July 25
The Mercury News on California needing to fight Trump on fuel efficiency standards:
In 1969, the year before the Clean Air Act was enacted, American cars on average got an abysmal 12.0 miles per gallon. They ran on leaded gas and spewed dirty exhaust into the air.
For the past 50 years, California has used its federal waiver under the Clean Air Act to set tougher fuel economy standards for the state, forcing automakers to innovate for the benefit of all. The Trump administration is expected to announce later this week that it will seek to revoke California’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars.
This is no time to take a step backward in the battle for cleaner air, reduced reliance on fossil fuels and against climate change.
If Trump follows through as expected, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra should fight for the state’s right to combat air pollution. And Californians should use the ensuing public comment period to let automakers know in no uncertain terms that they will not buy vehicles from manufacturers that roll back their standards. It’s not an idle threat. Californians buy about 2 million cars and light trucks every year. Twelve other states follow California’s rules. All told, they account for about 35 percent of all U.S. auto sales. Sticking to California’s standards, regardless of the success of Trump’s action, is a win-win for automakers in that it will also keep them on the cutting edge of the global marketplace.
The emissions standards fight began in 1967 when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the bill creating the California Air Resources Board (CARB), designed to aggressively combat the state’s serious air pollution. In 1970, the federal government authorized the state to set stricter vehicle emission standards.
Fast forward to 2009, when the Obama administration gave the state permission to set its own greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and then negotiated a deal with California so that there would be only one nationwide standard to follow. The deal calls for a nationwide boost for new passenger cars and light trucks to an average fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 - which equates to about 40 mpg in real-world driving.
California went even further when Gov. Jerry Brown in January signed an executive order committing the state to a goal of 5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2030. It’s a big part of the commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases in California, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the state’s total.
California now has about 350,000 electric vehicles on the road - a far cry from the governor’s 2030 target. It won’t happen unless California retains its ability to control vehicle standards.
Other nations are being even more aggressive than California. Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Netherlands, Norway and Taiwan have banned all sales of new, gasoline-powered cars after 2030, and France and the United Kingdom have enacted bans beginning in 2040. The United States should be taking a leadership role in greenhouse gas emissions and promoting innovation in the auto industry.
Californians should be a driving force in the effort to keep the Trump administration from rolling back its fuel efficiency standards.
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July 25
Los Angeles Times on California’s public-employee pensions not having the luxury of making political statements
The Trump administration’s practice of separating young children from their asylum-seeking parents and detaining them in prison-like facilities was abhorrent and so inhumane that even the administration chose not to defend it to an outraged public.
The ongoing detention of families is less barbaric, though still bad policy. But it is good business for the private corrections companies that contract with the government to house detainees. And it may get even more lucrative. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration has requested $2.8 billion in the coming fiscal year to pay for 12,000 more beds in immigration detention centers.
Among the investors that may profit from the demand for detention centers is the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which has $12 million in investments in two private correction companies, CoreCivic of Nashville, Tennessee, and GEO Group of Boca Raton, Florida. But hundreds of teachers and activist groups are now demanding the CalSTRS board divest from these companies because they say it is immoral to make money from human misery.
“We are here to serve diverse communities not profit from them,” one teacher said during an emotional moment at a CalSTRS investment committee meeting on Friday.
We agree that it’s repugnant that misery can be monetized, and we have issues with the government outsourcing of corrections in general. But let’s be clear: The villain in this dark moment in U.S. history is the federal government - and in particular, the Trump administration - not private prison companies.
The California Teachers Assn., the state’s largest teachers union, has taken a more measured approach, raising concerns about the conditions in the private facilities and asking the manager of CalSTRS’ pension fund to investigate whether the investments continue to meet the fund’s guidelines on human rights. But even this inquiry seems to be politically motivated, considering the time required to police an investment that’s a tiny sliver of the fund’s $224 billion in assets.
