CONSUMER FRAUD, PRICE GOUGING THREATEN FIRE RECOVERY DELAYS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

 

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CONSUMER FRAUD, PRICE GOUGING THREATEN FIRE RECOVERY DELAYS”

 

 

And so the word went out almost precisely two months after fire incinerated most of the Pacific Palisades district in Los Angeles: The water is OK again, you can drink it, come on back home.

 

 

Immediately, the old Latin slogan Caveat Emptor (let the buyer beware) gained new relevance, for survivors of both January’s fires in the Palisades and burned out Altadena, 40 miles east – and for prospective survivors of big new fires state authorities predict later this year.

 

 

For no matter the happy talk from embattled Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, few paid much heed. “In the tragic Camp fire (which destroyed Paradise in Butte County in 2018), it took a year (to restore water quality). It was done here in two months,” she said.

 

 

That may not matter much. The great bulk of the thousands of residents whose homes did not burn are not moving back for the time being. There enters the sometimes bitter reality of Caveat Emptor.

 

 

Frank and Grace Milton (not their real names) ran afoul of this very quickly. Once the 70-something grandparents learned their home survived and that, at a minimum, all its internal walls and ceilings would need scrubbing, they took bids from rehab contractors. Such contractors are subject to California’s anti-price gouging law (penal code section 396), but for washing their walls, estimates for the four-bedroom Milton place began at $40,000. Not including polluted furniture, carpeting and beds that must all be replaced.

 

 

They gave one contractor a $500 deposit, then never heard from the firm again. An out-of-state company, its “office” was a South Carolina cellphone.

 

 

Does $40,000 for a three-day job constitute price gouging? It was the best price the Miltons could find. Lawyers differ on whether it’s gouging, and if the company did not previously operate in California, no one will say for sure for lack of a baseline price. Similar problems reportedly plagued survivors of the 2017 Tubbs fire in the Santa Rosa area, which destroyed more than 5,600 structures. No one knows the full extent of such possible fraud and gouging; there is no formal registry.

 

 

The Miltons still have not secured a dependable rehab contractor.

 

 

Another family whose home in the nearby Sunset Mesa subdivision (a reported 400 out of 500 homes there burned down) is unsure they want to return, even if their home can be cleaned up.

 

 

Said the husband, “Our house and some others survived, but we can see no other standing homes from our windows. We don’t yet know how much toxic material penetrated our house. We’re not sure we want to move back to such pure desolation.”

 

 

Meanwhile, that couple pays $15,000 per month for an 850-square-foot one bedroom apartment in a nearby part of Los Angeles. That’s more than three times the pre-fire going rate in the area; rent gouging is illegal. But the apartment was never previously on the market. The couple rented while feeling pressure after living a month in a string of Airbnbs and on relatives’ couches. They’ve been unable to determine whether they’re subjected to illegal price gouging.

 

 

All this is before most returning residents even begin to test toxicity in their walls and yards. And well before the fires widely predicted statewide later this year materialize.

 

 

Yet, there are positive stories, too, of reliable contractors and newly fenced properties sporting contractor signage.

 

 

So when Bass and other politicians crow about speedily taking care of one aspect of reconstituting fire areas, survivors of these and future fires easily see how empty even comforting words can be.

 

 

For many present fire victims, the bottom line is that they’ll wait until today’s overheated activity dies down before deciding their futures. Meanwhile, others are moving elsewhere or planning to wait two or three years for the value of their lots to recover sufficiently to be sold off without heavy losses.

 

 

In the end, as with the Camp fire – where almost seven years after the blaze, about 43 percent of structures are rebuilt or permitted to rebuild, with more than 3,000 more permit applications pending– this now looks like a decade-long process with both good news and bad, but likely to be plagued by consumer issues, regardless of anything politicians say. 

 

 

-30-

 

    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

PRIMARIES WILL DECIDE A LOT ABOUT CONGRESS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2022 OR THEREAFTER 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “PRIMARIES WILL DECIDE A LOT ABOUT CONGRESS”

 

        Big change was in store for people like John Garamendi and Ken Calvert and Raul Ruiz from the moment California’s bipartisan and fairly apolitical redistricting commission published its final maps in mid-December.

 

        But only now that the March 11 filing deadline has passed can we see which longtime members of Congress will be threatened and who will not.

 

Garamendi, a onetime lieutenant governor, looks fine, even though much of his old district may soon go to fellow Democrat Josh Hawley, who has mostly represented territory a little south of his new 13^th District. Hawley also looks safe.

 

        But longtime Republican Rep. Ken Calvert can’t be so sanguine.

