IS THE CALIFORNIA EXODUS ENDING?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 2023, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“IS THE CALIFORNIA EXODUS ENDING?”

 

Strong signs abound that this year will mark the end of the over-publicized “California exodus,” which saw this state lose about 340,000 persons in 2021 and 2022, a bit less than 1 percent of its population.

 

The dates alone give some idea of why this population reduction occurred: They coincide with the nadir of the coronavirus pandemic, when thousands more Californians than usual died and hundreds of thousands of workers were given license to operate from home, wherever they chose to make it.

 

Some of those factors are now reversing. The virus is now at bay, stymied by a combination of vaccines, boosters and natural forces. No virus wants to kill off all its hosts, thus preventing expansion. So COVID-19 has evolved into something less serious than it was, with a lower percentage of cases than before carrying potential dire outcomes.

 

Death rates have dropped precipitously, with many hospitals converting their former Covid wards into other functions and treatments like Pfizer’s Paxlovid knocking symptoms back quickly.

 

        At the same time, many employers are asking workers to return at least part-time to offices, so distance between home and office is again a factor in choosing where to live.

 

        All this shows up in new Census figures. Yes, California had the lowest in-migration rate in the nation in 2022, with out-of-staters kept away mostly by sky-high property prices.

 

        Only about 11 percent of those moving to California spots during that last year of severe pandemic came from other states. This meant the vast majority of residential moves were within California. That did not end the out-migration trend, but slowed it considerably, while making the Inland Empire region of Riverside and San Bernardino counties and the Sacramento into the fastest growing regions in the state, even as population decreased a bit in coastal areas around San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. The big metro areas, of course, are where home prices remain highest while the growth regions see far lower real estate and rental prices.

 

        The actual figures show that about 4 million persons moved in 2022, when the current trends began, with a pretty normal 9 percent of Californians changing their residences.

 

        California’s in-migration rate was among the nation’s lowest in part because home prices remain high in its coastal areas, where most newcomers prefer to live. But the in-state migration numbers indicate that once they’ve been here awhile and start to yearn for home ownership, folks are quite likely to move inland, even if the weather is often  hotter than near the ocean.

 

        By comparison, Texas had an even lower migration rate than California over the last year on record, with just 11.7 percent of its moves going out of state (California saw 44,279 persons move in from Texas, the highest from any out-of-state location, beating out New York state by about 13,000.)

 

        All this also means that the factors behind California’s many decades of steady growth remain in effect: Scenic coastlines, gentle and blizzard-free climates that allow outdoor activity year-‘round, accessible mountain activities from hiking to skiing, industries like entertainment and electronics and many work openings in agriculture are keeping any massive population drain from lasting long.

 

        So the usual reporting of trends seems to have occurred: They tend to go unnoticed until they’re almost over and beginning to reverse.

 

        That’s happening right now with office workers. While some of those leaving in 2021-22 went to cheaper, more rural locations like Idaho and Montana, that’s ending as some employers want to see more of their workers in office. Some who moved to distant points now face the dilemma of how to move back into California if they want to keep high-paying tech jobs.

 

        But new tech workers can find plenty of luxury accommodations close to office areas because of the boom in apartment building spurred by pro-density state laws, combined with a plethora of vacancies in those same areas.

 

        Plus, inflation-boosted pay and a likely easing of interest rates promise soon to make California more affordable.

 

        All of which means that in the long run, the so-called California exodus will likely turn out to be very short-lived, with 2024 promising to be the year it began to peter out.

       

       

       

       

            -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

MEMO TO THE RESTLESS: THINK TWICE BEFORE HEADING TO TEXAS

 

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FOCUS

      1720 OAK STREET, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA 90405

FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “MEMO TO THE RESTLESS: THINK TWICE BEFORE HEADING TO TEXAS”

 

          Memo to Larry Ellison (Oracle Corp.), Elon Musk (Tesla) and other Californians eyeing a move to Texas because it has no state income tax but does feature lower living expenses and far less government regulation than California:

 

          Think twice, maybe three times, before you leap.

 

          That’s one lesson of the mid-February combination of blizzard and deep-freeze that struck the Lone Star state, dropping some outdoor temperatures near zero and indoor levels into the 30s and sometimes lower.

 

          Ice and snow froze water pipes, some placed two feet below ground level. Several hospitals were left without safe water, forcing mass patient transfers in extreme weather. All this just three years after Hurricane Harvey reduced much of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, to a bunch of rivers and ponds.