We are concerned about the increasing pressure to politicize the state’s largest public employee retirement funds, and think teachers ought to be as well. CalSTRS is deeply underfunded (even more than the California Public Employees’ Retirement System) with a staggering $107 billion in unfunded liabilities that threaten not just the school districts that will be squeezed to make up for the shortfall, but also the state’s taxpayers, who would have to pay any pensions CalSTRS couldn’t finance.
The calls for divestment used to be rare, focusing on truly toxic substances, such as tobacco, or countries targeted for global sanctions, such as South Africa during the apartheid era. But in recent years, activists have used divestment as a way to turn their political agendas into action.
Last year the state Legislature considered a bill pushing CalSTRS and CalPERS to divest from the companies that financed the Dakota Access Pipeline. This year, state Treasurer John Chiang urged both retirement funds to divest from assault rifle companies. CalPERS resisted, but CalSTRS agreed to put pressure on gun retailers.
Both funds prefer to use their holdings as leverage, engaging with companies to try to change policies they find problematic before they take the drastic step of divesting, which can take as years to fully accomplish and can reduce investment returns. CalPERS divested from tobacco companies in 2000, and although it was the moral and sensible thing to do, it cost the fund an estimated $3.68 billion in earnings.
Sacrificing some future revenue might seem like no big deal at the moment, with better-than-expected returns coming in. CalPERS reported an 8.6% rate of return for the fiscal year that ended June 30. CalSTRS did even better, reporting a 9% return for the same period, and for the second year in a row beating its own 7% expectations.
But as Gov. Jerry Brown points out year after year, the good times never roll on forever. And with such enormous unfunded liabilities, CalSTRS (and CalPERS) already need an exceptionally long run of better-than-expected earnings. The dark clouds seem to be gathering on the horizon already, seeded perhaps by the president’s trade war with the rest of the globe, which CalSTRS’ chief investment officer warned could hurt returns in the future. This is no time to force CalSTRS to use its pension funds to make a political statement, especially one directed at the wrong target.
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?July 24
The Press Democrat on DMV lines being no laughing matter:
Long lines at DMV offices are a staple of late-night comedy.
But there’s nothing funny about the insane delays in recent weeks, with people saying they have waited nine hours or more to renew license, register cars and conduct other routine business at the state Department of Motor Vehicles.
DMV blames the long waits on heavy demand for Real IDs - the new, secure drivers licenses that will be required to board airplanes by the end of 2020.
You must go in person to DMV to apply for your new licenses. In a state with 40 million people, and 26 million licensed drivers, some delays were inevitable.
But the state had 12 years to prepare. Congress passed the Real ID Act in 2005, acting on a recommendation of a post-9/11 commission.
Moreover, the new air travel rules originally were scheduled to take effect in January. Federal authorities pushed the effective date back to October 2020 because several states - California among them - were slow to offer Real ID-compliant licenses and identification cards.
When the new licenses finally became available in California early this year, long lines quickly followed, with the worst waits right here in the Bay Area.
Joe Sheerin of Santa Rosa said he waited all day, two days in a row, earlier this summer and never heard his name called. “It’s abusive to have people wait and not tell them, ’We can’t get you in today,’?” he told Staff Writer Mary Callahan. “I’m here for something that should take 20 minutes.”
Sheerin returned last week with an appointment, but even people arriving with appointments have had to wait at times. And making an appointment usually often means waiting for several weeks.
To alleviate the waits, DMV took the long-overdue step of opening for a half-day on two Saturdays each month at some locations, including in Santa Rosa. Beginning in August, those offices will be open every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
DMV also is promising to add more employees to help meet the demand. State lawmakers should be asking why the agency wasn’t ready for a predictable surge in demand.
If you need a new Real ID license, or have any other business at DMV, you’re best bet is to make an appointment. And bring a good book.
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July 24
San Francisco Chronicle on BART needing to give public faster response following fatal double stabbing:
Sunday night’s tragic and senseless stabbing of 18-year-old Nia Wilson and her 26-year-old sister, Lahtifa Wilson, on a BART platform in Oakland, horrified the entire Bay Area.