 

        Calvert, an Inland Empire congressman who has represented districts with numbers 42 and 43 since 1993, now must run in the new 41^st. He gets to keep his hometown of Corona, once near the center of his territory, but that city sits in the far western portion of his new district. More populous are added cities like Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage, the heart of the Coachella Valley constituency that has sent Democrat Ruiz to Washington, D.C., since 2013.

 

        Calvert may have trouble defending the new seat, which also includes cities like Anza and Calimesa, but if it had been a district in 2020, it would have voted for ex-President Donald Trump by a 1 percent margin. Calvert’s old district went for Trump by 7 percent.

 

        Ruiz, meanwhile, keeps the far eastern Coachella Valley parts of his old district centering on Indio, and gets new territory extending south toward the Imperial Valley and the Mexican border. He looks safe, but has said he’s chagrined at losing the unity of his old district covering the area from Palm Springs east.

 

        Who both men face next fall will be determined in the state’s June 7 “jungle” primary, where the two leading vote-getters move on to the November runoff election. So far, Calvert appears likely to face tougher competition than Ruiz.

 

        Further west, in the new 47^th District of Orange County, including cities from Seal Beach in the north to Laguna Beach in the south and swinging inland to take in Orange and Irvine, two-term incumbent Katie Porter looks like a survivor. She has already run off former one-term fellow Democratic Congressman Harley Rouda and may face onetime county Republican chairman Scott Baugh this fall, but has far more money on hand than any potential opponent.

 

        In the Sacramento area, current Placer County Republican Rep. Tom McClintock moves south to a new and very safely conservative district stretching toward the Nevada state line. Current Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, who represents some of northeast Sacramento and suburbs, along with Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones will contest in June, together with a few Democrats. One of them could survive into November if Kiley and Jones essentially split the GOP vote in the new 3^rd District.

 

        For reasons unknown, Kiley believes the 3.5 percent of the recall replacement vote he got in last fall’s gubernatorial recall election qualifies him to advance. But he polled a mere 15.6 percent in Placer County, which he has represented in the Legislature and which is the population key to the new district.

 

        In the central San Joaquin Valley, the oft-challenged Republican Rep. David Valadao, one of the very few GOP congressmen voting to impeach Trump in early 2021, will run in a new district that seems even more Latino and Democratic than his old one, where he split the last two elections with Democrat T.J. Cox.

 

        He’s expected to face Democratic Assemblyman Rudy Salas this fall in what could be a tight election.

 

        The bottom line is that there are new districts like these all around California, one reason folks like Rouda and current representatives like Jerry McNerney and Jackie Speier are getting out of this rat race and retiring.

 

        For folks like Calvert and Garamendi, who have not previously had to worry much about reelection races, the anxiety the contests bring is unwelcome.

 

        It could also bring newer, more energetic representation to the state, and maybe even a more unified purpose to the entire 52-person congressional delegation.

 

        The primary will begin to tell that story.       

 

    -30-

    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

 

Suggested pull-out quote: “Kiley believes 3.5 percent of the recall replacement vote last fall qualifies him to advance.”

 

 

CHIANG’S QUIET ENTRY A BIG CHANGE IN RUN FOR GOVERNOR

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “CHIANG’S QUIET ENTRY A BIG CHANGE IN RUN FOR GOVERNOR”

          For most of the last 18 months, California’s next run for governor has shaped up as a battle of flash and dash, with two of the gaudiest candidates the state has ever seen planning to face off, plus the possible entry of a billionaire or two.

          But a monkey wrench may have been thrown this spring into the best-laid plans of Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the ultra-wealthy Tom Steyer and Steve Westly when state Treasurer John Chiang quietly let it be known he’s “interested” in the race.

          Unlike Newsom and Villaraigosa, Chiang doesn’t have to run for any new office two years from now, when current Gov. Jerry Brown will be termed out after a total of four terms in the statehouse. And unlike the two fabulously wealthy additional prospects – Steyer and former state Controller and eBay executive Westly – Chiang can’t wait until the last moment to decide and then simply reach for his checkbook.

    If he were interested only in job security, Chiang would just run for another quiet term as treasurer. He also had the option of waiting to see whether Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein opts to retire after 2018, when her fourth full term is up.

          But Chiang may be bored in the treasurer’s job, where he supervises sales of state bonds and makes few headlines. His eight years as state controller – the officer in charge of state check-writing – were much more exciting, including his defying an order from then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to cut the pay of more than 200,000 state workers and another time when he suspended state legislators’ salaries because they missed a deadline for passing a budget.

          No such excitement yet as treasurer.

          Meanwhile, former San Francisco Mayor Newsom will be termed out after his current term and must try for another office if he wants to stay in politics. Villaraigosa, meanwhile, never seems to stop running for something.

