conditions are likely to affect the recreational use of public lands across seasons and regions of the United States. California’s public lands are likely to see a decline in visitation primarily in the summer and fall. What people do there will change, too.

These results hints at what’s bound to happen beyond the parks — to small towns and big hotels; mom-and-pop restaurants; “taco trails” and hiking trails. “When you put it all together, tourism patterns will be altered pretty significantly,” said Emily Wilkins, the study’s lead author.

A shift is already quietly, anecdotally, underway. In Northern California, low snow, early melts and high winds forced the Shasta Mountain Guides tour company to cancel its most popular route up Mount Shasta in April. Yet Casey Glaubman, a guide, offered words of higher wisdom. “Part of mountaineering is being flexible; adapting and adjusting plans is what it’s all about,” he said. “Things are changing, but it doesn’t have to mean the end of everything.”

More:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/travel/california-tourism-climate-change.html

 

Golden State Economic Recovery Lags US, But Tax Revenue Booms

State Dept of Finance monthly report for September

LABOR MARKET CONDITIONS

  • The U.S. unemployment rate fell 0.4 percentage point to 4.8 percent in September 2021, with civilian employment increasing by 526,000 and 183,000 fewer people in the labor force. There were 5.1 million fewer employed, 3.1 million fewer persons in the labor force, and 2 million more unemployed in September 2021 than in February 2020. The U.S. added 194,000 nonfarm jobs in September 2021, with eight of the eleven major industry sectors gaining jobs. Government, other services, and educational and health services lost jobs.
    As of September 2021, the U.S. has recovered 77.8 percent of the 22.4 million jobs lost in March and April 2020.
  • California unemployment rate remained unchanged at 7.5 percent in September 2021. California civilian employment increased by 43,000 in September 2021 with 31,000 more people entering the labor force and 13,000 fewer unemployed. There were 993,000 fewer employed, 420,000 fewer people in the labor force, and 574,000 more unemployed in September 2021 than in February 2020. After adding 47,400 nonfarm jobs, California has now recovered 63.5 percent of the 2.7 million jobs lost in March and April 2020. Nine sectors added jobs: leisure and hospitality (23,300), professional and business services (6,900), manufacturing (5,700), information (5,000), government (3,100), educational and health services (2,600), trade, transportation, and utilities (1,900), construction (1,400), and financial activities (1,300). Other services (-3,700) and mining and logging (-100) lost jobs.

MONTHLY CASH REPORT

Preliminary General Fund agency cash receipts for the first three months of the 2021-22 fiscal year were $9.145 billion above the 2021-22 Budget Act forecast of $33.235 billion. Cash receipts for the month of September were $5.617 billion above the forecast of $13.893 billion. Preliminary General Fund agency cash receipts for the entire 2020-21 fiscal year were $4.783 billion above the 2021-22 Budget Act forecast of $201.775 billion, or 2.4 percent above forecast. When this prior fiscal year-end amount is combined with the current fiscal year-to-date total, preliminary General Fund agency cash receipts are $13.928 billion above the 2021-22 Budget Act forecast.

  • Personal income tax cash receipts to the General Fund for the first three months of the fiscal year were $6.557 billion above the forecast of $22.088 billion. Cash receipts for September were $3.994 billion above the forecast of $9.486 billion. Withholding receipts were $1.667 billion above the forecast of $5.683 billion. Other cash receipts were $2.433 billion above the forecast of $4.507 billion. Even though California does not have a September estimated payment due, taxpayers often match the federal estimated payment schedule. Refunds issued in September were $34 million above the expected $534 million. Proposition 63 requires that 1.76 percent of total monthly personal income tax collections be transferred to the Mental Health Services Fund (MHSF). The amount transferred to the MHSF in September was $72 million higher than the forecast of $170 million.
  • Sales and use tax cash receipts for the first three months of the fiscal year were $1.035 billion above the forecast of $6.679 billion. Cash receipts for September were $365 million above the month’s forecast of $2.203 billion. September cash receipts include the second prepayment for third quarter taxable sales.
  • Corporation tax cash receipts for the first three months of the fiscal year were $1.449 billion above the forecast of $2.738 billion. Cash receipts for September were $1.12 billion above the month’s forecast
    of $1.782 billion. Estimated payments were $709 million above the forecast of $1.609 billion, and other payments were $342 million above the $351 million forecast. Total refunds for the month were $68 million lower than the forecast of $178 million.

BUILDING ACTIVITY & REAL ESTATE

  • California permitted approximately 123,000 housing units (57,000 multi-family units and 65,000 single-family units) on a SAAR basis in August 2021. This was up 1.9 percent from 120,000 units in July 2021 and up
    24.5 percent from the 98,000 units permitted in August 2020. Year-to-date through August 2021, California permitted 123,000 units on average, compared to 101,000 units in the same period in 2020 and 108,000 units in the same period in 2019.
  • The statewide median price of existing single-family homes decreased to $808,890 in September 2021, the sixth consecutive month above $800,000. This was down 2.3 percent from August 2021 and up 13.5 percent from September 2020. Sales of existing single-family homes in California totaled 438,190 units (SAAR) in September 2021, up 5.6 percent from August 2021 and down 10.5 percent from September 2020.

