California Editorial Roundup

Dec. 27

San Francisco Chronicle on California policies to fight climate change:

California has half the nation’s electric cars, cleaner burning fuels and a string of emerging plans to cut emissions and save energy to fight climate change.

This state has done much to set standards that are sinking into common acceptance. Millions of tailpipes produce less smog and heat-trapping carbon dioxide. A cap-and-trade program to reward businesses that lower greenhouse gases is on a shakedown cruise. A recent decision will lower the energy diet of computers. Coming next: a deadline in 2040 to drop carbon emissions to 1990 levels, a cut that will further remake the economy.

More importantly, California isn’t going it alone. Other states are matching these policies that are transforming energy sources and everyday habits. Over half the states, including those with Republican governors, have adopted rules that curb car and factory emissions. What was once viewed as partisan or economically risky is now standard.

But none of this is guaranteed. The mix of rules, incentives and goals could be shattered with the inauguration of Donald Trump and his energy and environmental appointees who doubt the science documenting the human-caused dangers of rising temperatures. The president-elect has dubbed climate change a “hoax,” and his appointees have records of fighting solutions in court and on the stump.

Deeply rooted as California policies have become, the Trump team can cause serious damage. The next president has pledged to drop out of the Paris climate accords and back off federal rules to curb coal-fired power plants. In this state and others, Washington can hold back on enforcing pollution laws or cut money for climate-change research. A national trend could be chopped to pieces.

The next administration could also ease up and allow change-minded states to take their own California-style path. This state’s leaders are right to sound off about Trump’s wayward direction, with Democratic leaders bristling for a fight with the new administration.

Their best argument is the one most easily seen. California has thrived as it lowered emission limits. There are costs and risks that must be weighed, but answering the threat of climate change hasn’t wrecked the economy.

It’s a track record that the Trump team of fossil fuel apologists should heed. Punishing California would antagonize the rest of the country where solar and wind sources are growing and fuel-sipping cars are filling garages. That’s progress that should continue.

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Dec. 26

San Diego Union-Tribune on addressing the state’s housing crisis:

The decision by several Democrats in the California Legislature to already start pushing their 2017 housing proposals is a welcome sign that they grasp the cost of housing is the biggest issue in California, responsible for the Golden State’s emergence as the center of poverty in America and a constant, never-ending problem for the poor and much of the middle class alike.

Unfortunately, even if all the proposals made it into law, the cumulative effect is unlikely to be nearly as positive as what would have happened had the Legislature approved Gov. Jerry Brown’s rejected proposal to streamline regulatory approvals of market-rate housing in residential-zoned areas. So far, state lawmakers are not rising to the occasion.

Assembly housing committee Chairman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, Assembly Speaker pro Tem Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, and Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, have proposed four housing-related bills.

The measure that got the most attention would end the mortgage-interest deduction tax break for second homes, freeing up $300 million for a state program that pays for affordable-housing construction. The measure that may have the most potential would provide funding to the Attorney General’s Office with the intent of getting it to begin enforcing existing state laws obligating local communities to approve housing. The other measures would create incentives for local approval of high-density, transit-oriented infill housing and create a state program to fund housing for chronically homeless individuals on Medi-Cal who receive county-funded services.

On the Senate side, the most notable housing legislation to emerge is from Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, who have revived the idea of adding a $75 fee to real estate transactions to generate funding for low-income housing construction. They also propose asking state voters in 2018 to approve a $3 billion bond to finance low-income housing.

The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board accepts the good intentions of these lawmakers - but not their appreciation of history. Whether or not they’re robustly funded, housing strategies that heavily rely on state-subsidized construction have no record of broadly addressing affordable housing because they don’t create nearly enough new housing stock. A McKinsey Global Institute report says California needs an additional 3.5 million homes by 2025 but is on track to only add 1 million.

