NEWSOM’S HASTY CEQA CUTBACKS WILL BRING UNPOPULAR PROJECTS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NEWSOM’S HASTY CEQA CUTBACKS WILL BRING UNPOPULAR PROJECTS”

 

One certainty about the just-signed AB 130 budget trailer bill is that it will lead to building projects that are extremely unwelcome in the areas where they’ll eventually stand.

 

This bill, which quite improbably passed the state Assembly on a unanimous vote after being pushed for two years by the East Bay’s Democratic Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, is likely to produce a boom in what is loosely called “infill housing” designed to help solve the state’s unquestioned housing shortage.

 

One of its major features applies the tag “infill housing” to anything built on any vacant plot of land containing less than 20 acres in a city or urban mapping area.

 

Until now, most folks thought of infill housing as apartments or condominiums on vacant lots or other small pieces of property. But 20 acres is an entirely new definition of “infill” or “small.” A plot that size built up to five stories can easily hold 1,000 or more new units, which is a large development. The previous definition of an infill site had a size limit of 5 acres.

 

As usual, with new housing in the new California, parking space requirements will be minimal, sometimes even non-existent for developments near major transit stops, on the presumption that very few living there will want the independence of owning their own car or small truck. Occupants will have to ride transit or fight for street parking every time they come and go from their new digs.

 

What’s more, the new developments will not be subject to community input, with no mandated public hearings on permits. It’s a developer’s fantasy.

 

Except for the Donald Trump effect. His campaign for unprecedented deportation efforts by Homeland Security agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol has created new shortages of labor in trades from roofing to drywall, from plumbing to demolition of smaller existing structures.

 

So one consequence of AB 130, which was quickly whipped into state law via the “budget trailer bill” maneuver, will likely be the proliferation of canvas-covered fencing around building plots where work is delayed.

 

Never mind that AB 130, which became law shortly after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the newest state budget, is wildly unpopular, once Californians are informed of what it contains – which is the biggest blow to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) since it passed in 1970 and was signed into law by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.

 

Fully 66 percent of Californians in a poll taken for building trades unions and other major state interest groups opposed the bill once they learned it eliminates community input on new developments and bypasses some environmental protections, especially on land that has previously been surrounded by urban uses.

 

The poll also showed 70 percent of Californians still support CEQA, despite years of grousing about it by governors from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jerry Brown to Newsom.

 

The single most significant new related bill, also a budget trailer, is Senate Bill (SB) 131, from San Francisco’s Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener. This creates new CEQA exemptions for things like health centers and rural clinics, childcare centers, food banks wildfire mitigation projects and parks.

 

Why would legislators unanimously pass a bill that goes so much against public sentiment as AB 130? One reason is differences in the polls, with some showing majorities in favor of building as much housing as possible as soon as possible, and hang the consequences.

 

Another is that Newsom is clearly seeking a legacy. While running for president in 2027 and 2028, he will only be able to get so much mileage out of being the anti-Trump, a role he has sought to grab ever since the president nationalized the California National Guard and sent thousands of its troops into Los Angeles, where there was little violence either before or after their arrival.

 

If Newsom can claim to have solved or at least partially solved the housing crunch and California rents begin to drop, he will have a brand new hook for his presidential hat. 

 

That’s strong motivation for any politician and probably explains the easy, greased passage of AB 130 better than anything else.

 

 

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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

NET SOLAR METERING: NEW RULES WILL HELP UTILITIES, NOT THEIR CUSTOMERS"

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2022 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “NET SOLAR METERING: NEW RULES WILL HELP UTILITIES, NOT THEIR CUSTOMERS"

 

        The California Public Utilities Commission says it wants to help the little folks as it gets set to issue new rules governing the price of rooftop solar energy throughout the state.

 

        But long history says that when the PUC claims it is helping renters and other small utility customers, one Latin language term applies: Caveat emptor, Let the buyer beware.”

 

        That’s because for more than half a century, every major decision from this scandal-prone agency has favored large monopolistic utility companies over their customers.

 

From its refusal to shut down leaky natural gas storage facilities that pose health hazards for many thousands to its constant approvals of unreasonable rate increases that make California energy the nation’s most expensive, there has never been much doubt about whose interests the PUC considers paramount.

 

When companies like Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric start wildfires that kill hundreds and cause billions of dollars in damage, the PUC makes sure they stay whole and solvent, while the customers they harm usually wait years for compensation.