 

          It’s one thing to see how virtually non-existent zoning that stems from the Texas ideal of little government control can let junk yards and body shops exist alongside posh homes. It’s another to see Houston reduced to non-functionality twice in less than 40 months.

 

          And not merely non-fuctionality in a business sense, but in much more human ways. In the midst of Texas’ weeklong super-freeze and blackout, some water purification works went the way of business activity and home heat: They did not work. More than 10 million Texans who still had running water were told to boil it before drinking it. That meant wide use of portable camping stoves – if households had them – because natural gas operations were also stuck in the deep freeze. Never mind the threat of carbon monoxide poisoning.

 

          The length and extent of the blackouts dwarfed anything modern California has seen, even in the energy crunch of the early 2000s, trouble primarily caused by Texas companies whose executives gloated publicly over “stealing from California grandmas” – before they were convicted and imprisoned.

 

          In short, the approximately 300,000 former Californians who moved to Texas over the last six years because of lower real estate and energy prices suddenly learned why their big new homes cost so little. They now know they bought into the mere façade of a solid place to live.

 

          Yes, Texas’ far-right Republican Gov. Greg Abbott tried to blame all this on the fact his state’s grid – independent of surrounding states that could have aided it (but did not) because Texas would have no federal regulation of its electric supply – gets about 20 percent of its power from solar and wind developments. What about the other 80 percent? In any case, Abbott’s own appointed energy experts said whatever green power Texas uses did not create this crisis.

 

          It was reminiscent of the old saying that when you eliminate a tradition, you soon learn why it became one. This time, Texas worked assiduously to avoid federal control and influence, then learned why those can sometimes be a big plus.

 

          Then there are Texas politicians. It wasn’t just that Abbott tried to scapegoat renewable power and the nonexistent Green New Deal. No top-level politician in California has been as dishonest and deflective during an emergency in more than 100 years.

 

          The freeze also featured panicked or irresponsible behavior by other officials. Two examples: Republican Sen. Ted Cruz fled to 80-degree Cancun with his family when the going got tough. That’s the same Ted Cruz who tweeted that California’s liberal policies created blackouts during recent wildfire crises. “I have no defense (of that tweet),” he conceded before flying south.

 

          And Colorado City, Tex., Mayor Tim Boyd was forced to resign after ranting on Facebook that local residents were “lazy.” The city and county, he told constituents, “owe you NOTHING. Sink or swim, it’s your choice. If you have no water, you deal with it and think outside of the box.” This, while some families tried for days to melt snow as their sole source of water.

 

          It all can serve as a timely and on-point warning to Californians who seek to get rich and live like kings by selling houses high here and then leaving for greener pastures and bigger homes at much lower prices.

 

          Those pastures may not look so green after you’ve been in the new place awhile, especially if it’s Texas.

 

     -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 pullout quote: They bought into the mere façade of a solid place to live.”

IDEALISTIC NEWSOM SHOWS HE'S GREEN AS GRASS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 2019 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “IDEALISTIC NEWSOM SHOWS HE'S GREEN AS GRASS”

          Just after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first state-of-the-state speech, a major newspaper editorialized that perhaps he should become known as “Gov. Gaslight” because of the mind-bending way he announced a plan to switch the focus of California’s under-construction bullet train to the rather short run between Bakersfield and Merced, but then pulled back.

          The nickname referred to the plot of a 1930s-era movie of that name.

          Newsom, fast becoming the face of resistance to President Trump and his agenda, ironically sounded very Trumpesque when he blasted the press for reporting what he said, rather than what he perhaps wished he had said.

          For this, color Newsom green as grass, inexperienced. Barely a month into his time as governor of the nation’s largest state, he seemed not to realize his words might be reported outside California. They were, and Trump seized on them.

          Soon after Newsom spoke, Trump announced he will cancel almost $1 billion of a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) grant that this state’s High Speed Rail Authority has counted on for about one-fourth of its known funding. The authority still hopes to find private backers and more state funds than the $9 billion in bonds authorized by voters in 2008, but little has materialized.

          Trump also threatened to claw back another $2.5 billion in federal funds already spent on the bullet train, an unprecedented action. And it was hard to quarrel with the justifying facts set out in the Trump administration threat letter, signed by the FRA administrator.