Yet of all the state’s high-profile Democrats, only Gov. Brown seems willing to jump-start the needed construction boom by weakening environmental laws to automatically approve properly zoned residential projects that set aside as few as 5 percent of their units as affordable. Instead, these Democrats heed the wishes of two of their most powerful factions - unions and environmentalists - who have long used these laws to extract concessions or payoffs for their pet causes or to block projects that won’t pay union-scale construction wages or are found unacceptable.

This conundrum at some point needs to trigger genuine soul-searching among California Democrats. If they believe in social and economic justice as much as they say, how can they tolerate a housing situation statewide that’s so extraordinarily punitive to so many struggling families? That’s going to force many young residents to leave the state? That imposes a constant, gnawing pressure on millions of Californians?

Good intentions won’t begin to address a problem that’s becoming insurmountable. That will take something much different: political courage.

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Dec. 19

Sacramento Bee on criminal justice reform:

In their laudable effort to reverse mass incarceration, California policymakers have been too slow to provide felons with necessary care and treatment upon their release.

That’s among the conclusions to be gleaned from an important reporting project by newspapers in Palm Springs, Ventura, Salinas and Redding analyzing Proposition 47, the 2014 initiative that cut penalties for drug possession and property theft, and reduced many crimes to misdemeanors.

“Thousands of addicts and mentally ill people have traded a life behind bars for a churning cycle of homelessness, substance abuse and petty crime,” says the report by The Desert Sun of Palm Springs, The Ventura County Star, The Redding Record Searchlight and The Salinas Californian.

Proposition 47, well-meaning but ill-conceived, won with nearly 60 percent of the vote. Advocates led by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon promised the law would save hundreds of millions of dollars in prison costs. The savings were to be poured into drug and mental health care treatment and job training.

The reporters found that 13,500 inmates have been released early from prison as a result of Proposition 47. Courts, complying with the initiative’s terms, reduced as many as 200,000 felony convictions to misdemeanors.

Some ex-convicts, having had their felony records erased, have used the opportunity to re-enter society by getting decent jobs and housing. But in many instances, individuals released from prison have fallen into old ways.

While the state has earmarked some money for education and treatment, “not a penny has been spent,” the reporters write. That’s one of the initiative’s flaws. Felons were freed before the state had sufficient programs in place; they’re still not in place, two years later. Many ex-felons, not the most stable of individuals, have been left to fend for themselves.

Wayne Woods was among the people whose lives were detailed. Free for the first time in 20 years, he was living on Los Angeles Skid Row, a dystopian dead end where drugs are used openly. Not surprisingly, Woods could not resist. Police arrested him smoking crack, but he was back on the street in two weeks.

“In my case, it’s worse,” Woods said. “In prison, everything was provided. I had a place to stay. I had meals. I had a job, if I wanted to work. And if I wanted to do some drugs, I could have gotten that in there, too.”

For more than a year, some local law enforcement officials have been decrying the real life implications of the initiative. Cops see little reason to arrest people for minor property crimes or drug possession because penalties are so lax. Petty property crimes, of the sort that lowers quality of life in cities, are on the rise.

Drug users know they will face few consequences. So in a perverse incentive, addicts are choosing short jail stints, knowing drug treatment, which could help them turn their lives around, would be more intrusive.

“The results are clear,” the papers write. “At the longest running drug court program in Los Angeles, run out of a narrow building on the edge of Skid Row, enrollment has plummeted from 80 people to only four.”

The issue is ripe for serious research. The plight of the Proposition 47 convicts ought to be documented. If it’s not too late, there should be intervention.

The Proposition 47 aftermath is eerily familiar. In the late 1960s and 1970s, California authorities, motivated by the best of intentions, released patients from state hospitals, promising treatment in the community. That never happened, and the mental health care system never recovered. Having failed to learn from history, California may be doomed to relive it.

The stories in The Desert Sun, The Ventura County Star, The Record Searchlight and Salinas Californian are heavy on anecdotes, as most journalism is. But authorities and prison reformers should take heed. Pendulums swing. If the failure persists, voters will respond.