          

     Both have had problems in the past keeping their pants zipped. Newsom famously bedded the wife of his former top aide. Villaraigosa’s marriage failed after his liaisons with a former television reporter. That was especially telling, as half the current surname of the former Tony Villar came from his ex-wife, Corina Raigosa, whom he married in 1987.

          Newsom, meanwhile, plays up his second marriage to actress Jennifer Siebel.

          Voters seeking a candidate without moral or marital failings can seemingly find one in Chiang, who will also have a strong base among the steadily-increasing Asian-American voter bloc. He is just the fifth Asian-American elected to statewide office in California.

          If he ends up running – and he plainly leans that way – he will provide other contrasts beside his solid-seeming marriage (Chiang said in a late-2014 interview that he would only seek higher office if that was OK with his wife).

          A longtime moderate and a tax lawyer, he says that “Ninety percent of what goes into (government) decisions should be based on expert knowledge. That’s how (I’ve) tried to do it as controller and treasurer. But in politics, decisions are often 90 percent political and just 10 percent based on expertise. I don’t like that.”

          This kind of moderate, almost technocratic stance, combined with his past willingness to stand up to higher officials attempting illegal things, could draw enough voters to him to ease past both the billionaires and the far-better-known Newsom or Villaraigosa into a November 2018 runoff – especially if he can draw a significant number of Republican votes. So far, no major Republican has indicated a desire to run.

          Chiang considered for awhile seeking the U.S. Senate seat to be vacated late this year by Barbara Boxer, for whom he once worked. But he stayed out of that campaign, perhaps because, as he observed, “The Senate looks good, but you have the drawback of needing to chase 50 other votes. The governor, meanwhile, leads the largest state, so you have the chance to shape the future more than in any office except president.”

          You won’t see Newsom or Villaraigosa talk in such down-to-earth terms. Both prefer grander rhetoric. But one thing for sure: Chiang’s likely entrance just made the next run for governor a lot more interesting than it was before.

          

     -30-       
     Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com 

DEMO CONVENTION SHOWS RESTRAINT BROWN PROVIDES

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2014 OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “DEMO CONVENTION SHOWS RESTRAINT BROWN PROVIDES”

          One well-worn thought that has not been heard since Jerry Brown in 2010 won his third term as governor is the notion that California’s state Capitol needs some adult supervision.

          That suggestion became commonplace among pundits and voters during the Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger years of massive budget deficits and, for just one example, bond issues in which more bonded debt was sold as the best way to pay off old debt.

          For some clues as to what California government might be like with Democratic legislative supermajorities and a governor unlike Brown, it can be instructive to look at the actions of the state Democratic Party convention staged on a March weekend in Los Angeles.

          There, the party with virtually no dissent adopted a platform endorsing complete legalization and then taxation of marijuana, also taking a firm stance against any immediate hydraulic fracturing (fracking) of the state’s immense shale oil and gas deposits, which some studies claim could produce more than 100,000 new jobs.

          Because state legislators are both convention delegates and also pretty representative of delegates as a whole, those actions give a decent idea of what state government might be like without Brown.

          A party that officially adopts stances like those is one that does in fact need adult supervision. It’s one that without a bit of restraint might push through not just those two policies, but also other notions currently popular among Democrats.

          For example, legislative leaders want not only to restore all the deficit-induced cuts to human services made both by Brown or kept on after Schwarzenegger’s departure, but they’d also like to add state-funded pre-kindergarten, a positive idea yet the kind of thing likely to put state budgets back into the red the moment a new glitch affects the economy.

          State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento also wants to eliminate special elections for legislative vacancies, allowing the governor to make appointments effective until the next general election.

    Steinberg apparently presumes that’s the best way to keep his party’s on-again, off-again two-thirds supermajorities intact in both the state Senate and Assembly, not recognizing the possibility that voters might one day elect a Republican governor, something they did as recently as 2006.

          So far, Brown has shown little interest in either idea, or some more radical ones also put forward by other Democrats.

          But it’s their actual platform planks that show how much of a curb Brown has been on overly exuberant Democrats.

          Yes, Colorado has completely legalized pot for people over 21, while Washington state has granted some licenses to grow cannabis for non-medical purposes. Brown says he’s happy to let them experiment with it. “I’d really like those two states to show us how it’s going to work,” he said.     

          Brown worries about “how many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation?”

          His thought more or less echoes those of Dr. Mitchell Rosenthal, founder of the noted Phoenix House drug rehabilitation program. Rosenthal warned in a recent essay that pot “damages the heart and lungs, increases the incidence of anxiety, depression and schizophrenia and can trigger psychotic episodes. Many adults appear able to use marijuana with relatively little harm, but the same cannot be said of adolescents, who are about twice as likely as adults to become addicted.”

