Advertisement
Live

California politics updates: Rams football legend Rosey Grier ends his bid for governor

Share

This is Essential Politics, our daily look at California political and government news. Here’s what we’re watching right now:

Be sure to follow us on Twitter for more, or subscribe to our free daily newsletter and the California Politics Podcast. Also don’t miss our Essential Politics page in Sunday’s California section.

Questions over Russia, healthcare dominate Rep. Eric Swalwell’s town hall at Livermore high school

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin)
(Jazmine Ulloa / Los Angeles Times)

Over the shouts of a lone heckler at a packed Livermore town hall, Northern California Rep. Eric Swalwell on Saturday once more called for the creation of an independent commission to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“If we do anything, we should make sure that the 2018 election is more secure than the 2016 election,” Swalwell said, drawing a round of applause from the audience.

Roughly 500 people filled the seats at a Granada High School gym, many of whom were attending a town hall for the first time amid concerns over what they said they view as a tense and divisive political climate in Washington. The event was organized to address questions from constituents about jobs, healthcare and what Swalwell called efforts to protect democracy.

It came days after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III convened a criminal grand jury to investigate the presidential election, focusing on Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Questions over the Russia probe and GOP efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act dominated the discussion.

Swalwell, a Democrat from Dublin who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, has started a web page detailing the alleged Russian ties of Trump administration officials. He said Mueller’s investigation did not eliminate the need for an independent commission.

The congressman said there was no evidence Russian actors had changed votes. But intelligence reports had shown President Vladimir Putin influenced the election through “a multifaceted attack” that he said included hacked emails and the spread of fake news through social media trolls.

“What we know the Russians did do is that they went into a number of state election voter databases,” he said. “We don’t know why. You could speculate that they wanted to show that they could at least get in, and that it would sow discord or sow doubt when the result came out.”

The event was largely free of the protests and rambunctious tactics that have overtaken recent town halls in California. One man in the audience shouted questions at Swalwell as he spoke about Russian interference, yelling, “Get over it. He won.” But he was soon silenced by the audience.

Swalwell also fielded questions about his efforts to ease college debt and build the Future Forum, a group of young Democratic members of Congress focused on student loan debt and homeownership.

On healthcare, Swalwell called for a “Medicare for all” system, saying lawmakers needed to continue to expand access and reduce costs. Constituents quizzed him on who would pay for such a plan.

Share

Advocacy groups want to reverse a state housing rule they say disrupts the schooling of migrant farmworkers’ children

Workers prune grapevines at a Napa Valley vineyard.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

More than 30 community organizations and advocates are working to reverse a California state agency rule that requires migrant farmworkers to clear out of subsidized housing at the end of a growing season and move more than 50 miles away.

They say the outdated regulation from the California Department of Housing and Community Development, known as the “50-mile rule,” forces children to switch schools twice a year, causing most to fall behind and drop out. But state agency officials say support for the rule has been just as strong to regulate the limited supply of migrant farmworker housing.

The debate comes as California is struggling with a shortage of homes driving its affordability crisis, and a labor shortage in the fields that has brought new temporary guest workers to towns and cities along the state’s coastal agricultural belt.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

Inquiries about immigration status will be barred in most civil liability cases under a new California law

(Mark Lennihan / Associated Press)

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill Monday that makes a plaintiff’s immigration status irrelevant to the issue of liability in civil cases involving consumer protection, civil rights, labor and housing laws.

Assembly Bill 1690, written by Assemblyman Mark Stone (D-Scotts Valley), prevents inquiries into a person’s immigration status in civil court, unless there is clear and convincing evidence that such a query is necessary to comply with federal immigration law.

The legislation, which was backed by the Consumer Attorneys of California, immigration rights groups and several public policy centers, was meant to clarify current state law, which states that all civil protections, rights and remedies are available under state law, except if banned by federal law.

The new bill prohibits legal inquiry into a person’s immigration status if they bring forth a claim to enforce state labor, employment, civil rights or housing laws.

Supporters pointed to federal court decisions that have found that allowing legal discovery into immigration status would deter plaintiffs from pursuing claims with a likelihood to win in court. It had no noted opposition and largely sailed through the Assembly and Senate chambers.

Share

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoes a bill that would make it a crime to ‘willfully release’ helium balloons

Dozens of legislative proposals have been rejected by Gov. Jerry Brown through the years over his lament that there are too many laws, and now added to that list is the danger of high-flying helium balloons.

Brown vetoed Assembly Bill 1091 on Monday, a bill that would have made it a crime to “willfully release” balloons made of Mylar or another “electrically conductive material.”

A legislative analysis of the bill offered statistics from utility companies showing how often in recent years Mylar balloons have resulted in power outages or surges. The metallic finish on the balloons can conduct electricity. Last month, a balloon briefly knocked out power to 2,800 utility customers in Huntington Beach.

Brown’s veto message doesn’t deny that there is a problem — rather, that it’s not a problem to be solved by a state law.

“Criminal penalties are not the solution to every problem,” the governor wrote.

