California Editorial Roundup

March 3

The East Bay Times on public officials and private emails:

Score one for transparency, for the public’s right of access to government communications.

Ruling in a case from San Jose, the state Supreme Court in a unanimous and pointed decision Thursday was unequivocal: Government officials cannot use private email accounts to circumvent the disclosure requirements of the California Public Records Act.

“Employees’ communications about official agency business may be subject to CPRA regardless of the type of account used in the preparation or transmission,” the court ruled.

It’s taken eight long years to get here. And the fight over these particular records is not over. But the high court’s decision rejects a growing and disturbing practice by government officials of using personal accounts to hide their emails and texts from public review.

The San Jose case demonstrates why this decision is so important. Ted Smith was seeking records pertaining to a development proposal from former Mayor Tom McEnery, who received a $6 million loan from the city’s Redevelopment Agency.

Smith’s request included emails and texts about the deal sent or received on the private electronic devices of then-Mayor Chuck Reed, two City Council members and their staffs.

City Attorney Rick Doyle’s position was simple: Those records were not subject to disclosure under the Public Records Act. And the state Supreme Court’s response was equally simple: You’re wrong.

The court rejected Doyle’s arguments that the records didn’t fall under the purview of the law and that the disclosure of documents from personal accounts would necessarily violate privacy interests.

A “city employee’s communications related to the conduct of public business do not cease to be public records just because they were sent or received using a personal account,” the court ruled.

The decision sagely applied the language of a law originally written in 1968, in an era of paper communications, to 21st-century technology. The court bolstered its position by noting the importance Californians have given to transparency, most recently in 2004 when voters made the principle part of the state Constitution.

At the same time, the court was respectful of competing constitutional privacy rights. The opinion, written by Justice Carol Corrigan, pointed out that the Public Records Act already has privacy protections built in. Those protections apply regardless of where the documents reside.

It’s been disappointing to watch San Jose officials fight for secrecy for so long. And they haven’t been alone. They’ve been joined by statewide organizations representing cities, counties, school boards and special districts.

They’ve been fighting to circumvent the law and keep the public from learning about the public’s business. It’s shameful. Now, thanks to the high court, this sordid practice must end.

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March 6

The Porterville Recorder on addressing California’s infrastructure needs:

We had to laugh when we saw a California lawmaker urging his fellow Democrats to back off confrontations with President Donald Trump until after he gives the state billions of federal dollars to fix the state’s crumbling infrastructure.

Where was this lawmaker five, 10 or 15 years ago when it was becoming obvious the state had a problem with its infrastructure, and not just roadways. As the damage at the Oroville Dam shows us, the state has been somewhat negligent in keeping up with not just repairs, but assessments of the risks aging infrastructure poses.

Gov. Jerry Brown must share in that blame. He has been so focused on the high-speed rail project he has practically ignored everything else. Not that the fast train may be fun to ride someday, but even after its completion - which we may never see - it will do nothing to solve the state’s crumbling infrastructure needs.

There are things the governor and state Legislature can do right now to help. First, highway funding that is being diverted to the state’s general fund can be restored. Taxes paid by trucks are not going to fix our roadways and that is millions and millions of dollars every year. The governor can stop that almost immediately, then we can talk about other revenue ideas.

And, maybe bad-mouthing the president of the United States is not such a good idea when the first time we have a crisis, we go running to that same president with our hands out.

The governor and Legislature need to take an immediate assessment of the non-highway infrastructure needs of this state and then prioritize those. That list should include more water storage to hold back some of the flood waters which have caused so much damage.

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March 7

Orange County Register on funding the high-speed rail project:

The federal government is putting a hold on funding that would aid the California high-speed rail project, but the state apparently didn’t get the memo.

The Trump administration has suspended, pending the completion of its proposed budget, a decision on a $647 million grant intended to electrify Caltrain commuter rail tracks, which would ultimately be used by the high-speed rail system. As these pages noted about two weeks ago, all 14 congressional Republicans sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, asserting: “We think providing additional funding at this time to the Authority would be an irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars.”

The letter cited a confidential Federal Railroad Administration report that concluded that the initial 119-mile segment of the system in the Central Valley could cost 50 percent ($3.6 billion) more than estimated.

But the state has nonetheless doubled down on the project. On Friday, the Finance Department approved the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s request to ask the State Treasurer’s Office to issue $2.6 billion of the nearly $10 billion in funds authorized by the 2008 bond measure narrowly approved by voters.

The state also appears nonplused by the fact that its major ongoing revenue source for the project, the proceeds from the state’s “cap-and-trade” auctions, seems to be drying up. Just a small fraction of the pollution credits up for sale have been sold in the last year, threatening the hundreds of millions of dollars the bullet train expects to receive annually. In the most recent auction last month, just 16.5 percent of the emission allowances were sold at the floor price, netting just $8.2 million for the state (and only about $2 million of that for high-speed rail) out of a possible $600 million.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office noted in 2012, when the cap-and-trade program first got up and running, that the use of such proceeds was “very speculative,” and cautioned that using them to fund the high-speed rail system might be illegal, since they were supposed to be used to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions but the high-speed rail system will actually increase net GHG emissions for at least several decades due to construction and operation effects.

The cap-and-trade program itself is facing great uncertainty. A lawsuit challenges that the program’s “fees” are an unconstitutional tax, and the Legislature has yet to extend the program past its current sunset date of 2020.

From the very beginning, the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s business plans have been based more on hope and fantasy than on sound finance or economics. Proponents seem to have adopted the “in for a penny, in for a pound” strategy: Just grab as much money as you can, as quickly as you can, and start building. Once the track has been laid, there is less likelihood the public will mount strong enough opposition to stop the project, which might be seen as wasteful and cost even more money to tear up the track.