October 2021

https://www.dof.ca.gov/Forecasting/Economics/Economic_and_Revenue_Updates/documents/2021/FB_Oct_21_final.pdf

 

Governor & Legislature Must Address California’s “Economic Dilemma”

CalMatters commentary from Dan Walters

As he fended off a campaign to recall him this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom adopted the slogan “California Comeback” to describe what he said was a very robust recovery from the severe recession triggered by COVID-19 shutdowns.

Ever since, as the federal government released its monthly reports on employment and unemployment, Newsom – or, more likely, his staff – would cherry-pick the data to buttress his claim of a massive surge of economic activity.

He did it again last week as job numbers for September were released, saying, “Our economic recovery continues to make promising progress, with 812,000 new jobs this year and regaining over 63% of those jobs we lost to the pandemic. As we continue averaging record job creation, our work is more important than ever to get more Californians back on the job and support those hardest hit by the pandemic.”

What he didn’t say was that California is still more than a million jobs short of regaining the two-plus million jobs that were erased during the recession and that our unemployment rate of 7.5% is tied with Nevada’s for the highest in the nation. It’s 50% higher than the national rate of 4.8% and nearly four times as high as the 2% rate in Nebraska, the nation’s lowest. Arch-rival Texas had a 5.6% rate in September.

Data from the state Employment Development Department show the dramatic change in the job picture since March, 2020, just before the pandemic changed everything.

In that month, the state counted 19.5 million Californians in the labor force with 18.8 million of them working and unemployment at a record-low 3.9%.

In September, the state’s labor force was just 19 million, only 17.6 million were employed and the jobless rate was 7.5%.

The state’s overall population is virtually unchanged, but a half-million fewer Californians count themselves as workers and 1.2 million fewer are working. Morever, California now accounts for a whopping 31% of the nation’s new unemployment claims, with more than 80,000 residents filing claims for the week ending Oct. 16, the federal data report revealed.

Simply put, the nation as a whole has snapped back from the COVID-19 recession and other states are seeing record low unemployment rates, but recovery has been, to put it mildly, sluggish in California.

Michael Bernick, a former director of the state Employment Development Department and an attorney at Duane Morris, told CalMatters’ Emily Hoeven: “The explanations previously given for California lagging behind the national economy are no longer convincing. California’s COVID rates are below other states, schools have reopened and child care is coming back. The small business economy in California remains decimated, limiting job openings. However, employers who do have job openings … report few applicants.”

We may be seeing not just a slow recovery from recession but a fundamental and worrisome economic dilemma of low labor force participation, high unemployment and jobs going unfilled for a lack of workers.

If so, one would think that the governor would be defining it as a crisis that needs to be addressed. Instead, Newsom continues to paint the very misleading picture of a vigorous recovery.

One might understand his pollyannaish posture during the recall campaign, but he easily won last month’s election. Continuing to ignore California’s employment dilemma serves neither him nor the state well.

Newsom – or the Legislature if he’s unwilling – should commission a vigorous investigation into why California’s recovery is lagging and what needs to be done to match legions of unemployed or underemployed California with the jobs that are going unfilled.

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2021/10/newsom-california-economic-recovery/?utm_source=CalMatters+Newsletters&utm_campaign=545871a74a-WHATMATTERS&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_faa7be558d-545871a74a-150181777&mc_cid=545871a74a&mc_eid=2833f18cca

 

New Lines Being Drawn for Political Districts…the Trade-Offs are Tricky

CalMatters & John Myers’ California Politics

California’s independent redistricting commission released its first draft maps Tuesday for what new congressional, state Senate and state Assembly districts might look like after the latest Census. The commission picks back up today to hear public comment on these visualizations, after last week’s sessions hearing from community groups and individuals advocating for their boundaries.

Though they’re far from final, the congressional visualizations display some potential flashpoints. They show early wins for Republicans who want to see the Democratic stronghold of Tracy grouped with the Bay Area instead of the Central Valley. They also show, as expected, fewer districts in Los Angeles County, which could lead to the loss of a district likely to elect a Black representative. The congressional redistricting is complicated by the fact that California is losing one of its 53 U.S. House seats for the first time in history.

The commission plans to approve preliminary maps in mid-November and the final maps by Dec. 27 so they can be used for the June 2022 primaries. Tune into the meetings here, and follow along with Sameea’s reporting to see what kind of redistricting is going on the local level.

