March 17
East Bay Times on addressing the state’s housing challenges:
Without changes in public attitudes toward homebuilding, it will be difficult for California to pull itself from its housing crisis. That’s the takeaway message from a new report from California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office titled, “Do Communities Adequately Plan for Housing?”
The report, which assesses local barriers to development, makes clear that local community plans and zoning laws are often outdated, restrictive and difficult to change, both procedurally and politically.
“Although we offer a few changes the Legislature could consider, real improvement can come only with a major shift in how communities and their residents think about and value new housing,” the LAO says. “Unless Californians are convinced of the benefits of significantly more home building - targeted at meeting housing demand at every income level - no state intervention is likely to make significant progress on addressing the state’s housing challenges.”
The scale and depth of the housing crisis has been quantified a number of ways. According to a draft Statewide Housing Assessment produced through the California Department of Housing and Community Development in January, over the past decade production averaged less than 80,000 new homes annually, short of the 180,000 new homes needed annually.
The sharp drop-off in housing production since the period from 1955 to 1989, when California produced an average of 200,000 new homes a year, has contributed to rising rents and longer commutes for people looking for affordable homes.
The report argues that in crafting long-term land use plans local communities often provide inadequate chances for housing to be built and that those communities sometimes establish “onerous processes for the approval of new housing developments.”
Gov. Jerry Brown had proposed establishing methods to streamline approvals. While the LAO concurred with his notion that state action should be taken to limit local rules, it cautioned that all would be for naught if local jurisdictions didn’t provide enough opportunities for projects to take advantage of the streamlining.
The LAO notes residents often disfavor updates to plans and zoning to accommodate more housing because many see the changes new housing would bring to communities as a “threat to their well-being.” This mindset cannot be legislated away - it must be understood and engaged.
“Convincing Californians that significantly more home building could substantially better the lives of future residents and future generations necessitates difficult conversations led by elected officials and other community leaders interested in those goals,” the report said.
Still, there are signs people are beginning to realize that few are served by making California an unaffordable place to live. On March 7, Los Angeles voters rejected the anti-development measure by more than 2-to-1.
Making California an affordable place to live won’t be easy, but it must begin as a collaborative effort among the people, their representatives and the housing industry.
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March 21
The Porterville Recorder on a new school rating system:
Last week, without much fanfare, the California Department of Education released its new “Dashboard” ratings of public schools, which replaced the old standard that graded schools based on test score results.
The new school rating system still includes test scores, but it also includes rankings on suspensions, graduation rates, school facilities and absenteeism. Other categories will be added later.
Unfortunately, the rankings are lacking in detail and often confusing to follow. Where the old system based on test results was fairly easy to understand, the new system of colors given for how a school does is way short of telling a parent if a school is doing well or bad.
For some reason, and we suspect at a cost in the millions of dollars, the system uses different colored pinwheels to grade a school or school district. But, by simple deduction, one should be able to determine that blue stands for excellent, green good, yellow average, orange bad and red very bad, although the state does not explain that very clearly.
We are not sure if the state is really trying to give parents a tool in which to judge their schools, or offer only useless information in more of an effort to confuse people, rather than really rate a school.
Porterville Unified Superintendent Ken Gibbs said last week’s release of the Dashboard was a test run and he expects the scoring to be revised and made clearer for people to understand. We hope so.
We have never felt the state’s system of rating schools has been that beneficial, although the test scores were pretty clear to understand. What really matters to parents is the level of education their child is getting and only a parent can see that. And, when someone moves into a new town, we doubt they look at the dropout or absenteeism rates, but are more inclined to ask around. The best evaluators of how a school is doing are the people in the community. They can tell you which schools are better than any state rating system.
We hope the state is not just trying to put up a good smokescreen with this latest system and that it can get down to information that is easy to find and easy to understand, but this first Dashboard gets an “F’’ in our grade book, or a single red pinwheel.
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March 17
The San Francisco Chronicle on self-driving cars:
After years of go-slow debate, California is all in on a promising but chancy idea: a green light for self-driving cars. By the end of the year, cars without human drivers or even steering wheels and brake pedals may be whizzing along streets and highways.
The approval is coming from the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is weighing the safety factor against something equally big. This state is now the new Detroit, where software developers are turning steel and glass vehicles into rolling computers. Tech firms are putting down billion-dollar bets on the future. Added to the mix is the adoptive nature of California drivers, already the biggest national market for hybrids and electric cars.
Sacramento is easing the rules to welcome the nascent industry that’s attracting every major automaker and a flock of startups to Silicon Valley. But as any smartphone user can attest, technology isn’t always foolproof, reliable or immune from hackers. Sitting back and letting Siri do the driving may only be for the brave.
If the plan rolls out, conventional driving won’t the same. Gone is the need for a steering wheel, with guidance supplied by seeing-eye sensors and a dashboard loaded with chips and software. Under the newly announced rules, come Christmas there won’t be a need for a human at the controls or in the car, though an operator will stand by to monitor operations remotely.
California’s push still needs approval from federal highway authorities, but the intention is clear, especially as other states push self-driving experiments and woo the brewing industry. It’s more than a niche game as Intel’s $15 billion acquisition last week of vision sensor firm Mobileye shows. In October, San Diego-based Qualcomm paid $38 billion for NXP Semiconductors, principally for its stake in the car market. Some 27 companies including Google, Ford and General Motors have scores of test cars on the road here.
This financial horsepower is playing an undeniable role in Sacramento’s thinking. In one notable skirmish, Uber, which didn’t want to play by the state rules, moved its testing operations to Arizona. Other firms impatient with state oversight could do the same.