 

So it is again this summer, as the PUC – without any public demand for “reform” –gets set to issue a new set of rules for pricing of rooftop solar energy. Never mind that homeowners who invested tens of thousands of dollars in solar panels and battery systems were promised beforehand they’d get certain levels of payment for excess power they generate and put into the general grid. Now the PUC wants to lower those payments and thus the incentives for building more and more renewable energy into urban and suburban areas.

 

        Just how much will likely become known in the next month or two. An earlier iteration of the upcoming changes was dumped last winter amid a firestorm of protest.

 

        Why would the PUC want to change the current, very productive system at all? It claims to be acting to save money for people who can’t afford to install solar and for renters who have no authority to add it.

 

        For every dollar paid by solar owners, the PUC says, rates rise a fraction of a cent or so for everyone else.

 

        What the commission has never admitted is that the alternative – bringing solar thermal energy vast distances to the cities from gigantic solar farms in the state’s vast and sun-soaked deserts – would raise rates for the little guys far more.

 

        That additional money would go to the big utilities, whose rates are based partly on how much they spend building or buying facilities and equipment. It takes hundreds of miles of transmission lines to bring power from solar thermal farms to the cities. This translates to billions of dollars in expenses and a guaranteed 20-year profit on every cent of consumer-provided funds spent by the big companies.

 

        So yes, the utilities want ever more solar in the deserts, and ever less in the cities and suburbs. And the PUC, always looking after their interests while making pious claims to the contrary, is getting set to provide just that as the state seeks to use 100 percent renewable power within decades.

 

        One example: Within days of the PUC making its initial proposal to cut compensation to rooftop solar owners, the federal government okayed building two new solar thermal farms deep in the Mojave Desert. Expect utilities that will buy up that energy to start building new transmission lines to those locations soon after ground is broken.

  

        The idea of penalizing pioneering energy-conscious homeowners actually originated with the often misguided former Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, also the author of the highly destructive AB 5 that wrecked the professional lives of many freelancers and others. She proposed reneging on the longtime guarantee promising homeowners the rules would remain stable for at least 20 years after any rooftop solar system goes in.

 

        What’s more,, the PUC proposed a monthly fee of about $50 to $70 on each rooftop owner, plus price reductions for their extra output. That didn’t fly, at least not yet.

 

        No one knows just what the new proposal will contain, but one thing seems sure: It will again place the interests of the big utilities over those of their customers.

 

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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

WILL BREXIT SPUR A ‘CALEAVEFORNIA?'

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
      “WILL BREXIT SPUR A ‘CALEAVEFORNIA?’”

          Louis Marinelli polled just 6.2 percent of the vote in San Diego’s 80^th Assembly District during the June primary, but there’s at least a chance the subsequent “Brexit” vote in Great Britain could increase his influence greatly.

          Marinelli, a teacher of English as a second language, has made a semi-independent California his theme for years. Until lately, he hadn’t pushed a complete split from the rest of the United States, the way some promoters of an independent Texas now advocate, using Twitter hashtag #Texit.

          Marinelli’s Yes California Independence Campaign (formerly called Sovereign California) sees immense promise in the way the United Kingdom likely will soon divorce the European Union. Yes California had mostly sought a semi-autonomous status similar to what Scotland has in the U.K.

          Just maybe, if Britons felt they had more of a voice within the EU, they would have voted to remain in it. That kind of larger voice is what Marinelli’s nascent movement has sought for California.

          Prior to the late-June British vote, Yes California Independence had not seen much success. In March, for example, the group under its previous name failed to qualify a new and more aggressive ballot initiative that would have asked that Californians vote on whether to become independent, with governors present and future to be called “presidents.”

          The measure also specified that if the rest of America refused to allow a so-called “Calexit,” the question would automatically appear on the state ballot every four years, along with the question of whether California should apply for membership in the United Nations.

          Even in a year when the number of signatures required to qualify initiatives for the ballot is at a historic low of about 365,000, this idea found no traction, just like Marinelli’s state Assembly campaign.

          But the Brexit vote could change things. “It shows secession isn’t just a relic of the 19^th Century,” Marinelli told a reporter. “It’s an example of an independence movement occurring in the Western world, a modern-day, 21^st Century example of a political entity seceding from a political union. It means Californians who hear the word secession don’t have to think of the Civil War anymore. Now they have an example of how it can happen peacefully and legally…, and that’s the path to mimic here in California.”