The name most famously associated with political map drawing is Elbridge Gerry, who as governor of Massachusetts signed off on a diabolical “gerrymander” in 1812 to break his rivals’ stronghold on the state legislature.

But in California, where congressional and legislative redistricting is in the hands of an independent citizens’ commission, the process is probably more of an homage to Hermann Rorschach, whose inkblot test (originally designed as a diagnostic test for schizophrenia) has become shorthand for how different two people’s perceptions can be of the same shape.

And the shapes of most political districts are unusual, not because of nefarious gerrymandering but rather because groups of voters with shared interests — common traits that matter — don’t always live in close proximity to one another.

Members of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, who have rolled up their sleeves over the last couple of weeks to dig deep into how to draw new maps, are quickly discovering that beyond what’s outlined in legal mandates, there are lots of ways to get it right — or, in the eyes of some groups, get it wrong.

“We all must recognize that redistricting involves trade-offs,” Commissioner J. Ray Kennedy said during the panel’s meeting on Wednesday.

Other than the need to equalize population (especially for House seats), the top requirement for political districts is that there’s no dilution of the voting power of Latino, Black and Asian Americans. The state commission has hired lawyers whose primary job is to assess proposed districts for their compliance with that requirement based on provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act.

The 14 commissioners — five Democrats, five Republicans and four unaffiliated with a major party — have indicated they will draw these so-called VRA districts first and create as many of those districts as possible. That approach probably reflects the desire to support diversity and the realization that lawsuits filed against redistricting plans are often centered on alleged violations of the Voting Rights Act.

Look for this issue to dominate the choices made in drawing districts in Southern California and parts of the Central Valley and for many of the discussions to focus on Latino voters.

A decade ago, as researchers at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California noted last week, only one of the state’s political districts had a Latino population of more than 60% — 11 districts now meet that standard. Asian Americans make up 45% of the population in three current districts; Black citizens, the report notes, are more dispersed and line drawers could find it hard to draw districts where these voters make up sizable pluralities.

The political power of Black voters will be closely watched in the state’s current 37th Congressional District, where Rep. Karen Bass is leaving Congress to run for mayor of Los Angeles. Data in the recent PPIC report show 29.2% of citizen voting-age residents in Bass’ district are Black while 27.3% are Latino.

(Remember that the state is losing a congressional district, which makes some observers wonder whether Bass’ departure helps ease the political pain.)

In all of these areas, the commission will need to determine whether voters in traditional minority groups have a history of voting along racial lines. Look for reports on what’s known as “racially polarized voting” as a guide to how many districts will be drawn with these considerations in mind.

For a glimpse at the tough trade-offs inherent in drawing political maps, it’s worth taking a quick look at the challenges the California Citizens Redistricting Commission has in new boundaries in San Luis Obispo County, whose coastal/agricultural voters offer a fascinating cross-section of the state’s larger political landscape.

It also, given its spot on the state map, can cause ripple effects hundreds of miles away.

“San Luis Obispo County makes a huge difference in terms of what districts in the north and districts in the south look like,” Andrew Westall, a researcher with the Equal Representation Project, told the commission on Thursday.

Several groups that made mapping suggestions to the state commission envisioned radically different spots for the lines along the Central Coast and rural areas to its east.

One group, the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, drew a proposed Assembly map that would place most of San Luis Obispo County in an Assembly district with western Kern County. The group, which describes itself as an advocate for the region’s working-class and immigrant communities, argues the counties share “traditionalist values” voters and shouldn’t be grouped with “poorer farmworker communities like the Salinas Valley or Santa Maria Valley.”

But the California Environmental Voters, one of the state’s most prominent environmental advocacy groups, had a completely different viewpoint. Its map drew lines for an Assembly district down the coast from Santa Cruz to the southern border of San Luis Obispo County, separating the area for the agricultural regions to the east in an effort to give priority to the community’s record in support of environmental protection policies.

The two proposals would almost surely result in different partisan outcomes. In the coastal Assembly proposal, a Democrat would be the odds-on favorite to win. In the San Luis Obispo-Kern configuration, the partisan registration would probably favor the incumbent, Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham (R-Templeton).

It’s important to remember that the state redistricting commission cannot consider the residences of incumbent legislators. And beginning with the first commission’s work in 2011, the practice has been to also turn a blind eye to a region’s political registration data.

Political insiders, though, are tracking some of the potential shakeups in real time. Analysts at the Target Book, which handicaps legislative and congressional races, noted this week that the preliminary sketches suggested big changes for the state Senate regions now represented by Sen. Anna Caballero (D-Salinas) and Sen. Sydney Kamlager (D-Los Angeles) while flipping a district now represented by state Senate Minority Leader Scott Wilk (R-Saugus) to one that looks strongly Democratic.

In the end, even with firm mandates, where to draw political lines comes down to a subjective decision about which goals of independent redistricting are most important — and why.