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Dec. 27

The Porterville Recorder on regulating pesticides:

A report last week from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation underscores the importance of Valley agriculture and the role it plays in providing a safe supply of food.

The annual report of pesticides residues found no residues on most produce grown in California, and only very few and low levels of pesticide residues. None of the levels found were enough to be a risk to public health.

The annual analysis of pesticides and produce also included some of the imported produce sold in California and while most were clean of any dangerous levels of pesticides, they were not as clean as those grown in the United States and in some cases, banned pesticide residues were found.

California has the strictest regulations regarding the use and application of pesticides of anywhere in the world. The Tulare County Agriculture Commissioner’s office is charged with seeing that growers are well aware of the regulations and that they follow the regulations. The office has reported few issues.

A safe food supply is critical to everyone. We all eat and enjoy good fruits and vegetables, especially those grown right here in the No. 1 agricultural county in the world. There are more than 150 farm commodities produced here - from milk to collards. It is the cleanest, healthiest food produced in the world.

What the report highlights is the need for agriculture to continue in this fertile valley. Today, there are threats to farming from all sides - environmentalists, government and water managers. The ability of farmers to produce their products is greatly strained and the threats keep coming and are reaching a point when many in agriculture - at least here - may abandon their farms.

Water, as pointed out by Tulare County Agricultural Commissioner Marilyn Kinoshita, is key to farming surviving. Without it, the farms go away and there are those in the state Legislature who want to cut water to farmers. Apparently, they don’t realize water is what makes crops grow. No state grown crops increase the risk to consumers of imported crops which are not clean of pesticides.

In order to ensure a safe food supply, we need to support agriculture in this state, not try to plow it under.

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Dec. 23

The East Bay Times on expensive Metropolitan Transportation Commission meeting:

They’re at it again at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

The planning agency just moved into a new $256 million office building in downtown San Francisco, which was funded largely with bridge toll money and ran 53 percent over budget.

But when the 21-member commission held a workshop this month, the new digs weren’t good enough. Instead, they spent about $13,500 to meet five blocks away at the Embarcadero Hyatt Regency.

The bill included $4,225, including service charges and taxes, for lunch and for cookies and drinks during the break of the four-hour meeting. That’s $121 per person for 35 staff members and commissioners.

The meeting room rental was $3,263. Use of the audio visual equipment cost $6,101. MTC has similar facilities down the street in its new building.

The first meeting topic? Raising bridge tolls on seven state-owned Bay Area spans, from $5 to as much as $8. Those same bridge tolls funded the building that wasn’t good enough for the meeting.

If MTC wants drivers to pay more, its leaders should start showing they know how to responsibly spend a buck, or $5 billion that a $3 additional toll would raise over 25 years.

Unfortunately, MTC, under leadership of Executive Director Steve Heminger, demonstrates a money-is-no-object outlook.

Heminger flew during a three-year period to conferences in Tokyo, Sydney, Beijing and Vienna at public expense using air tickets costing more than $45,000, Bloomberg reported.

His $13,000 Sydney flight was eight times the price of a coach ticket. The cost and quantity of his international trips far surpassed leaders of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago transportation agencies.

Meanwhile, Heminger deceived the public about the deal for the new office building, which houses MTC and three other regional agencies, as the project ballooned from $167 million to $256 million.

Heminger didn’t do basic due diligence. The state auditor slammed MTC for bogus accounting. The state Legislature’s attorney questioned the legality of using bridge tolls for the building.

Now comes the proposed toll hike, which state lawmakers could place on the ballot for nine Bay Area counties in 2018.

MTC wants more money for BART, which just received voter approval for a $3.5 billion bond measure. That measure allowed using one-third of the money to indirectly subsidize already-excessive labor costs.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf suggests some of the bridge toll money should go toward housing, even though voters in her city and her county just approved $680 million of bonds for housing.

A responsible bridge toll increase that includes money, and spending controls, for roads and public transit might be merited. But public officials must first show they can manage current money responsibly.

Commissioners might start by ordering in sandwiches from a local deli.