California Editorial Rdp

Feb. 12

The San Diego Union-Tribune on Newsom’s bullet-train honesty:

It only took 10 years after California voters narrowly approved $9.95 billion in bond seed money for what was then a $33 billion statewide high-speed rail network, but a governor is finally acknowledging the project’s major problems. Gavin Newsom used his first State of the State address to declare that while he supported completion of an under-construction route from Bakersfield to Merced, “there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A.” Hallelujah. In his speech and a series of subsequent tweets, Newsom emphasized that he wasn’t abandoning high-speed rail, but he can’t walk his welcome criticism back.

Newsom crammed a lot into 43 minutes, about California Environmental Quality Act reforms, housing, homelessness, prescription drugs, water availability, rent stability and more, which state residents and this board will chew on in coming days and weeks. But by far the biggest news in his speech was his reality check on the state and the nation’s largest infrastructure project. “Let’s be real,” he said. It “would cost too much and take too long.”

As Ralph Vartabedian of the Los Angeles Times has reported, there’s at least a $50 billion gap in funding to build a now-$77 billion San Francisco-Los Angeles route, based on cost estimates from the unreliable California High-Speed Rail Authority. In November, Vartabedian also cited this fact: A project that was then 10 years old was 13 years behind schedule. How is such incompetence even possible?

Newsom’s candor was in sharp contrast with former Gov. Jerry Brown. He liked to ridicule project critics as “declinists” who were scared of the future - while never addressing the long list of concerns that began building about the bullet train just days after the passage of Proposition 1A in 2008. That’s when the California High-Speed Rail Authority released an overdue business plan that said the project was unlikely to attract private investors unless they received “both financial and political commitments from state officials that government would share the risks to their participation.” In other words, they would get subsidies if revenue forecasts fell short. But under Proposition 1A, such subsidies were illegal. The authority had this information in the spring of 2008 but never shared it with the public until after the measure passed - even as then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other advocates told voters it would be easy to get the private investment necessary to finish the project.

This original sin has been compounded by years more of dishonesty from state rail officials, most notably the periodic claims that the large international firms which were interested in building and/or managing the project wanted to invest in it. No, they weren’t - not without the prospect of subsidies.

The authority’s credibility hit rock bottom in 2015. That’s when Vartabedian reported that the authority had refused to make public a 2013 analysis from Parsons Brinckerhoff, its main project contractor, that predicted a $9 billion cost overrun on the bullet train’s initial 300-mile segment. Not only did the authority continue to issue cost estimates that didn’t reflect this warning, its CEO - Jeff Morales - claimed he didn’t know about the report. If Newsom is serious about bringing transparency to the rail authority, he should remove every single senior official who countenanced this cover-up.

Despite Newsom’s talk of good jobs and investment, his decision to seek completion of the Merced-Bakersfield segment is baffling. That wouldn’t link Silicon Valley jobs with potentially cheap housing in the Central Valley, which he said last year was a great idea. It’s also hard to see how ridership could be adequate to cover the high cost of buying and maintaining bullet trains and upkeep of the high-speed rail line - remember, subsidies are illegal.

Whatever Newsom’s calculations, his decision to be honest about this sinkhole of a project deserves praise. Better late than never, to be honest about it.

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Feb. 12

The Sacramento Bee on solving growing crisis of homelessness:

Carl Ulmer died near Ahern Street last Tuesday. He was 62, homeless and sleeping outside on a night when temperatures dropped into the 30s.

The coroner has yet to determine a cause of death. Homeless advocates say Ulmer might still be alive if the city had opened its warming centers. City guidelines keep them closed unless temperatures remain freezing for three nights in a row. Ulmer died on the first night of the cold snap, and homeless advocates have asked the city and the county to discard the guidelines and open the warming centers.

This is clearly an overdue step that may prevent more deaths.

Ulmer wasn’t the first homeless person to die on the streets of our city. He likely won’t be the last. On any given night, thousands of people in Sacramento struggle to survive without shelter.

“A census conducted on a single night in 2017, the most recent available survey, found 3,665 people living without permanent housing in Sacramento County, an increase of 30 percent from 2015,” according to a story by The Sacramento Bee’s Theresa Clift.

Ulmer’s death was a preventable tragedy, and stories like his may one day be a thing of the past if Mayor Darrell Steinberg gets his way. Sacramento, at Steinberg’s direction, has embarked on an ambitious new plan to deal with homelessness. Today, the City Council will discuss on how to spend $36 million designated to address the problem.

This is a significant milestone. And there’s no question about what made it possible: the passionate moral leadership of Mayor Steinberg, who has pledged to move 2000 people from the streets into some kind of housing by 2020.

