SAY GOODBYE TO SB 50, HELLO TO WIENER’S NEW SB 90

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 2020, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “SAY GOODBYE TO SB 50, HELLO TO WIENER’S NEW SB 902”

          Six weeks after Californians saw the legislative failure of SB 50, an attempt to impose dense housing and high-rise buildings on most parts of this state, the bill’s author is back with yet another attack on single-family zoning throughout the state.

          This one is called SB 902. It’s Wiener’s third bid in the last three years to urbanize neighborhoods that neither want nor need to see their characters changed.

          Wiener’s first two tries fixated on transit, mandating that cities OK apartment and condominium buildings of up to eight floors anywhere near light rail stations, and only somewhat shorter structures anywhere within hailing distance of major bus routes. Cities wanting to densify under that plan could do it just about anywhere, merely by increasing the frequency of bus traffic on particular streets.

          The fix would have been in for developers and construction unions, who stood to make big money from this misguided method of allegedly fighting the state’s housing shortage.

          But a coalition of homeowner groups and local officials jealous of their right to govern their own cities and counties shot it down both times.

          That didn’t change Wiener’s mindset about single-family zoning. He still believes it’s an abomination to build substantial homes on decent-sized lots. For sure, anything like that contrasts starkly with Wiener’s home turf in San Francisco’s Castro District, where cheek-by-jowl wooden walkup apartment buildings of varying heights fill the cityscape.

          With his new effort, Wiener’s basic idea hasn’t changed, but his tactics have. He’s no longer focusing as much on transit to decide where new housing should rise. Nor does he insist on high-rises. In fact, SB 902 is not nearly so draconian or compulsory as Wiener’s previous efforts. Which may give it a better chance for passage and the almost certain signature of Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose own flailing attempts to get millions of new homes built quickly have failed miserably so far, mostly because there aren’t enough qualified buyers for even the relatively few new homes that actually have been built. The coronavirus pandemic will reduce that group even more.

          “It’s much lighter-touch housing,” Wiener said as he introduced his new measure. This one is wider-ranging than SB 50, taking in virtually all communities in the state, not merely those with active public transportation. “It’s OK for it to be broader, because many communities in California that don’t necessarily have great transit or job access are still struggling with housing…so we need housing everywhere.”

          Instead of compelling everything, SB 902 compels only one thing, but also enables quite a bit. It forces an end to R-1 single family zoning everywhere in California, while giving owners the right to build or convert existing homes into small multi-family housing except where there’s high-risk for wildfires.

          In part because Wiener’s previous efforts have often been derided as one-size-fits-all approaches, this bill makes distinctions between urban and rural areas. It would create a right to build or convert single family homes into multi-unit structures everywhere except commercial and industrial areas.

          But in unincorporated areas and cities with fewer than 10,000 people, only duplexes are guaranteed approval on all lots. Buildings with up to three units could rise on any property in cities between 10,000 and 50,000 persons. The maximum would be four units in cities over 50,000.

          This could be a way for existing homeowners having difficulty making mortgage payments to build new units and create a funding source for their payments. The bill also would not touch local height and design standards, in sharp contrast to Wiener’s earlier plans. It allows cities to upzone areas for denser housing if they wish, without going through much of today’s laborious environmental processes.

          Said Wiener, “We’re serious about giving cities more and more tools to make their lives easier in…approving more housing.”

          This is all a far cry from SB 50, with its firm mandates and removal of local control. But it still could change the character of many California areas.

          All of which gives this plan a much better chance of becoming law than the major housing measures Wiener has  sponsored before.     

         

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

FIRE RISK MAP FOR UTILITIES TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2018 OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“FIRE RISK MAP FOR UTILITIES TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE”

It was a clear-cut case of too little and too late when the California Public Utilities Commission the other day issued its first-ever map showing where the likelihood of utility-sparked wildfires – often followed by mudslides – is highest.

          The cows were already out of the barn months before this long-awaited map and its accompanying regulations made their appearance more than 10 years after the map could have and should have been drawn.

          The blueprint shows not only areas of greatest risk for major blazes, but also rates various locales on their danger levels, with tougher inspections and tree-trimming requirements needed in areas of greatest menace.

          It’s all because big privately-owned utilities must serve all areas, not merely those that are most convenient. That’s part of the deal giving them power-service monopolies over vast regions. With their agreement to serve even fire-risk zones comes responsibility to do it safely.

          The findings are not yet in on whether either Pacific Gas & Electric Co. or the Southern California Edison Co. were in any way culpable for either the hugely-destructive Wine Country fires of last fall or the Thomas fire which ravaged Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in December and early January, followed by massively lethal and damaging mudslides.

          Both companies are now defendants in multiple lawsuits. Some charge sparks from electric wires caused at least one big inferno and others claim a utility work crew spurred another.

