California Editorial Rdp

Jan. 10

Los Angeles Times on L.A. County’s supervisors needing to stop naming things after themselves:

Hey, here’s an idea: Let’s rename the L.A. Convention Center for Mayor Eric Garcetti. Right now. And how about a magnet school for L.A. Unified board member Kelly Gonez, now in her seventh month of service? And Doug Jones, that new U.S. senator from Alabama - he ought to get at least a library or a garage or something.

Well, why not? That’s how it’s done, right? You get elected to public office and you name stuff after yourself. This isn’t like the old days when such honors went to politicians only after they died, or the not-quite-so-old days when they at least had to leave office first. No, this is an era full of self-aggrandizement and devoid of shame or decorum. All the old rules go out the window.

And so we have Item 21 on Tuesday’s Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agenda: Name a new mental health center in the city of San Fernando for Supervisor Sheila Kuehl.

This is different from all those regional parks like Bonelli, Schabarum and Debs, or the John Anson Ford Theatres or the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, named by previous boards as going-away presents for retiring supervisors after long and distinguished (or in some cases just long) tenures. Kuehl may have a long and distinguished record as an activist, attorney, lawmaker, performer and ceiling shatterer, but that’s hardly the point. This is no parting gift.

For heaven’s sake, Kuehl hasn’t even completed her first term as a supervisor. She is raising money for reelection. She just assumed the board chairmanship a few weeks ago. Since when do boards of supervisors name things after members who just got there?

The only thing more absurd would be to, say, erect a statue to Supervisor Hilda Solis.

And that, by the way, would be Item 13 on Tuesday’s agenda: “Authorize the Acting Executive Director of the Arts Commission to accept a donation of a sculpture of Supervisor Hilda L. Solis and civil rights leader, Dolores Huerta, by artist José Sacal..”

Seriously. A statue. Members of the Arts Commission, by the way, are appointed by the Board of Supervisors.

That outdoes even Michael D. Antonovich, who takes the legacy prize for greatest number of public assets bearing his name - a courthouse, a wilderness area, a park, a trail, etc. Yes, many of those things were named for him while he was still in office (he served 36 years). But that’s a singular pattern that ought to have been term-limited along with the supervisor himself.

Instead of a motion to name a building for Kuehl or to accept a statue of Solis, the item that ought to be coming before the board Tuesday is a policy against ever doing such things, at least until a successor has been elected. Metro had such a policy until 2014 - when it abandoned the prohibition in order to name stations after departing Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina.

It’s crass for elected officials to name things after one another (and just bizarre to accept statues of themselves) while they are still in office. It’s also rather shortsighted, because the person’s legacy has yet to be set. Remember the Richard M. Nixon Freeway, for example, which became the Marina Freeway after the president’s resignation.

Granted, sometimes a naming can endure even criminal charges. Supervisor Pete Schabarum’s colleagues renamed a county park for him many years ago - before his no-contest plea on charges of felony tax evasion. But the charges ultimately were reduced to misdemeanors, so what the heck? Schabarum Park remains.

And although the political name game is played to excess, the prize is sometimes earned. Supervisor Janice Hahn walks daily into a building named after her father, who served on the board even longer than Antonovich did.

On the other hand, it was Hahn herself who, while in the L.A. City Council, introduced the motion to name part of City Hall after her brother, former Mayor James K. Hahn. If you were on the council at the time, what were you going to say? “No”? That would be a nastygram to both Janice and Jim, and there could be some legal or political comeuppance down the road. Or at least the appearance of it. So the only real option was to vote “yes.”

Kuehl’s prize for simply doing the job to which she was elected may be only a name on a mental health center, but why her and not, say, Mark Ridley-Thomas or Kathryn Barger for public assets in their own districts? Don’t they now have to keep up, and won’t their colleagues feel compelled to vote “yes”? And how will they top themselves when Kuehl really does leave office? Will she get something already named after some other supervisor assigned to her? Will, say, a portion of the John Anson Ford Theatres be renamed the Sheila Kuehl Amphitheatre?

What’s that you say? It already happened? Last October? We missed that one. In the political ego name game, it’s sometimes hard to keep up.

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Jan. 10

Santa Rosa Press Democrat on California vs. the FCC on net neutrality:

Add one more front in California’s war with the Trump administration: net neutrality.

State lawmakers returned to Sacramento this week to consider, among other things, a work-around in response to the Federal Communication Commission’s disgraceful decision to allow internet service providers to play favorites.