          Which suggests Brown is prudent to let other states be test cases, something that will happen now if only because the several proposed initiatives to legalize the weed in this state appear unlikely to make this fall’s ballot.

          Meanwhile, Brown okayed a go-slow approach to fracking, which has not yet been proven to have harmed water supplies desite many years of use on older oil wells in California, while it has created boom towns in once-desolate states.

          That makes it seem premature to ban the process here, now the official party position and one that legislators would most likely adopt if they didn’t believe Brown would veto any such bill.

          One thing to think about for the future: Even assuming Brown is reelected this fall, who’s going to provide his style of non-confrontational adult supervision and restraint once he’s termed out in 2018?

          -30-

     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

CONGRESSIONAL RACE MAY BE FIRST REAL TEST OF ‘TOP TWO’ PRIMARY

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2011, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CONGRESSIONAL RACE MAY BE FIRST REAL TEST OF ‘TOP TWO’ PRIMARY”

The first real test of California’s new “top two” primary election system will likely come on July 12, when two high-powered and well-known Democrats vie to replace the long-serving Jane Harman in a strongly Democratic coastal district of Los Angeles County.

The new system calls for the two top finishers in all primaries to face off in a runoff election, regardless of party. It also allows for outright victory by any candidate who draws more than 50 percent of the total vote in any primary.

It’s almost certain than neither of the two big-name Democrats – Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn and California Secretary of State Debra Bowen – will win the seat outright in June. That’s because voter registration in the district is about 45 percent Democratic, 28 percent Republican and 22 percent decline to state, meaning there will almost surely be enough Republican primary votes to prevent any Democrat from getting an immediate win.

But if Hahn or Bowen, both proven vote-getters with enduring popularity at opposite ends of the district, can pull large numbers of independent voters, it’s possible this district could see the first-ever Democrat vs. Democrat runoff race at mid-summer.

There is, however, a wild card here. Leftist Democrat Marcy Winograd, a self-described “progressive” and a high school teacher who twice gave Harman stiff primary challenges (she won 37 percent of the Democratic vote in 2006 and 41 percent in 2010), could sneak into the runoff if she hangs onto most of the voters who previously went for her.

Hahn, who entered the race only moments after Harman announced she would move on to become head of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., has tried to position herself as the mainstream, pro-defense, pro-Israel Democrat in this race. Call her a “blue dog,” similar to the departed Harman.

Hahn, sister of former Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn and daughter of the late longtime Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, won election to the city council three times with ease from the district’s southern portion centered on her city's harbor area and has strong name recognition throughout the district.

Bowen, meanwhile, lives in Marina del Rey at the north end of the district, but represented virtually all of it for eight years in the state Senate – because in California, state senators each have about 200,000 more constituents than members of Congress. So Bowen is well known and liked in all parts of the district she shared for years with Hahn and Harman. But her strongest support probably would come in the north end of the district, around the Venice, Marina del Rey and Westchester areas.

But Bowen lacks major endorsements. Ted Lieu, who won a February special election in the state Senate district with 57 percent of the vote in the first round, backs Hahn.

Plus, Bill Rosendahl, the liberal Los Angeles councilman representing the areas of Bowen’s base, was also quick to endorse council-mate Hahn, jumping on her bandwagon while Bowen – with almost four years to run in her term as secretary of state – was still mulling over whether to run.

Bowen, best known for cleaning up problems with California’s electronic voting machines, was a consistent liberal vote in the Legislature, in particular showing little sympathy for polluters.

The best-known Republican in this race is Mike Webb, the elected city attorney of Redondo Beach and a former city prosecutor. He’s almost certain to get at least 25 percent of the June vote, and will probably make the eventual runoff if Winograd splinters the Democratic vote enough to preclude an all-Democrat runoff.

Something similar happened early in March in Northern California’s fourth state Assembly district, where so many Republicans vied to replace new state Sen. Ted Gaines, who has moved into the state Senate, that a Democrat actually led the primary voting result in a rock-ribbed Republican district. So the runoff pits Gaines' Republican wife against a Democrat, rather than being GOP on GOP.

A Bowen-Winograd or Hahn-Winograd runoff race would surely test the premise that led to last year’s passage of Proposition 14, which set up the top two system. The idea was that in districts like this one, where voter registration heavily favors one party or the other, occasional races between rivals from within the same party could lead to election of more centrists.

It’s not known for sure just yet whether Hahn or Bowen will emerge as the more moderate Democratic candidate in this contest. But you can count on one trying to capture the bulk of Republican votes in the runoff, if and when they face off either with one another or with Winograd.

-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net