          The letter said California has not kicked in matching funds it promised for final design work and adds that the state can’t complete even part of the originally proposed project by 2022, a key deadline in the federal grant.

          Newsom called this “political retribution” for California’s resistance to Trump policies, including his deep desire to build a solid wall along the Mexican border. The Trump move surely is retribution, aimed at bringing Newsom to heel.

          Why be surprised? As Mr. Dooley, the legendary, fictitious bartender of the 1890s, once observed, “Politics ain’t beanbag.”

          None of this had to happen. Newsom’s speech could have avoided the subject of high speed rail, like most of ex-Gov. Jerry Brown’s similar addresses. Perhaps a desire to avoid such pitfalls moved Brown to make speeches quickly forgotten after their delivery, just like most presidential state-of-the-union addresses.

          But Newsom blithely stepped into a pothole, then acted surprised when he tripped. His shock at having his words quickly and accurately reported does not render him less idealistic than he’s been, offering initiative after initiative to help poor children, areas with foul drinking water and places that need more housing. Nor does it necessarily portend lasting hostility to the press, with which he has long enjoyed positive relations. This man is not a blackguard.

          Rather, Newsom looks like a green rookie. He demonstrated this elsewhere during the same ongoing bullet train flap created by his speech. The new governor seemed to think he can by himself change the train’s scope and route. He was quickly reminded by the chairman of the state Senate Transportation Committee that he cannot. As Democratic Sen. Jim Beall of San Jose told a reporter, “He has a right to say what he wants. But there has to be a public process.” That might include legislative votes.

          This part of the kerfluffle evoked a 1999 flap which saw the newly-elected Gov. Gray Davis issue an order to then Attorney General Bill Lockyer.  Lockyer demurred, reminding Davis the attorney general works for the state, not the governor, and is independently elected by the same constituents.

          Davis, like Newsom, was a former lieutenant governor who may have gotten magnified ideas about gubernatorial powers by watching up close as a political veteran exercised them skillfully, in his case ex-Gov. Pete Wilson.

          Davis never again made a similar mistake. So maybe Newsom’s bullet train blunders won’t be repeated, either. For if Newsom has demonstrated any quality besides idealism as governor, it’s that he’s a fast learner. That might mean the current “Gov. Green-as-grass” will soon turn into a savvy operative, like the man he succeeded.     

         

    -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

BROWN UNLIKELY TO GET ALL HE WANTS FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 2013, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“BROWN UNLIKELY TO GET ALL HE WANTS FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS”

          Gov. Jerry Brown has never described it quite this way, but the essence of what he wants to do with many of the new tax dollars from last fall’s Proposition 30 is finish the job begun in 1971 by the Serrano v. Priest decision of the California Supreme Court.

          “Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice,” Brown said as he proposed giving school districts with high concentrations of English-learners, subsidized-lunch students and foster children as much as $5,000 per year over several years for each such student they have, in addition to the “base grant” of $6,800 per year that schools get for every pupil.

          Brown’s observation was much like the reasoning of the Serrano decision, which ruled the former prevailing system of school finance a violation of the equal protection clause of the state Constitution. Because Serrano was based on the state Constitution, not the federal one, it has never been seriously challenged in federal appeals courts.

          In short, Serrano held that the fact wealthy school districts could spend more than poor ones on each of their pupils was flat-out unfair. At the time the case was filed on behalf of a student in the Baldwin Park School District in 1969, that district spent $577 per year to educate each of them, while Pasadena spent $840 and Beverly Hills $1,232. Those inequalities stemmed directly from differences in property values from district to district.

          A series of Serrano-related decisions through the 1970s saw the courts demand that disparities in official per-student spending be no more than $100 per year, later adjusted for inflation to $350.

          Of course, many wealthy districts raise millions of dollars each year via voluntary contributions from parents and other local citizens, something the state cannot prevent. So districts in places like Palo Alto, Palos Verdes, Beverly Hills and Hillsborough still get more than those in Trona, McFarland, Compton and Los Angeles.

          Now Brown wants to take things farther. Los Angeles, with a large majority of Latino students, would be one prime beneficiary of the governor’s proposal, getting more than a 17 percent boost next year over current funding, and that's just for the first year of the plan.

          Chances are that other districts bearing the brunt of educating California’s large corps of immigrant children, with whom English is often not spoken at home, will also get some new benefits.

          But just because Brown is a Democrat and his party now holds majorities of about two-thirds in both legislative houses does not mean he will get everything he wants.