Acting on a party-line vote, the FCC, now led by a former Verizon lawyer, freed ISPs to speed up, slow down or block content when it suits their purposes. The rules adopted Dec. 14 also allow ISPs to charge online companies extra for faster speeds - costs that will be passed on to broadband consumers and could hinder startups, nonprofits and small companies that can’t afford to pay premium prices.

Think of it as extending the cable TV model to the internet: high cost for basic service, a lot more for anything else.

But in an increasingly wired world, where work, study and personal finances often require online access (and streaming video is an attractive alternative to cable), it’s much easier to cut the cord on TV than it is to do without broadband internet.

This is a national concern, and the best solution would be a federal law restoring net neutrality. Unfortunately, Congress appears to be headed in the opposite direction.

That’s why California and several other states are looking to implement their own net-neutrality rules. In Sacramento, a bill introduced by state Senate President Kevin de León would:

- Make it unlawful for broadband internet providers to block or limit services, interfere with customers’ access or engage in deceptive marketing practices.

- Allow the California attorney general or any district attorney or city attorney to enforce the rules under the state’s unfair business practices law.

- Direct the California Public Utilities Commission to establish rules to enforce the state’s net neutrality requirements.

Congress ought to be discussing similar mechanisms to maintain a level playing field on the web, and Democrats gathered enough signatures to force a Senate vote.

However, there’s no indication that vote will come anytime soon, that the House will vote at all or that the president, who appointed the FCC chairman, would sign a law re-establishing net neutrality.

Meanwhile, a House bill introduced by Republican Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, the top congressional recipient of campaign contributions from the telecommunications industry, would codify most of the worst parts of the FCC’s new rules into federal law.

For many years, states’ rights were a cornerstone of the Republican platform. That appeared to be forgotten as soon as the GOP took the reins of power in Washington. Blackburn’s bill is no exception. It would specifically bar states from adopting “any law, rule, regulation, duty, requirement, standard or other provision” related to net neutrality.

Some of the biggest names in tech - Facebook, Google and Uber among them - tried to persuade the FCC to leave net neutrality in place. They failed. Maybe they will have better luck in Congress, where saving the status quo might allow states to step in until a more consumer-friendly Congress is elected.

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Jan. 9

The Orange County Register on California Environmental Quality Act and the California housing crisis:

Abuses of the California Environmental Quality Act are aggravating the state’s housing crisis, according to a recent study by Los Angeles lawyers Holland & Knight.

With more than half of renters and over a third of homeowners with mortgages in California cost-burdened by housing - spending more than 30 percent of household incomes on housing - and many forced to commute long distances to work in order to live in affordable housing, California’s housing crisis has made life difficult even for those with well-paying, professional jobs.

There are many reasons for this situation beyond supply and demand. Among them are overly restrictive and antiquated government zoning regulations that artificially limit opportunities for development, “affordable housing” regulations and requirements that reduce incentives for homebuilding and other government restrictions or obstacles.

CEQA, passed in 1970 to ensure environmental impacts of proposed projects are considered by state and local agencies and that identified impacts are mitigated, has unfortunately become a tool to block or delay projects regardless of whether there are significant or legitimate environmental concerns.

In recent years, housing developments have been the most frequent target of CEQA lawsuits, with the chief result being the blocking of new housing developments and the discouraging of others.

Holland & Knight conducted reviews of CEQA lawsuits from 2010-12 and most recently in 2013-15, finding that challenges to housing developments actually increased from the first period to the second even as the state’s housing crisis intensified.

This issue was unfortunately well on display locally. CEQA lawsuits in the Los Angeles region (encompassing Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and Imperial counties) accounted for 38 percent of CEQA lawsuits statewide in 2013-15, up from 33 percent in 2010-12.

Whereas 24 percent of CEQA lawsuits statewide targeted housing projects, in the L.A. region, more than 33 percent of CEQA lawsuits targeted housing projects, the study says. These lawsuits targeted a combined 13,946 housing units and a 200-bed homeless shelter in just the L.A. region alone in 2013-15.

Despite the common insistence of proponents that CEQA is needed to protect low-income and minority communities from environmental harms, Holland & Knight note that housing lawsuits in the L.A. region “disproportionately target new housing in whiter, wealthier, healthier communities,” with a vast proportion of CEQA lawsuits filed in places like West Los Angeles. Overall, 78 percent of CEQA lawsuits in 2013-15 were filed outside of areas designated environmentally disadvantaged communities by the California Environmental Protection Agency.