After a daylong manhunt, John Cowell, the 27-year-old violent felon suspected of killing Wilson and critically injuring her sister, is in custody. But it took an eagle-eyed BART passenger to spot Cowell - who was, terrifyingly, back on BART.
So the Wilson incident - along with the news that there were two other deaths linked to the system over a five-day period - has brought back old complaints about BART’s responsiveness and transparency.
BART has a long record of trouble when it comes to responding to crime on the system. Following a fatal shooting on a BART train, a January 2016 Chronicle report revealed that most of the system’s train cameras were decoys. It took another year and a half for BART to complete the installation of working cameras in all of its train cars.
The agency has also been criticized for its handling of less severe crimes. For instance, the Chronicle’s reporting prodded the agency into revealing the extent of its fare evasion problems and the 2017 case of juveniles staging a robbery on a train car.
Regarding the most recent string of deadly attacks, BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said the agency’s goal was to be thorough rather than quick.
“There were three homicides in a very short period of time, which is extremely rare for BART,” Trost said. “We weren’t hiding any information. We wanted to double check everything before we released it. In the Wilson case, there were law enforcement reasons for delaying the release of his picture.”
When it comes to crime, it’s important to get it right. But it’s also important to be forthright with the public in a timely manner.
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July 20
The San Diego Union-Tribune on improving California schools:
When it comes to pushing for improved schools, California reformers led by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, have long enjoyed the federal government’s support. President Barack Obama and his first education secretary, Arne Duncan, tried to get the state to enter the Race to the Top program, dubbed “the largest-ever federal competitive investment in school reform.” The Trump administration initially continued with such pressure.
Under 2015’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), federal education mandates were sharply reduced from those contained in 2002’s No Child Left Behind Act. But the federal education framework still required that for states to receive federal education aid, their schools would have to face consequences if they graduate less than two-thirds of students; fall in the bottom 5 percent of statewide assessments; and have minority groups that consistently show weak test results.
The U.S. Department of Education rejected the first two ESSA compliance plans offered by the state Department of Education. The plans were viewed as so vague that they made it more difficult - not less - to hold schools accountable. But last week, after more state tinkering, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos pronounced herself satisfied and approved a state ESSA plan that continues to rely on a California School Dashboard program that measures school progress in 10 categories - some of which have nothing to do with academics.
That’s bad enough. But state officials’ embrace of vagueness has also led them to discourage school districts from pursuing promising reforms that are based on academic metrics. A recent CALmatters report noted a reform known as the “growth model” appeared to be paying off in Long Beach Unified. Under the approach, school districts pay close attention to teaching practices at schools that show the biggest improvements in test scores, then use those practices at other schools to see if the results replicate. Long Beach officials say that’s just what happened when they used the mathematics lesson plans and teaching stratagems from one particular middle school at other schools.
Such results are why school districts in Long Beach, Fresno, Garden Grove, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and Santa Ana and in 40 states in all are using variations of the growth model to try to close the persistent achievement gaps between white and Asian students - especially those from middle-income and affluent families - and Latino and African-American students, who often come from poorer households.
Even so, members of the State Board of Education are cool - even hostile - to the growth model. According to CALmatters, board member Sue Burr recently said at a meeting that the focus on testing “scares me a little bit … . We have made a concerted effort to move away from making decisions based solely on test scores. And I feel a sucking motion pulling us back in that direction.” CALmatters also quoted board President Michael Kirst as saying that 40 states use the growth model as a way to evaluate teacher effectiveness - as if that’s a bad thing.
This framing crystallizes the Golden State’s education dilemma: Reflecting the clout of the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers, the No. 1 goal of those running public schools is protecting teachers - not helping students. Yet state job protections for poor-performing teachers are already so extreme that The New York Times’ Editorial Board in 2014 called them “shameful” and harmful to minority students these teachers often end up instructing. These are rules Weber wants to change, even if her colleagues won’t.
Democrats who say they’re devoted to social justice should prove it in public schools, where there is little appetite for reform but a great need.
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