          Marinelli has changed his tune a bit over the last two years. In 2014, he said in an interview that a totally sovereign California wasn’t needed, that the state should merely become capable of making its own binding deals with other countries and be able to pass laws that could not be overturned by the United States Supreme Court.

Back then, he wanted to set up a nonpartisan blue-ribbon panel of state legislators to analyze “sub-national sovereignty” and its effects on Californians and other Americans. The group would hold hearings and call experts to testify on how California could sign its own treaties with foreign countries and otherwise assert itself internationally — while still using the United States dollar and having its citizens register with Selective Service and serve in the American military.

The idea of making binding agreements with other countries is something recent California governors like Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger have liked, to the point of signing myriad “memoranda of understanding” with provinces and states belonging to other nations from India to Russia, Canada, Brazil and, yes, the U.K. These have had little long-term meaning because they lack the status of treaties.

Marinelli also raised the question of whether California should stop participating in presidential elections and revert to something like the not-quite-statehood status Puerto Rico has today.

And he plumped for the symbolic change of always flying the state’s Bear Republic flag at equal height with the Stars and Stripes on public property.

          No one took much of that seriously until after the British vote. Now far more radical changes may be taken seriously, at least in part because California gets back only about 77 cents in federal spending for every dollar in taxes its citizens contribute. There’s also the reality that Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court are often at philosophical odds with a majority of Californians.

          No, a Caleavefornia movement is not imminent. But neither is the notion quite as preposterous as it used to be.

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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

IS VACCINATION ORDER LINKED TO PERTUSSIS EPIDEMIC

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 22, 2014, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    "IS VACCINATION ORDER LINKED TO PERTUSSIS EPIDEMIC?”

          For almost seven months, California parents have been free to claim without offering any proof that their religion forbids getting their children vaccinated against once dreaded and disabling diseases like polio, mumps, pertussis and smallpox.

          This allows parents who believe false myths to exempt their children from the vaccinations usually required for public school enrollment, even if they really have no religious beliefs at all.

          Is it just coincidence that first six months of this new “personal belief” rule saw cases of pertussis, also known as whooping cough, more than double from last year? Through mid-June, 4,558 cases had been reported in the state, fully 1,100 during a single two-week period in June. There were three deaths in this year’s first six months.

    The state’s officially-declared whooping cough epidemic is now on pace to top even 2010, when California recorded 9,120 cases, 809 hospitalizations and 10 deaths from the ailment. That year saw the most cases in more than 60 years, since record-keeping began.

    Officials are reluctant to tie the new epidemic to a once-unpublicized 2012 signing message from Gov. Jerry Brown, attached to his approval of a bill originally designed to make it more difficult for parents to evade vaccinating their kids.

          Brown's words now allow parents merely to check off a box on a form, rather than having a doctor, school nurse or nurse practitioner sign a paper attesting that they have been informed of the benefits of vaccinations, as was previously needed for an exemption.

          From the time his message became reality late last year, Brown has appeared oblivious to its the potential harm, his press secretary saying earlier this year that he “believes that vaccinations are profoundly important and a major public health benefit.” He has said nothing beyond stating that his order aimed only to “take into account First Amendment religious freedoms through an extremely narrow exemption.”

          But the exemption turns out to be wide enough, as the football cliché goes, to drive a truck through.

          So far, no one is directly blaming the Brown message for the epidemic of whooping cough, whose symptoms include “rapid coughing spells that end with a tell-tale ‘whooping’ sound,” according to a state Public Health department description.

          “Pertussis is just cyclical,” the department’s deputy director and chief epidemiologist, Dr. Gil Chavez, said during a conference call. “The biggest contributor now is that the most modern vaccine’s effects wane over time, with the fullest protection lasting just two to three years.”

          In fact, current pertussis vaccines given children under nine have shorter-term effects than those used in prior generations. “The vaccine is now easier on children, producing less fevers and less arm soreness than previous ones,” said Catherine Flores Martin, executive director of the California Immunization Coalition. The tradeoff is shorter duration.

          Martin added that only after school opens this fall and officials report how many personal belief exemptions are filed will there be certainty about some effects of the Brown message. But she agreed that the confluence of the new form and the record number of cases, coming more rapidly than ever, might be linked.

          “Politicians have a responsibility to protect the public and they don’t when they issue an order like this one,” she said.

          The health department reported rates of pertussis cases this year are highest in Marin and Sonoma counties. “It boils down to the number of susceptible individuals in those counties,” said Chavez.