The overall result of the abuse of CEQA by often wealthy NIMBYs is the driving up of the cost of housing, the shifting of populations elsewhere and potentially even greater environmental harms on balance due to longer commutes.

To ameliorate these problems, Holland & Knight suggests ideas like ending anonymous CEQA lawsuits and eliminating duplicative lawsuits against projects that have already completed CEQA processes. These would be a good start.

Lawmakers serious about tackling the housing crisis cannot shy away from at least considering CEQA reform. The longer they wait, the more the public will suffer the consequences.

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Jan. 8

The San Diego Union-Tribune on Californians needing protection from stoned drivers:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions just threw California and the seven other states that have approved recreational marijuana use into confusion by reversing an Obama administration policy and allowing local U.S. attorneys to enforce federal anti-cannabis laws at their discretion. But no one should believe Sessions is changing the arc of history when it comes to Americans accepting marijuana use. An October Gallup poll showed record support for marijuana legalization - 64 percent - a massive change from 1996, when only 25 percent supported it.

Perhaps making marijuana legal won’t increase its use because it is already so widely available from medical pot dispensaries and the black market. But legalizing recreational use normalizes cannabis and may make it both more acceptable and more common. Any increase, especially by inexperienced users, makes it crucial that the public be protected, in our car-crazy culture, from pot-impaired drivers.

After Colorado legalized recreational marijuana sales in 2014, traffic fatalities linked to marijuana use rose from 47 in 2013 to 115 in 2016. That’s troubling. Also, testing for marijuana is far more difficult than for alcohol impairment, which can be measured easily with breathalyzers. No such reliable quick, hard-science field tests are available to determine the presence of THC, marijuana’s primary active ingredient, or other drugs that impair motor skills.

Nearly a year ago, the San Diego Police Department obtained two Dräger DrugTest 5000 machines, which test oral mouth swipes from drivers suspected of impairment for the presence of marijuana, cocaine, opiates, methamphetamine, amphetamine, methadone and benzodiazepines. Dräger asserts that its machines only test for the presence of the active THC compound that impairs a driver - not residual THC. If a driver field-tested by SDPD shows the compound, he or she must submit to blood tests to establish levels of impairment. The German company claims its machine worked in two California tests with 98.9 percent accuracy.

Yet scientific studies of the Dräger method and similar tests don’t back that up. In 2017, the journal of the Canadian Forensic Science Society suggested saliva tests could prove to be a valuable tool for law enforcement. The journal also noted researchers found relatively high levels of false positive results and unimpressive results in detecting cannabis use. It also noted that oral mouth swipes were better at detecting some drugs than others. These concerns about Dräger’seffectiveness are shared by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.

In an interview with an editorial writer for The San Diego Union-Tribune, Mark McCullough of the Police Department’s Traffic Division said SDPD was “comfortable” with its use of the Dräger machines and had not encountered any issues to date.

But he also said the department was open to better drug field tests, as UC San Diego is trying to find. That’s good to hear - because if Dräger thinks its device is near perfect despite contrary evidence, it is unlikely to try to improve its performance.

For everyone’s safety, here’s hoping intense research into improving drug field tests continues. In California, it’s never been more important to quickly and accurately identify stoned drivers.

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Jan. 7

Marysville Appeal-Democrat on regular farmers operating like pot grow operators:

If regular agriculturists operated in the manner that a lot of marijuana grow operators do, they’d be cited, prosecuted, pay a penalty, maybe go to jail.

We’re not talking about gardeners and locals who want to raise a small crop of cannabis. We’re talking about those big, illegal grows planted by opportunists, black marketeers, and gangsters.

The issues were reiterated by locals who traveled to Sacramento Jan. 2 and held up placards and spoke on the Capitol steps. There were images of dead fish, tons of trash left scattered around grow sites, containers of contaminants left around waterways. The problem is real and growing, they emphasized.

The small group rallied around the theme “Dope Damage - Rural Counties Rally,” focusing on environmental damage, illegal siphoning of water, water pollution and use of illegal pesticides.

Small rural counties have a hard time coping with large illegal grows. Yuba County’s message was on the money. They theorize that big growers target rural areas because they know small counties and towns don’t have the resources needed to do anything about it.

Yuba County Supervisor Rand Fletcher said the rally and the county’s declaration of an emergency were the first steps. From here on they’ll be scouting for assistance from state and federal sources.

By the way, in 2017, local forces eradicated 29,000 marijuana plants in Yuba County. That’s up from 9,000 in 2016 and 2,000 in 2015. It’s clearly a burgeoning problem.