That’s only one reason for more lenient regulations. Autonomous cars have the potential to eliminate driver error that kills over 30,000 people per year. Road rage, drunk driving and plain error could be tamed. The elderly and disabled could achieve increased mobility. Even traffic jams, parking, and gas station waits might be improved if a driver-dominated car culture shifts in a more efficient direction.
Down the road will be other challenges only beginning to be felt. Fleets of app-summoned self-driving taxis may eliminate the need for paid drivers. Self-driving trucks are already being tested, presenting a job-ending dilemma for the transportation industry. These considerations reach far beyond California’s official steps so far.
There still needs to be serious oversight. Skepticism about tech’s infallibility is just a first reaction. Immensely powerful chips and software will be required to handle the instantaneous decisions that human drivers now make.
The ground rules right now put much of the testing and documentation in the hands of the car firms. They’re required to disclose accidents and report results, but the span of experience is still relatively short. There’s the legal realm to consider in assigning blame if any foul-up leads to trouble or harm.
If these issues can be sorted out, California’s asphalt may never be the same. But there’s reason for doubt and concern, plus ample public review before letting technology take over.
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March 21
Pasadena Star-News on homelessness in Los Angeles:
If public officials in Los Angeles County can be judged by their response to any single problem in the next few years, the problem is homelessness.
That this has become the keystone issue for the county and many of its cities became clear with the passage of Measure H in the March 7 election.
Measure H’s victory is all but official. The final ballot count, released Monday, shows it received 69.34 percent of the votes, solidly above the two-thirds majority a tax increase needs to pass. Results in this and other elections this month were to be certified Tuesday by the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s Office, and declared official March 28 by the Board of Supervisors.
When it takes effect on Jan. 1, 2018, Measure H will raise the county sales tax by a quarter-cent for 10 years to provide about $355 million annually to fund services for people experiencing homelessness and at risk of homelessness.
Voters said OK even though the measure adds to already-high sales taxes. With Measure H coming on top of Measure M - the half-cent sales tax increase for mass transit approved last November - sales taxes in most L.A. County cities will climb from 8.75 percent to 9.5 percent (and 10 and 10.5 percent in some places).
Voters said OK even though many of the L.A. city residents among them just voted in November to approve Measure HHH, another anti-homelessness program, calling for $1.2 bill in bonds to build housing for the homeless.
And voters said OK even though many will have suspected that county officials could find some of the needed money in existing revenue if they really tried.
They said OK for the same reason this editorial board endorsed Measure H: Homelessness has simply become that big a crisis.
In a sense, it’s this big because it encompasses almost any other local issue you can name: poverty, jobs, housing, health, crime, infrastructure, assorted quality-of-life issues; it appeals to Angelenos’ compassion and pragmatism.
In declaring victory for Measure H, county Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said officials “now have the means to end this crisis.”
Yes, they have. Today’s elected officials and their successors now are obliged to follow through and make the sacrifices of L.A. County taxpayers pay off.
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March 18
The Los Angeles Daily News on California property taxes:
Some like to claim that Proposition 13 has decimated local government revenue and made California a low property tax state, but this is hardly the case.
While Proposition 13 has succeeded in preventing property tax hikes as large as many big-government proponents might wish (not to mention providing a stable revenue stream that is largely insulated from the sometimes dramatic shifts in property values), local governments are far from starved for revenue.
California has an effective tax rate of 0.81 percent, or 81 cents for every $100 of assessed value, according to a recent study by WalletHub. That ties us with Arizona for just the 33rd-highest rate in the nation (including the District of Columbia), which sounds pretty good.
Unfortunately, since housing prices are so ungodly in the Golden State - the $385,500 median value was the third-highest (behind only Hawaii and D.C.), and more than twice the $178,600 U.S. median value in 2015 - that Californians still end up paying much more than most in property taxes. When calculated based on the median home value, California’s $3,104 in annual property taxes shot up to 11th in the nation.
This is somewhat to be expected, given the higher standard of living. To gain a better understanding of how much of a burden these property taxes really are, Orange County Register reporter Jonathan Lansner compared the median property tax payments to median annual incomes ($64,500 here in California) and found that the state’s 4.8 percent share of income ranked 10th worst among the states.
Keep in mind that this is only one aspect of the tax burden placed on California residents. A number of states - such as Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas and Washington - have higher property tax rates than California, but that is largely because they do not have any income tax. In addition to its onerous property taxes, California has not only the highest marginal income tax rate, but the highest four income tax rates, the highest state sales tax, the ninth-highest corporate income tax rate and the fifth-highest gas tax rate.
And while Prop. 13 succeeded in keeping down property taxes, cities and counties have found creative ways to increase overall tax revenue per person, such as by imposing and raising sales, utility and hotel taxes; development impact fees and Mello-Roos assessments, the latter two of which are used to pay for infrastructure and other costs related to developments. In fact, city and county “own-source” revenues (not including state or federal funds) have increased 36 percent, adjusted for inflation, from roughly $2,600 per person in 1977-78, just prior to the implementation of Prop. 13, to roughly $3,440 per person, the Legislative Analyst’s Office noted in a September report.
As we noted in an editorial on Friday, California is in the midst of a severe housing crisis - largely as a result of taxes, fees, regulations, restrictive zoning ordinances and other anti-growth state and local government policies that have suppressed housing supplies and driven up prices dramatically. Whether through burdensome regulations, parcel tax hikes or higher development fees - which average almost $32,000 for a typical $200,000 three-bedroom home, nearly three times the national average, according to consulting firm Duncan Associates - governments are increasingly pricing Californians out of the housing market and putting the “California dream” out of reach.
Particularly with a spendthrift Democratic supermajority in control of the Legislature, Prop. 13 is one of the few remaining checks on the growth of government. Rather than scapegoat it for not facilitating the fantasies of big-government politicians, we should seek to enact similar limits on all the other creative revenue sources they have devised.
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