 

State Auditor Retires After 21 Years

Sacramento Bee

State Auditor Elaine Howle, whose scathing audits of the embattled Employment Development Department boosted efforts this year to reform the agency, will retire at the end of the year, her office said Monday.

Howle, 63, the state auditor for more than 21 years, has been the state’s independent voice, leading examinations of state agencies and winning both sharp anger and lavish praise from the Assembly and Senate members. A certified public accountant and a certified government financial manager, she became a strong voice over the past 18 months with her detailed looks at EDD as it struggled to deal with an overwhelming number of unemployment claims during the COVID-triggered economic crisis.

Howle also produced an audit last year showing well-connected students were admitted to four University of California campuses because of their ties to donors or well-known families. Many of her recommendations for EDD are now being implemented, and the Legislature passed several bills aimed at making the agency more efficient.

Monday, Howle told a joint legislative panel how she had recommended after the Great Recession of 2007-09 ways to improve how EDD deals with the public. Yet as the COVID pandemic surged last spring, she found many of the same problems were surfacing again. Howle had found in a January audit that “EDD struggled to provide claimants assistance with their claims.” After claims began to surge in March 2020, Howle’s audit said, EDD’s call center answered less than 1% of calls. The agency quadrupled its available call center staff to more than 5,600 people, “but these staff were often unable to assist callers and only marginally improved the percentage of calls it answered,” Howle said “Despite knowing for years that it had problems with call center performance, EDD has not yet adopted best practices for managing the call center, leaving it ill prepared to assist Californians effectively.”

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article255273461.html#storylink=cpy

 

Influential Legislator May Lead Labor Federation

Politico

California politics-land was thrumming on Tuesday over a letter from San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council Secretary-Treasurer Brigette Browning endorsing Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez to be the next leader of the California Labor Federation .

The letter lauds Gonzalez as a “powerful and effective force for working families” and urges the group to elevate the San Diego Democrat before the year’s out to replace current leader Art Pulaski.

We had heard rumors here that Gonzalez might assume leadership of this union powerhouse. The choice would make sense: Gonzalez formerly led the San Diego labor council, and in Sacramento she has built a long record of pro-labor policy achievements as one of the Labor Fed’s most reliable partners in the Capitol.

If you want to know how labor feels about a bill, Gonzalez’s vote count is a good place to start. And she happens to be termed out in 2024. We’ve also heard some rumblings of discontent over how Pulaski steered labor through the gig economy wars surrounding the Dynamex decision and the Gonzalez-authored AB 5.

Pulaski has not formally announced he’s retiring, and his term doesn’t expire until 2024. “There is no timeline at this point” for Pulaski to step aside, California Labor Federation spokesperson Steve Smith told us. Gonzalez similarly told us the notion was “intriguing” but noted there isn’t a current vacancy.

It’s worth noting that term limits or not, Gonzalez holds a coveted position as chair of the Assembly Appropriations Committee — one of the most influential posts in the Capitol. But it sure looks like some folks in organized labor are mounting a public push to draft Gonzalez and vault her into a new gig.

 

Leading Republican Hope for Statewide Office Raising Big Bucks

Politico

Republican Lanhee Chen, the Hoover Institution’s highly courted policy adviser, is raking in campaign cash from some big names as his 2022 controller generates buzz. Chen’s campaign take in the first three months since he announced in July is a whopping $1,002,980, with $734,280 in funding for the June 2022 primary and nearly $300,000 for general election, his campaign reported Tuesday.

Chen’s donors include Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang, former state Insurance Commissioner and tech investor Steve Poizner, an independent, and former Cisco CEO John Chambers. 

He currently works as Director of Domestic Policy Studies in the Public Policy Program at Stanford. A native of Southern California, he holds a Ph.D in political science and a law degree from Harvard. He spent much of the last decade working on high-profile Republican campaigns, including as a policy director for Sen. Mitt Romney’s two presidential bids and a senior adviser to Sen. Marco Rubio during his 2016 campaign.

Current California State Controller Betty Yee, a Democrat, will term out next year, leaving open the spot for chief fiscal officer. Chen is betting that Californians are ready to elect a Republican to statewide office after nearly 15 years of Democratic control, and touts support from across the political spectrum.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” Chen said. “And I think people recognize that there is a need to find problem solvers regardless of party.”

Chen says they’re among the wide range of backers who hope a watchdog controller can provide checks and balances on state finances. “What’s encouraging to me is we’re seeing support from across the political spectrum,” Chen told POLITICO this week. He’s putting a special emphasis on addressing the state’s Employment Development Department fraud debacle as well as the current supply chain issues affecting the state’s ports, he tells us. Chen’s chief Democratic opponent is Malia Cohen, a member of the Board of Equalization, who’s raised around $400,000 to date, according to the latest figures on file with the California Secretary of State’s office.