But there is a saying in economics: “Sunk costs are sunk.” That money is gone, and sometimes it is best to just cut your losses, rather than continuing to rack them up. Or, as actor and humorist Will Rogers once said, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” The same holds true if you’re laying tracks for California’s high-speed rail project.

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March 8

Mercury News on impact of GOP health care plan on California:

So much for President Trump’s promise to deliver a health care plan that will “have insurance for everybody” and health care “that is far less expensive and far better.”

Trumpcare is an unmitigated disaster.

House Speaker Paul Ryan released the plan Monday, and Trump enthusiastically endorsed it Tuesday - even though it covers fewer Americans, increases costs for low-income and senior citizens, increases the deficit, defunds Planned Parenthood and does zero to reduce overall health care costs. Zero.

Who does it help? The wealthiest Americans and the profits of insurance companies.

The plan would be cataclysmic for health care in California, where one-third of the population - 13 million people - are covered by Medi-Cal. By a conservative estimate, the state stands to receive $8 billion less a year from the federal government to cover its health care costs for low-income families qualifying for Medi-Cal.

In addition, as many as 4 million Californians would likely lose the health insurance coverage they receive through Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act program, including hundreds of thousands in the Bay Area.

But wait. It gets worse.

Despite the dramatic effects of this plan nationwide, Ryan wants to ram it through Congress.

Republicans like to pretend President Obama and Democrats in Congress in 2009 didn’t try to work with them on health care reform. They imply it was rushed through without debate.

Were we as impolite as President Trump, we would say: Lies!

In spring of 2009, Senate Democrats created a “Gang of Six” - three Democrats and three Republicans. They were charged with crafting a grand bargain that would generate widespread bipartisan support. It’s where the notion of an individual mandate and state exchanges involving private insurers was born, to the chagrin of many Democrats.

The debate raged for months before Democrats eventually were forced to move forward on their own. Before the Affordable Care Act was passed in March, 2010, it had been reviewed multiple times by the independent Congressional Budget Office, as efforts were made to keep it from adding to the nation’s deficit. The CBO ultimately said the ACA would pay for itself. The projections proved overly optimistic, but Republicans and Democrats had a chance to review the report and debate it.

Ryan wants the full House to act on his plan before it goes into recess April 7. Why? Because he knows the independent CBO scoring will show how disastrous the GOP plan is for everyone but the rich.

Taking health care subsidies away from low-income Californians won’t lower the nation’s health care bills. It means people won’t receive the preventive care they’ve been getting under the Affordable Care Act. Without it, preventable or controllable diseases or conditions become chronic or catastrophic.

Hospitals and doctors, by law, must deliver that treatment when the indigent show up at emergency rooms, where treatment is magnitudes more expensive with poorer outcomes. County taxpayers end up paying the bill.

The Republican bill this week is under assault from all directions: from liberals for the tax giveaway to the rich, from conservatives for the failure to fully repeal Obamacare and from moderates in both parties alarmed about taking insurance away from potentially millions of people, many of whom vote.

The battle may not be entirely over. But it’s pretty easy to see who’s losing. And it’s not the well-insured members of Congress.

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March 7

Sacramento Bee on pension costs for California cities and counties:

New Sacramento City Manager Howard Chan is putting together his first budget proposal, and you might think with the improving economy, he would be able to hand out cash to this program or that.

Instead, he’s warning department heads not to expect many of their pent-up requests, he’s focused on increasing revenue and cutting expenses, and he’s looking at least five years down the road.

There’s a very good reason: Higher pension costs are on the way because CalPERS lowered its expected investment returns. Sacramento’s additional payments are projected to rise from a manageable $3.2 million in 2018-19 to a frightening $29.4 million in 2022-23.

“It keeps me up at night,” Chan told The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board this week.

If the higher CalPERS contributions aren’t the stuff of nightmares for city and county officials across the state, they should at least be a big worry. The League of California Cities calls the pension issue the biggest obstacle facing every full-service city in the state. It is urging its members to run the numbers and to start taking necessary steps. It says some cities may have to consider hiring freezes and service cuts. Even then, the league warns, some cities might eventually veer dangerously close to bankruptcy.

It’s the legacy of overly generous promises, notably a legislative giveaway to public employee unions by Gov. Gray Davis in 1999, plus the fallout from the December vote by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System board to cut the “discount rate” - its long-term projection of investment returns - from 7.5 percent to 7 percent. It will be phased in, starting in 2018-19.

For Sacramento, the higher pension contributions make up the vast majority of projected deficits that by 2022-23 could rival those during the Great Recession that forced layoffs and major cuts in city services, including public safety and parks.

There’s time to avoid painful budget cuts, but only by belt-tightening now. That’s even more crucial because the City Council went on something of a spending spree last year, before the CalPERS action.

Those budget projections assume that voters renew the Measure U half-cent sales tax, which now brings in more than $40 million a year and is set to expire in March 2019. The numbers also include about $5 million more a year, mostly in property taxes generated in part by the development around Golden 1 Center.

The figures, however, don’t include revenue from city taxes on marijuana production or stores as the legalization of recreational pot is rolled out. They also don’t take into account any federal budget cuts, either from President Donald Trump’s plan to trim domestic spending to beef up the military or from his threats to take funding away from “sanctuary” cities that protect undocumented immigrants.

With all the unknowns - and the certainty of higher pension payments - being frugal is the only responsible course for Sacramento and cities and counties across California.