For Clients & Friends of The Gualco Group, Inc.
IN THIS ISSUE – “This is exactly the kind of conversation that should be taking place in public”
David Snyder, First Amendment Coalition leader, criticizing legislative Democrats for amending bills in private negotiations
- Gas Price Special Session Quickly Becomes High Octane Political Battle; Could Impact Presidential Election
- Newsom Denies Holding Senate Bills Hostage
- Voters Oppose Newsom on Crime & Healthcare Funding Ballot Initiatives
- Dem Lawmakers Amend Bills Behind Closed Doors
- California Voter Profiles, Likely Leanings
- County Judge Halts State Water Board Groundwater Pumping Rules
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) curates California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique client service.
FOR THE WEEK ENDING SEPT. 20, 2024
Gas Price Special Session Quickly Becomes High Octane Political Battle;
Could Impact Presidential Election
Politico’s California Playbook
California’s special legislative session on oil prices has, in many ways, become more of a political exercise than a policy fight.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to require oil refiners to store more fuel in California is unlikely to actually lower gas prices in the near future. And it’s unlikely acting during a special session would be any faster than voting when lawmakers return in January.
That’s why Capitol watchers are dissecting the session, which began in earnest yesterday as the Assembly held its first informational hearing, more for its political implications.
It is testing already-strained relations between Sacramento’s “big three” players: Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and state Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire.
Rivas and McGuire have both used the issue to reassert their chamber’s power as a co-equal branch with Newsom, who has long frustrated lawmakers with his last-minute bill pushes he’s usually won.
But Rivas and McGuire are using different tactics to push back on a termed-out governor, who called the special session on the last night of the Legislature’s regular session — a pressure tactic after lawmakers in the Assembly wouldn’t take up his proposal earlier.
Their divergent approaches have sharpened inter-house tensions that spiked at the end of session. They’ve highlighted the different trajectories of McGuire — a short-term leader facing an imminent exit thanks to term limits — and Rivas, who could be in charge for far longer.
Rivas had refused to bring Newsom’s plan to a vote during the final days of the regular session, arguing there wasn’t enough time for meaningful debate.
Now, the pressure is on Rivas to prove he can deliver the votes. He quickly agreed to Newsom’s call for a special session, but the speaker faces the extra challenge of convincing a majority of his 62-member Democratic caucus, which is much larger and more fractious than the Senate, to pass the bill.
McGuire, at first, refused to consider calling the Senate back for a special session. Then, he issued an ultimatum, saying the upper chamber would only come back if the Assembly can show it has “the votes to move reform forward.” McGuire declined to comment Tuesday.
Rivas and top Assembly Democrats have balked at McGuire’s comments suggesting they didn’t have the votes to act earlier.
“It’s very complicated, it’s not something that ever should have been rubber stamped in a week,” Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, chair of the Democratic Caucus and one of Rivas’ closest allies, told Playbook.
The politics are also different for Newsom. He’s long battled the oil industry, and the governor is sensitive to California’s vulnerability to price spikes. The state is geographically isolated from oil pipelines and has unique fuel-blend requirements. The state is also considering stricter rules limiting the carbon content of fuel that could increase gas prices.
That’s why Newsom wants to show Sacramento is taking action now. He has more leverage than lawmakers — at least for the next 10 days.
Newsom has hundreds of their bills on his desk as he faces a Sept. 30 deadline to sign or veto the measures. Notably, Newsom has signed far fewer bills from the Senate than the Assembly in recent weeks, raising hackles at the Capitol.
Daniel Villaseñor, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the governor isn’t holding bills hostage: “The timing of his actions is not tied to any broader legislative dynamics,” he said.
But the governor’s leverage will wane after the bill signing deadline, especially if Assembly Democrats struggle to find consensus. Democratic lawmakers are also wary about the potential implications for presidential nominee Kamala Harris as she runs against Donald Trump, who has leaned hard into a Republican critique of California’s high energy costs.
“Highlighting high gas prices from Kamala’s state is not going to help her,” said one Democratic lawmaker, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. “It’s going to accrue to her disadvantage, not her advantage.”
Newsom Denies Holding Senate Bills Hostage
CalMatters
With each batch of bill signings and vetoes by Gov. Gavin Newsom, it’s becoming more and more noticeable: He isn’t approving many bills authored by state senators.
Is he holding their legislation hostage to get the Senate to play ball on his special session on gas prices?
His office says “no.”
Newsom spokesperson Izzy Gardon: “We generally announce bills in the order in which the Governor reviews them. The timing of his actions is not tied to any broader legislative dynamics.”
When asked for comment on Newsom’s lack of action on Senate bills, McGuire spokesperson Kerrie Lindecker replied: “This question is best directed to the Governor’s Office.”
Sen. Scott Wiener has a couple of high-profile bills on Newsom’s desk, and he’s holding events to try to persuade the governor to sign them. Monday, the San Francisco Democrat joined doctors, pharmacists and patients in support of his bill that would tighten regulations on pharmacy benefit managers in hopes of reducing prescription drug prices.