          For educators in some of the state’s better-performing school districts are wary of too much equalization. They know what standardized test scores show: In spite of the fact that spending is much closer to equal today than before Serrano, the quality of instruction and course offerings is still far from consonant. In general, students from wealthier districts still do better on standardized tests and in life. This is partly a function of the differing degrees of parental wealth and interest in education from place to place.

          It’s almost certain that Republicans, who opposed the original Serrano decision even though it was written by then-Chief Justice Donald Wright, a Ronald Reagan appointee, will also object to Brown’s plan, which essentially aims to give children of immigrants – legal or not – the same opportunities for success as children of native born citizens.

          At the same time, there are plenty of suburban Democrats in both houses of the Legislature who represent well-heeled areas where voters have passed school construction bonds and where parents donate heavily to public schools.

          One is Joan Buchanan, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, who spent 18 years on the San Ramon Valley School Board in the East Bay area. Facilities expanded greatly during her time on that board, while the district moved into the top 5 percent in California academically.

          Buchanan, through whose committee Brown’s plan must pass, has so far not said much about it.

          It’s unlikely she or other Democrats, mindful of the strong Latino vote their party usually draws, would object to providing some more money to districts with a plethora of English learners. But to almost double the basic grant of $6,800 per student over the next five years? That might be another question.

          The likely outcome then, is that the final budget that reaches Brown’s desk this summer will include a boost in funding for each English-learner, foster child and subsidized lunch recipient. Just not as much as Brown proposed in January. Which may be what Brown – a skilled and veteran negotiator – actually figured on.

           -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

REDISTRICTING CHANGES MAY NOT HURT DEMS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2011 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“REDISTRICTING CHANGES MAY NOT HURT DEMS”


The Census is over, its findings known and California has a brand-new redistricting commission made up of citizens who have never before been public figures.

The big remaining question: Will all this lead to lots of new faces in both Sacramento and in California’s delegation to Congress?

The best guess here is probably not.

From the start, the idea of taking the once-a-decade chore of drawing new legislative and congressional districts was embraced by Republicans who wanted fewer Democrats in office and by reformers who wanted to see more competitive districts than this state has had in many years.

It’s a rare election where even one Congressional seat changes parties; just as unusual to see a switch in the state Senate or Assembly. Out of 173 total seats available, perhaps two or three might change party in any election cycle, a rate of about 1 percent or 2 percent.

But there’s a surprising likelihood about the new districting reality: It might not change this situation very much. In fact, it stands a chance of placing even more Democrats in office than we see now, when the party dominates both Legislative houses and the congressional delegation.

Here’s why: The Citizens Redistricting Commission is charged with making new districts conform as nearly as possible to city limits, county lines and logical geographic divisions like rivers and the crests of ridges and mountain ranges. At the same time, federal law demands the districts be drawn so all ethnic groups have a decent chance at representation.

There can be no clumping of all Latinos in one large county into just one district, for instance. Nor can there be splintering of any ethnic group to make sure it has no chance of getting representation or influence. The latter two requirements stem from a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

Many of the old districts were plainly gerrymandered, a term derived from the 19th Century Massachusetts politician Eldridge Gerry, who wanted to keep Whigs in office in the early 1800s. To this purpose, he drew one district in the shape of a salamander, complete with long, thin tail. Combine Gerry’s name with the shape he used and you get a gerrymander. California has seen lots of those, especially in its most populous areas.

The purpose of California’s most recent gerrymandering was to make sure Republicans and Democrats stayed represented at about the same levels they were in 2000. Republicans agreed not to fight a Democrat-drawn plan so long as all their incumbents were safe in the new districts.

It's worked just that way for the last 10 years, as there was very little change in the proportions of the Legislature or the congressional delegation controlled by either big party.

In that arrangement, most Democrats won by very large margins and most Republicans did, too. Districts with races decided by fewer than 10 percent of the vote were rare. For there is no federal law against drawing lines around a few city blocks known to contain many Republicans to make sure they’re all within one district.

Add to all this the simple fact of a large Democratic voter registration advantage, amounting to about 2 million during last November’s election.

But the 2000 agreement is dead. Membership on the new commission is made up equally of Democrats, Republicans and folks not in either party -- plainly out of proportion to the actual voting preferences of Californians, with Republicans and independents over-represented. But for sure, there will be no attempt made to dump Democrats or Republicans into different districts just to create safe seats for either party.