          But Martin said, “It’s worth noting that those two counties also are the ones with the highest rates of parental refusals to allow their children to be vaccinated.”

          That’s in line with a Johns Hopkins University study which concluded last year that California’s 2010 pertussis epidemic was fueled in part by an increase in the numbers of parents refusing to vaccinate children. The study showed the locations with the highest disease rates were also those with the most personal belief exemptions.

          And that was before Brown’s order produced the new, easier to employ form in use this year. Still, it will be a few months before anyone can definitely establish cause and effect between the form and the newest outbreak.

 
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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

CALIFORNIA RECOVERY DEPENDS ON HOUSING INDUSTRY

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2011, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CALIFORNIA RECOVERY DEPENDS ON HOUSING INDUSTRY”

There’s one big reason why foreclosure reforms that strongly encourage banks to redo loans for “underwater” homeowners are a must for California, and soon:

This state’s overall economy and employment levels simply cannot recover to pre-recession status until the foreclosure crisis ends.

And the tide of foreclosures has shown no sign of abating lately, particularly in previous high-growth areas like the Inland Empire of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the high desert portions of Los Angeles County and several Central Valley counties that were among the fastest growing places in America through most of the last decade.

Places like Moreno Valley, Merced, Stockton and Fresno grew immensely in large part because of easy money made available by banks which demanded little or no down payment on houses and then sold off the mortgages they wrote, helping cause the Wall Street debacles of the last four years.

That’s had a wide impact; thousands of homes now sit vacant after their occupants either were forced out via foreclosure or abandoned houses and mortgages when property values fell to the point where loan amounts topped home values, putting them figuratively under water.

With so many houses vacant, or even derelict, there is little or no demand for new housing. That means there’s little or no new residential construction underway or in prospect. Which has proven disastrous for businesses that sell everything from appliances to carpeting, lumber and concrete.

No other state over the last century has been as dependent as California on steady construction of new homes. That's the main reason California’s unemployment rate skyrocketed from about 7 percent in 2007 to more than 12 percent last year and well over 11 percent today.

Economic forecasters don’t say so explicitly, but this is also why every recent prediction indicates this state’s recovery from recession will keep trailing after the rest of America.

Foreclosures and the resulting construction slump are also the main reasons California unemployment is almost 50 percent higher than that of Texas, the state to which we are most often compared. Texas, unlike California, has no serious foreclosure or walking-away-from-mortgages crisis, mostly because housing prices never skyrocketed they way they did here between 1990 and 2007, meaning few Texans are under water.

Meanwhile, the building bust is choking the job market. In the 12 months ending in mid-June, California lost more than 74,000 construction jobs, reports the federal Department of Labor. That was on top of similar losses in each of the previous three years. Last September, the Associated General Contractors of America reported California construction employment was off by almost 51,000 jobs from the preceding year. Put these numbers together, and they suggest the construction industry has lost more than 250,000 jobs in this state since the foreclosure crisis began.

That doesn’t even count all the out-of-work real estate brokers, carpet salespeople, air conditioning installers, furniture salespeople, fence builders and more in myriad other construction and remodeling fields.

Meanwhile, commercial and industrial construction shows some small signs of recovery, adding 10,000 jobs last April alone, for a net gain of about 5,000 construction jobs in that month. In short, while commercial construction looked up a little, residential construction was still way down.

California has been so dependent on homebuilding for so long that its virtual disappearance has led to an inevitable nightmare. That’s also been disastrous for state government and its programs, from gang prevention to parks and highway maintenance.

Not only is there virtually no revenue anymore from capital gains taxes on real estate sales, but folks who have been foreclosed upon often find their financial losses are tax deductible, further reducing the state’s tax take. It’s no wonder deficits have been at record levels for the last three years.

Said Ken Simpson, chief economist for the national contractor’s group, “The construction industry may have stopped bleeding as many jobs, but there is no sign that employment levels will bounce back. We are unlikely to see significant increases in construction for the foreseeable future.”

That means California needs actions that can somehow alter the foreseeable future. Foremost among these should be mortgage loan reforms, laws compelling banks to work with underwater homeowners on restructuring payments so that homeowners won’t be on the hook each month for more than they'd pay to rent something similar to their current houses. There are no signs Congress will do anything like this, so it may be up to state legislators to act.

Without this kind of move, there is no end in sight to the foreclosure crisis, high unemployment or the persistent recession.

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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 second edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net.