And Wiener gathered with the National Organization for Women, youth groups and others to push his legislation on artificial intelligence safety that has drawn national attention and is strongly opposed by Big Tech.
Reminder: Newsom has nearly 900 bills left to decide before his Sept. 30 deadline. CalMatters tracking page for high-profile bills:
Voters Oppose Newsom on Crime & Healthcare Funding Ballot Initiatives
CalMatters & Public Policy Institute of California
California voters will begin marking their mail-in ballots for the Nov. 5 election in just a few days and how they vote may reflect their somewhat sour outlooks, particularly rising concerns about crime, a pre-election poll suggests.
The Public Policy Institute of California survey, released Wednesday night, found that “majorities of adults and likely voters think the state is headed in the wrong direction and expect the state to have bad times financially in the next 12 months,” the San Francisco-based think tank said in its analysis.
The poll also revealed that 71% of voters support Proposition 36, which would boost penalties for some crimes, partially undoing Proposition 47, a 2014 measure that reduced sentences. At least 41% said the outcome of this vote is “very important.”
The strong support for Prop. 36 — which is sponsored by a coalition of law enforcement and business groups and backed by many local officials — should not be a surprise.
Earlier this month, the institute released a study confirming that property crimes have been rising since Prop. 47’s passage, while the ranks of police have thinned and arrests for such crimes have declined.
“Driven by larcenies, property crime jumped after Prop 47 compared to the nation and comparison states,” the study found.
Prop. 36’s popularity marks a change of public attitudes since the heyday of what was called “criminal justice reform” a decade ago, when then-Gov. Jerry Brown, legislators and voters, under pressure from federal courts, were depopulating the state’s overcrowded prison system. The number of felons declined by nearly 50% from a peak of 173,000 in 2006.
Brown’s successor, Gavin Newsom, initially supported continuing to soften penalties for crimes — even unilaterally banning executions of murderers despite voter support for capital punishment. However, as smash-and-grab invasions of retail stores, car burglaries and other forms of property crime increased, Newsom gradually shifted to increasing some punishments.
Newsom tried, but failed, to persuade the Legislature to place a measure to rival Prop 36 on the ballot and had to settle for some fairly mild punishment upgrades.
Newsom is now publicly opposing Prop. 36, rejecting its supporters’ contention that it would improve therapy for those committing crimes to support addictions.
“It’s about mass incarceration, not mass treatment,” Newsom told reporters during a recent press conference after signing the Legislature’s alternative crime laws. “What an actual insult it is to say it’s about mass treatment when there’s not a dollar attached to it.”
The overwhelming support for Prop. 36 indicates that as his governorship approaches lame duck status, Newsom’s ability to sway voters is declining. In fact the same poll found that just “49% of adults and 51% of likely voters approve of the way that Governor Gavin Newsom is handling his job,” even though the vast majority of California voters are either Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents.
Nor is Prop. 36 the only ballot measure likely to pass despite Newsom’s disapproval. The poll found that more than 60% of voters support Proposition 35, which would make a tax on managed health care systems, such as Kaiser, permanent.
Doctors, hospitals and other major players in the health care industry wrote Prop. 35 because the tax would generate matching funds from the federal government, resulting in increased payments to providers of care for the 14.5 million poor Californians enrolled in the state’s Medi-Cal program.
Indirectly, passage of Prop. 35 would block Newsom’s efforts to use money from the tax to help close multi-billion-dollar deficits in the state budget, thus making it more likely that his governorship will end with the budget still leaking red ink.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2024/09/prop-36-crime-newsom-opposition/
PPIC POLL:
Dem Lawmakers Amend Bills Behind Closed Doors
CalMatters
State Sen. Dave Min admonished a fellow legislator recently for talking about his bill during an open hearing, saying lawmakers were forbidden from negotiating amendments to legislation in public view.
“We have a policy in the Senate … We don’t negotiate amendments from the dais,” Min told his Democratic colleague, Assemblymember David Alvarez, this summer.
“We are happy to continue discussing this offline, but I just don’t think it’s appropriate – nor is it in the interest of our time – to be negotiating and discussing particular provisions from the dais.”
The exchange between Alaverz and Min highlights an unwritten rule in the Capitol, one that points to a culture of backroom dealing, where secret negotiations between lobbyists, Capitol staff and legislators are what really decide the fate of laws whose impacts will be felt by millions of Californians.
Senate leaders said Min, a Democrat from Irvine, overstated the rule since committee chairs can make exceptions and debate amendments in a hearing. But Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire acknowledged to CalMatters that he requested “policy committee chairpersons and bill authors work to secure potential amendments prior to the (public) hearing” in order to improve the quality of legislation.
“When verbal, on-the-fly amendments are taken, there is real potential for confusion, misunderstanding and disagreement on definitions,” McGuire said. “We highly encourage robust discussion and debate at policy hearings. This is the people’s house after all. But we also want to get the amendments right because details matter on these important laws.”
The Assembly takes a similar approach to amendments, said Cynthia Moreno, a spokesperson for Speaker Robert Rivas.
Leaving the process almost entirely up to secret negotiations has critics calling the process little more than a rubber stamp for deals made behind closed doors.