Brown’s rejection of the bill follows a small but noticeable trend of proposals he has vetoed for a stated belief that there might be too many laws. Even so, he has issued fewer vetoes than most any governor in modern times. In 2016, Brown vetoed only 15% of the proposals sent to his desk by the Legislature.

Share
Advertisement

Gov. Brown signs bill making it easier to create bike lanes — but not that much easier

Riders on Santa Monica's bike-share system.
(Nick Ut / Associated Press)

It might sound strange that one of the main impediments for bike lanes in California is a state environmental law, but it’s true.

The California Environmental Quality Act requires new projects to take into account effects on car congestion, and doing so has stymied bike lanes up and down the state for more than a decade.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday signed legislation allowing cities to continue sidestepping provisions of CEQA when planning for new bike lanes or painting them on roads. But the measure, Assembly Bill 1218 from Assemblyman Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake), doesn’t do much to address the problem.

Obernolte’s bill extends for three years — until 2021 — CEQA exemptions for bike lane projects that have been on the books for the past few years. Cities have taken advantage of the exemptions only three times, according to a legislative analysis of the bill. Bicycle advocates have said the measures don’t go far enough because they still require cities to complete costly traffic studies and hold public hearings.

Instead, cyclists have pinned their hopes on forthcoming regulations changing how congestion is measured under CEQA to fix the bike lanes problem. The Brown administration began writing those regulations in 2013, but they’ve been repeatedly delayed and aren’t expected to be complete until next year.

Share

Former football star Rosey Grier takes a pass on the California governor’s race

Former football player Rosey Grier.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Former Los Angeles Rams football legend Rosey Grier has dropped his bid for California governor.

“I decided not to run for governor in January, after much prayer, research and counsel,” Grier said in an email Monday.

Grier, a member of the famous “Fearsome Foursome” defensive line, announced he was running in January but he never officially filed for office or actively campaigned.

Grier, a Republican who lives in west Los Angeles, has an eclectic political history. He supported the presidential bids of Democrat Jimmy Carter as well as Republican Ronald Reagan.

Grier was serving as an aide to the presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy when he was gunned down by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan outside the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in 1968. Grier grabbed Sirhan’s leg and gun hand after the shots were fired.

Grier faced long odds in the race for governor, which has already attracted a list of top Democratic candidates, including Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Treasurer John Chiang.

The Republicans in the race include Assemblyman Travis Allen (Huntington Beach) and a Rancho Santa Fe venture capitalist John Cox.

See our list of who’s running and who’s still on the fence in the governor’s race.

Share
Advertisement

John Chiang: The no-drama contender for California governor in the era of Trump

John Chiang at the Summer Solstice Festival in Santa Barbara.
(Mariah Tauger / For The Times)

It took decades for John Chiang to hustle into the top ranks of California politics, and he relished all the schmoozing along the way.

On the Lunar New Year, Chiang turned up at a firecracker party in Westminster. Weeks later, he awoke early for a cattlemen’s breakfast in Sacramento. When the Fresno Rotary Club sought a luncheon speaker, Chiang made time.

His nonstop networking has paid dividends. He won five elections in a rout, most recently for state treasurer in 2014.

Yet to many Californians, Chiang is just a vaguely familiar name, often mispronounced. (It’s Chung, not Chang.) It shows up on ballots, somewhere near the middle.

But now that he’s running for governor, Chiang is competing on a much bigger stage. Voters pay close attention to the top of the ticket, appraising character and personality.

For the first time in his career, the way that Chiang’s reserved, low-key demeanor comes off on television will matter — all the more so in a race against two of the state’s most charismatic politicians.

Read More

Share

Political Road Map: There’s little on the horizon when it comes to ballot measures in 2018

Supporters rally last summer in Los Angeles for Proposition 62, an unsuccessful 2016 ballot measure to eliminate California's death penalty.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

In the wake of last November’s super-sized ballot, which sparked the most expensive ballot measure election in California history, the political arena where initiatives are crafted has been in the midst of a summer of stagnation.

Consider where things stood at the same point in 2015. Then, there were 31 initiatives gathering signatures in hopes of landing on the November 2016 ballot. Out of that came 17 propositions that ultimately made it to voters.

By contrast, there are only five initiatives now in the signature-gathering phase. Nine others are awaiting a formal vetting.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

Today’s newsletter: On healthcare fallout, and one of the hopefuls aiming to be California’s next governor

Today’s Essential Politics newsletter highlights our best work from the last few days, along with stories from around the Web we’ve noticed.

The newsletter comes out Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Are you a subscriber? Sign up below.

Read More

Share

Nancy Pelosi raises more than $25 million for Democratic efforts to retake the House

(Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s reelection campaign said she has raised $25.9 million for House Democrats’ bid to retake the chamber in 2018, with the majority of the money going to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Long known as a fundraising powerhouse, San Francisco’s Pelosi has seemed invigorated with her new role of opposing President Trump.

Since joining House leadership in 2002, Pelosi has raised $593.8 million for Democrats, according to her campaign spokesman Jorge Aguilar.

The 124 fundraising events she’s held in 22 cities this year garnered $1.2 million from a New York City fundraiser in March, nearly $2 million from a fundraiser in San Francisco and nearly $1.5 million from a Los Angeles fundraiser, both in April.