          If the areas where those alleged incidents supposedly occurred had been mapped earlier than they were, with tougher regulations applied to them, there’s at least a possibility lives, homes, crops and businesses might have been spared.

          But there was no danger map when those fires broke out. Nor was there one in the months leading up to them, when it might have done some good. Creation of the map was first ordered by the PUC shortly after the 2007 Witch fire destroyed at least 1,500 homes and killed 17 persons in San Diego County. Investigators placed the blame for that fire on arcing power lines of the San Diego Gas & Electric Co., which has failed so far in efforts to force consumers to pay more than $300 million in costs not covered by insurance.

          But one newspaper reported last fall that utilities repeatedly asked to slow down mapping, saying some proposed regulations would “add unnecessary costs to construction and maintenance projects in rural areas.”

          The problem with those objections, apparently heeded by the PUC as it extended the mapping deadline repeatedly, is that when strong winds blow, fires in rural areas can spread to more heavily populated places, as residents of Ventura, Montecito, Santa Rosa and Calistoga learned to their dismay in late 2017.

          As with many government agencies, the PUC moaned that it has insufficient staff to inspect all utility lines. But 10 years was likely time enough for just one inspector to check every power line in every high-risk area of California.

          “The sad part,” Democratic state Sen. Jerry Hill opined just after the Wine Country fires, “is the maps didn’t arrive before these fires…It’s an outrageous example of negligence by a regulatory agency.”

          The good news is that, pressured by the results of its relaxed approach to the mapping project, the PUC has adopted new regulations. This won’t help anyone victimized by fires and mudslides last fall and early this year, but it ought to prevent at least some future damage from arcing and sparking power lines.

          Utilities, led by SDG&E in last fall’s Lilac fire near Fallbrook, also show more readiness to cut off power in potentially affected areas during early stages of fires in hopes of containing damage. That worked in the Lilac blaze, knocked down much more quickly than others that burned simultaneously.

          One problem: New map-related rules take effect only gradually, applying after Sept. 1 to areas where fire peril is highest and not until June 30 of next year in other places. Utility companies will have to file annual reports on their fire-prevention efforts in high-risk areas, but the first isn’t due until Oct. 1.

          These are positive developments that could prevent a lot of future damage. To the PUC’s utter shame, there appears to be no good reason these things could not have happened much earlier.

                            

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     Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net

BEST BUDGET IDEA? LETTING SICK, ELDERLY CONVICTS GO

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 2015, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “BEST BUDGET IDEA? LETTING SICK, ELDERLY CONVICTS GO”

          Sometimes it can take more than a decade for a completely sensible idea to catch on. So it is with what may be the single best money-saving idea in last year’s state budget, one that is just now beginning fully to take hold.

          The idea, part of a plan by Gov. Jerry Brown to appease a panel of federal judges demanding ever more releases of state prison inmates, calls for the possible parole of several hundred convicts who are chronically sick or mentally impaired, plus a new parole program that could affect thousands of the elderly, defined as over 60.

          It’s an idea first proposed to this column in 2002 by reader Ray Procunier, then a Grass Valley resident. Procunier, who died two years ago at age 86, was director of corrections in California under Gov. Ronald Reagan and during part of Brown’s first term in the 1970s. He also headed prison systems in Texas and Utah.

          “When Reagan was governor, we cut the prison population by one-third and there was no increase in crime, not even a blip,” he wrote 11 years ago, in response to a column. “I guarantee I could cut down today’s prison population by 100,000 or more and not hurt a soul in the process.”

          Among his chief suggestions was the wholesale parole of prisoners over age 55, regardless of the Three-Strikes-and-You’re-Out law or their specific sentences. He would have kept murderers, rapists and other serious sex offenders behind bars unless they had major chronic illnesses. These tactics alone, Procunier said, would cut prison costs by more than $4 billion – equivalent to at least $5 billion in today’s dollars.

          Brown made something very similar a central point of his plan to comply with the federal court’s ruling on prison-overcrowding. The big question: What took so long for this idea to percolate to the top?

    The most likely answer is inertia, along with a fear component, as no politician ever wants to appear soft on crime. This proclivity helped produce Three-Strikes and to increase the state’s prison populace from about 25,000 in 1980 to 170,000-plus in 2008. It’s taken the court order to cut that down a bit.

          So far, as Procunier predicted, the early paroles have caused no significant statewide crime increase. As of mid-March, California had set loose 74 elderly convicts, with thousands more waiting their turn. Releasing the chronically ill will likely have a similar negligible impact on crime, although just 76 such paroles had so far been approved.