As CalMatters has reported, an analysis of every vote cast in the past five years shows that Democrats who control the Legislature vote “no” on average less than 1% of the time, suggesting the fates of most bills are decided before votes are cast.
“This is exactly the kind of conversation that should be taking place in public,” said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. “The public has a right to understand why lawmakers are making the decisions they’re making.”
Assemblymember Bill Essayli, an outspoken Republican from Corona, was even more critical.
“It’s very hard to figure out if there’s corruption involved when you don’t know who the drafters are and how language gets in a bill,” he said.
The original language in almost all bills that navigate the legislative process — more than 2,500 this year — is usually changed through amendments added in committees.
In California, that can be a high-stakes discussion done in secret between legislators and staff and lobbyists representing powerful interests for or against a bill.
When there are political consequences or money is involved, the governor’s office or legislative leaders can also shape legislation behind the scenes.
California Voter Profiles, Likely Leanings
Public Policy Institute of California
With the 2024 election less than two months away, our fact sheets examine the demographic and partisan makeup of California voters.
» California Voter and Party Profiles
County Judge Halts State Water Board Groundwater Pumping Rules
CalMatters
In a scathing ruling, a Superior Court judge has lambasted state water officials for going too far and invoking “underground regulations” when they penalized Kings County water managers for failing to protect overpumped groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley.
Kings County Superior Court Judge Kathy Ciuffini last week granted a preliminary injunction that bars the State Water Resources Control Board from requiring growers to pay fees and report how much water they pump from the county’s severely overdrawn aquifers.
The injunction could last through a trial, which has not yet been scheduled.
“Clearly the actions of this state agency have not been transparent, are only known to the (water board), and there has been no review, analysis, or ability to challenge their conduct,” Ciuffini wrote in her decision.
She added that the agency failed to show how an injunction from the court “would cause specific, identifiable harm to the public.”
Brought by the Kings County Farm Bureau and other growers, the lawsuit challenges the state’s decision to designate the severely depleted basin as “probationary,” which triggers fees and monitoring requirements.
The judge sided with growers’ claims that the board relied on “unlawful” and “underground” regulations when it placed the basin on probation. The state water board “had over 10 years to adopt regulations for state intervention but failed to do so. As to this unlawful regulation, the plaintiffs will prevail on the merits of their claim,” she wrote.
The groundwater basin, located in the San Joaquin Valley, serves a vast expanse of dairies, ranches and farms — including those controlled by agricultural giants J.G. Boswell Company and Bay Area developer John Vidovich — as well as disadvantaged communities.
Edward Ortiz, a spokesperson for the water board, said the agency is “considering further legal options,” noting that the state needs to protect its oversight over “critically overdrafted basins.”
“All Californians benefit when groundwater is managed sustainably. Groundwater makes up a significant portion of the state’s water supply and serves as a critical buffer against the impacts of drought and climate change,” said Ortiz.
He said the law is clear and that the board has the authority it needs to protect groundwater.
The decision grants a substantial respite for growers in the basin, who were facing a state mandate to install meters on their wells and pay fees of $300 per well and $20 for every acre foot of groundwater they pump.
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the state’s landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which aims to stop dry wells, sinking earth and other consequences of over-pumping groundwater.
Under the law, local groundwater agencies must develop a plan to rein in groundwater depletion by 2040 in the state’s most severely overtapped basins.
But state officials said the Kings County agencies failed to submit revisions to its plan by an April deadline, despite multiple warnings that the plan had serious deficiencies and would “allow substantial impacts to people who rely on domestic wells for drinking, bathing, food preparation, and cleaning.”
A staff analysis reported that hundreds of groundwater wells could go dry, groundwater contamination could increase and that roads, canals and more would be damaged as the land continues to sink from overpumping.
So, in an unprecedented decision, the water board put the Kings County groundwater managers on probation — which imposes new fees and requirements to monitor pumping in a first step toward taking control of the basin.
The Kings County Farm Bureau and local growers sued, calling the decision unlawful. They said that the agency was slow to notify landowners of the new requirements and that the board’s deadlines for installing meters on their wells were hitting them during peak irrigation season.
This injunction reinforces and extends a temporary restraining order issued in July.
Dusty Ference, executive director of the farm bureau, called the decision a “monumental win” that “highlights the validity of our claims.”
Legal experts noted that the 33-page decision sides heavily with the growers.
“There’s a striking contrast between the court’s detailed and sympathetic repetition of the plaintiffs’ claimed facts and its cursory dismissals of the (state water board’s) factual claims,” said Dave Owen, a professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.
“Those arguments weren’t crazy. Unmonitored groundwater pumping causes all kinds of harms, and stopping those harms is the reason why (the law) got enacted,” Owen said.
The injunction comes as state water officials are considering probation for another San Joaquin Valley basin tomorrow.
But Karrigan Börk, a law professor and interim director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, said that the injunction is “likely to be a small speed bump” in the implementation of the state’s groundwater law.
“This lawsuit is just pushing off the inevitable,” he said. “It’s impossible to argue that the subbasin isn’t critically overdrafted, and ultimately that has to end.”