Instead, the lines will supposedly be drawn without regard to any of that. Enter two other factors: Persons with similar ethnic, economic and educational backgrounds tend to cluster together. So there will still be mostly-Latino districts and mostly-black districts and mostly-Anglo ones.

But the fact there are 2 million more Democrats than Republicans now becomes a factor. If lines are drawn without regard to party, chances are in most districts there will have to be more Democrats than Republicans.

Which means there may be closer races in future elections, but Democrats will have the best shot at winning the bulk of them by sheer dint of their numerical preponderance.

All of which means the usually inept California Republican Party may have shot itself in the foot again by not thinking through the ultimate consequence of their knee-jerk backing of the new redistricting commission. We’ll know much more about all this come early November, 2012.

-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

STATE BUILDING SALE LOOKING WORSE AS IT DRAWS CLOSER

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2010, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“STATE BUILDING SALE LOOKING WORSE AS IT DRAWS CLOSER”

The closer it gets, the worse California’s pending sale of state buildings looks, at least for the long-term interests of taxpayers.

Here are the basics of the sale, which aims to produce a modicum of cash to help resolve a budget crisis that seems to grow worse every year:

State officials planned to go into the real estate marketplace in late February with as many as 17 state buildings that are expected to fetch about $2 billion even in today’s depressed climate for sales of commercial buildings. Bids will probably begin arriving in early April.

One reason these buildings will likely draw strong interest is that the state will guarantee continued occupancy for at least 20 years and in some cases as much as 30 years. Not many commercial buildings come with that kind of guaranteed rental income.

Receipts from the sale will be used to pay off about $1.35 billion in bonds issued to finance construction of the buildings. Another $665 million would go toward commissions for the real estate broker managing the deal and to the state’s general fund, where it would be applied toward this year’s expected deficit of about $20 billion.

The commission will likely come to about $16 million for the firm of Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis. CBRE executives have contributed just over $79,000 to various campaign committees controlled by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a strong advocate of the sale. If the buildings bring the expected amount and the commission is $16 million, or 0.8 percent of the purchase price as spelled out in the CBRE’s bid for the listings, the state budget would benefit by almost exactly $600 million this year, a drop in the deficit bucket.

Meanwhile, future rents California government would be forced to pay would come to at least $5 billion and might reach $6 billion. Yes, retiring the construction bonds would save the state around $120 million in yearly payments. But many of the bonds have less than 10 years to run, so the prospective benefits of paying them off early don’t even approach the costs of future rent payments.

Doug Button, the state Division of Real Estate official supervising the sale, contends savings in ongoing repair and maintenance expenses would also benefit the state. Much of those savings would come from eliminating between 600 and 1,000 state employees who now help operate the buildings. No one knows if those workers would be hired by new owners or draw unemployment and welfare payments, thus reducing any financial benefits of firing them.

Put all the putative savings together and they don’t even approach the rent the state would be committed to pay.

That’s why Bill Leonard, a former Republican state legislator now serving on the tax-collecting state Board of Equalization, says the deal would simply engender “another form of state debt, leaseback contracts instead of bonds.”

Then there’s the question of which buildings are being sold. Rather than try to sell off vacant state properties like a former CalTrans building near San Diego’s Maritime Museum, this sale will offer the Ronald Reagan state office building in downtown Los Angeles, a pink granite tower whose construction bonds were paid off last December. Choice buildings in the San Francisco Civic Center are also on the block.

So instead of the state enjoying free rent in prime locations for many years to come, it will be making rent payments for decades if this sale proceeds.

Then there’s the matter of patrimony. California voters approved the bonds that built all the properties involved in the putative sale. But those same voters have been given no voice in the decision to sell off the buildings they paid for. Does this make sense? How is it different than if the state were to auction off state parks, also bought with voter-approved funds?

But rest easy, say Button and other officials running the sale. “We will only sell if it makes economic sense, and we won’t know about that until the bids come in,” Button said. “We won’t obligate the state unless it makes economic sense.”

But what will seem economically sensible to the bureaucrats and politicians trying to convince Californians that reduced maintenance expenses will somehow make up for paying 20 to 30 years of rent at levels yet to be determined?

It all adds up to a highly questionable deal that offers many years of costs in exchange for a one-time payment that won’t even come close to solving the deficit.

Which is why the closer this deal gets, the worse it looks.

-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