          This is true because national crime statistics show most violent crimes are committed by persons in their teens, 20s and 30s, and very few by persons aged 55 or above. At the same time, the cost of maintaining hospitalized inmates ranges between $68,000 and $125,000 per year apiece, depending on where they are treated. That’s significantly more than the average $47,000 annual cost for maintaining the typical healthy convict.

          So far, 15 other states acting on this kind of information have begun expediting releases of elderly prisoners, who can use pensions, savings, Social Security, welfare or the resources of relatives to cover their expenses outside custody. Most ill inmates released early can be covered almost immediately by Medi-Cal under Obamacare, while the state gains not only prison space, but also can stop posting two guards in each of their hospital rooms around the clock, as required for prisoners hospitalized outside the prison system.

          All this explains why the current Brown plan makes sense, both as a means of helping comply with the court order and saving many millions, perhaps billions, of prison dollars. Too bad Brown and other governors didn’t have the good sense to do this many years ago, after Procunier first suggested it.

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

BIG CHANGES FOR STATE POLITICAL WATCHDOG

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2012, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“BIG CHANGES FOR STATE POLITICAL WATCHDOG”

From the moment it was created as part of the 1974 Proposition 9 political reform initiative, California’s Fair Political Practices Commission has operated on the presumption that politicians and their most active campaign aides and backers should never be fully trusted.

But that underlying approach has seemed to change gradually under the leadership of the agency’s current chair, former Santa Clara County Counsel Ann Ravel, appointed last year by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Sure, the FPPC still assesses significant fines when wrongdoing is proven – but they often come long after any harm from a campaign law violation can be undone. The latest big fine was a $30,000 levy against ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and one of his ballot measure committees, which spent $1.1 million on television ads during Schwarzenegger’s 2009 budget negotiations with legislators. That fine came this spring, years too late to mitigate the effects of that illegal spending.

There was also a $111,500 fine levied in December against a Pinole city councilman who participated at least 16 times in governmental decisions that benefitted a company which used his services in his private life.

But plenty has changed, with the commission looking far more politician-friendly. The latest example of this came in mid-March, when a 3-2 commission majority led by Ravel ruled in an Orange County case that it’s OK for local elected officials to vote on their own prospective appointments to government boards and commissions that pay per diem expenses or other stipends.

Previously, conflict of interest rules prevented city council members or county supervisors from voting to name themselves to panels like water districts or air quality boards that sometimes pay more than the elected positions they hold.

The commission also no longer posts cases it is considering on the Web until after they’ve been decided, a big change from its previous practice. That now leaves voters in the dark about claims of illegal donations and other shady campaign practices they’ve been told about for the past few years even before the cases were decided.

It’s important that voters know such accusations because politicians and their consultants often break the rules in order to win elections, even if they know they’ll endure some negative headlines later. That's because immediate public notice of accusations against politicians and their operatives can be a deterrent against dirty or corrupt politics, including false or misleading ads and accepting illegal or excessive campaign donations.

Not publicizing charges against politicians and their campaigns until they’re decided is a bit like not revealing indictments or charges against accused criminals until after their trials.

One who disapproves of the new FPPC chairperson’s approach is the immediate past chair, Dan Schnur, a longtime Republican political operative who now directs the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. Schnur, onetime press secretary for both former Gov. Pete Wilson and former presidential candidate John McCain, says it may be inconvenient for politicians when accusations against them are posted online, but “the inconvenience of the politicians is not as important as the interests of the public.

“We all know that most political consultants, regardless of party, are willing to go over the line to win an election, and then put up with whatever happens long after the results are in,” he said.

“I know Ann is a good person and a smart person, but she obviously thinks the political community can be trusted with less oversight than I do.”

Further evidence that the new FPPC majority trusts politicos more than the commission previously did comes in the form of rule changes that last fall loosened restrictions on gifts from lobbyists to legislators and statewide officials. Lobbyists who have “bona fide” dating relationships with lawmakers, for instance, now can give them jewelry, restaurant meals and other gifts without their being reported, leaving “the Legislature to police its own house.”

That change drew a loud complaint from Commissioner Ronald Rotunda, a Chapman University law professor appointed by state Controller John Chiang. “I find that mind-boggling,” he said. “Had they policed their own house, we wouldn’t be here.”

But some others are not as disturbed as Schnur and Rotunda. “I’m not really outraged by something like the Orange County ruling because these people don’t usually get much for serving on city councils,” said Robert Stern, former president of the Center for Governmental Studies and co-author of the FPPC’s enabling initiative. “I don’t think the commission has lost its teeth; it’s just going in a slightly different direction. Every new chairperson comes in with their own agenda.”

But the new course appears substantially different and weaker than the practices that long made the FPPC a strong watchdog. Most changes in the past year have leaned toward making it the politicians’ lapdog instead.

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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net.