Nearly $16 million of the funding comes from the Measure U reserve fund. While the measure passed before Steinberg became mayor, the big investment in homeless solutions is only possible because Steinberg convinced voters to both extend and increase the sales tax in 2018. The rest comes from state and private funds. Steinberg thinks the city’s first priority should be the expanded triage shelter plan he calls the “8 x 100 approach” - 100 new beds for the homeless in each council district.

“It must be a fair approach,” said Steinberg “It shouldn’t just be one area of the city.”

The temporary sites may consist of “Sprung” shelters, which are “semi-permanent, tent-like buildings that can be erected in a matter of weeks,” according to The Bee. The city already has one such site housing 100 people on Railroad Drive in North Sacramento.

Steinberg raised private funds from Sutter Health, UC Davis, and Helene and David S. Taylor, as well as others, to keep the shelter open.

The mayor has encountered some resistance. Not every member of the City Council is thrilled about the idea of shelters their districts. Yet most have come to agree with the mayor, and council members like Jay Schenirer are moving forward with plans to make beds available.

Triage isn’t a permanent solution, but it beats leaving people in the streets. Steinberg envisions a city where people can transition from the street to a shelter, and then to permanent housing. Last January, he proposed building 1,000 tiny homes to serve as transitional housing for homeless people. He asked the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency to gather proposals.

A year later, SHRA had nothing to show for it except vague proposals lacking critical details. This led to the unusual spectacle of the normally polite Steinberg blasting the agency’s non-performance during a City Council meeting.

“We need somebody driving an aggressive goal to build more affordable housing,” he said.

It looks like that somebody is Mayor Darrell Steinberg - and he’s up to the task.

The question is not whether some residents of Sacramento will continue to find themselves too impoverished to afford shelter. In a society plagued severe economic inequality, where many people live paycheck to paycheck, thousands live with the threat of homelessness.

The question is: Will our community care for all its citizens and help those who fall into homelessness? Or will Sacramento remain a place where thousands sleep - and many die - in the streets?

How we treat the poorest and most vulnerable in our community provides a measure of our moral character. Mayor Steinberg knows this. His leadership reflects it.

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Feb. 6

The Press Democrat on not banning paper receipts:

Laudable goals can lead to bad legislation. That is the case with a bill that would require California retailers and other companies to issue electronic receipts to customers instead of paper ones.

The goal is to reduce the use of paper, although customers could get a paper receipt by request. But with hackers already having exposed the data of millions of U.S. customers, do we really want to require every store to collect email addresses linked to our shopping choices?

Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, introduced AB 161, which he says would be the first such law in the United States. His legislation quotes a Green America study that says paper receipts annually create “686 million pounds of waste and 12 billion pounds of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of one million cars on the road, and most paper receipts contain chemicals that would contaminate other recyclable paper materials.” The legislation says those chemicals also pose health risks.

The bill, which is in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee, would take effect in 2022. It would mandate that receipts for retail sales or services be provided only electronically unless the customer requested a paper version.

Businesses would be issued warnings for their first two violations. Fines of $25 a day would start with the third violation, capped at $300 annually. Those provisions are similar to California’s new law that bans full-service restaurants from providing plastic straws unless customers request them.

Many businesses already employ technology, including programs developed by Bay Area companies, that gives customers a choice among paper, email, text or no receipt. As rationale for the bill’s need, the legislation cites data from San Francisco-based Square that “sellers send over 10 million digital receipts each month.” However, that statistic also underscores how businesses have evolved to meet consumer preferences, making a mandate unnecessary.

The proposed law could be counterproductive. A global report by the cybersecurity firm Shape says more than 2.3 billion credentials - user names and passwords - were compromised by data breaches in 2017. Many such security breaches stem from flaws in customer payment systems.

The Shape report explains that retailers, financial institutions and other businesses must strive for the right balance between hard-core security and convenient access for customers. Against that backdrop, an unintended consequence of legislation such as AB 161 could be that it leads to increased hacking.

The legislation has other shortfalls, as well. One is inconvenience for other customers who must wait while the shopper ahead of them enters an email address, phone number and/or other personal information into a terminal. Not only is the one-fingered typing slow and often inaccurate so it must be repeated, but it also might be visible to prying eyes.

A greater concern is the cost for implementation. The transitional costs for large corporations to replace their existing systems would be significant. Many businesses, such as grocery stores, operate on thin margins. Any increase in overhead costs, even one that seems minimal to outsiders, threatens their competitive viability and ultimately their survivability.

And while many small businesses have been early adopters of electronic receipts, others depend on old-fashioned cash registers.

This costly, counterproductive mandate is unnecessary. Let consumers, not lawmakers, determine the need for electronic receipts.