Aguilar said the haul “demonstrates the growing enthusiasm for House Democrats to retake the House.”

Though none of them has raised more than $50,000, Pelosi has attracted a handful of challengers for 2018, including Democratic challenger Stephen R. Jaffe, a supporter of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders who has criticized Pelosi for raising money from corporations and special interests.

Pelosi was reelected in 2016 with 80% of the vote.

Share
Advertisement

From Times Opinion pages: Why Dianne Feinstein shouldn’t run again

At age 84, Dianne Feinstein is the oldest of the 100 U.S. senators. And the word, both in Washington and around California, is that she plans to run for reelection next year to a six-year term that will end when she’s 91.

The problem with yet another Feinstein candidacy is partly a matter of image. Ever since the tea party landslide of 2010 wiped out a generation of Democratic up-and-comers, many of the party’s central figures — Barack Obama decisively excepted — have been disproportionately older. Some of those Democrats have flourished with age: Sen. Bernie Sanders, technically an independent, has led a rebirth of the American left; Rep. Nancy Pelosi remains the most accomplished legislative leader Congress has seen in many decades; Rep. Maxine Waters has become the bubbe of the anti-Trump activists; and Jerry Brown, in his second go-round as California governor, has become the nation’s commander-in-chief in the fight against climate change.

Read More

Share

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher faces hostile crowd during panel about Russia and Trump at Politicon

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, right, and Rep. Ted Lieu, second from left, were among the speakers at a Politicon panel titled "From Russia with Trump."
(Christina Bellantoni / Los Angeles Times)

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher on Sunday braved a crowd of politically engaged Southern Californians for a panel called “From Russia with Trump.”

It started with boos for the congressman and went downhill from there.

“Let’s avoid outright hostility,” moderator Vince Houghton told the audience in the Civic Auditorium at the Pasadena Convention Center, where the Politicon convention was held this weekend.

Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) said he appreciated being able to speak with people “who obviously don’t like me” on the topic, one from which he has not backed down even as he’s been in the headlines for his pro-Russia positions.

The crowd wasn’t having it. They heckled him. “Shame on you!” they shouted. They called for “town hall meetings” in his district, 50 miles from the convention. They called him “paranoid.” They hissed and they laughed.

Organizers for Politicon, in its third year, said more than 10,000 attended. Not everyone there was liberal, but this was an event which featured a popular panel on impeachment and where fans stood in long lines to take photos with MSNBC hosts.

The moderator didn’t ask Rohrabacher about his own ties with Russia, or about his informal nickname: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s favorite congressman.

“There are some bad guys in Russia and Putin is one of them,” he said, adding there also are “bad guys” in the United States. Then he compared Putin to “Mayor Daley and his gang,” presumably a reference to the late Chicago politician known for hardball tactics.

When he was shouted down, the congressman warned, “It’s usually fascists who don’t let somebody talk.”

Rohrabacher went after familiar targets, including President Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. A man in the crowd shouted, “Fox News talking point!”

When it came to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into Russia’s meddling in the U.S. elections, Rohrabacher questioned the intelligence unearthed in the investigation and brought the conversation back to Clinton’s controversial campaign emails. “They were not making up emails,” he said. “All they were doing was releasing information that was accurate.”

The congressman said he’s learned not to trust American intelligence until he can verify it, and cited the reports of weapons of mass destruction during the Iraq confict to back up his point.

“You’ve got to be skeptical and you’ve got to ask for proof before you just accept something,” he said.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) didn’t shy away from going after his colleague.

“You can believe Trump’s CIA director, Trump’s NSA director, Trump’s director of national intelligence. Or you can believe Dana Rohrabacher,” Lieu said. The crowd applauded.

Rohrabacher scored a point on the rest of the panel when he challenged if they had actually been to Russia. When they admitted they had not, he boasted of his work for President Reagan and his role as chairman of the “emerging threats” subcommittee in the House.

“We have people here who are advocating policy and they have not been to Russia,” the congressman said.

Acknowledging the political leanings of the audience and his fellow panelists, Houghton took a moment at the close of the panel to thank Rohrabacher for showing up in front of such an unfriendly crowd.

“He is on an island up here right now ... he has done an exceptional job,” the moderator said.

UPDATE
7:30 a.m.: This post was updated with information about the convention size.

This post was originally published at 3 a.m.

Share
Advertisement

2018 could be the year of the rookie in California’s congressional races

Pediatrician and Democrat Mai Khanh Tran is one of five first-time candidates challenging the reelection bid of Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton).
Pediatrician and Democrat Mai Khanh Tran is one of five first-time candidates challenging the reelection bid of Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton).
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Mai Khanh Tran came to the U.S. as a child refugee, worked as a janitor to put herself through Harvard University and is a two-time breast cancer survivor. But she describes the months-long process of deciding to run for Congress as an “agonizing” time.

“I am leaving a very nice, private life that I’ve worked very hard to build and to be at a position where I can now take it easy and enjoy my family,” said Tran, a pediatrician who lives in Yorba Linda and has announced a run against Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton). “It’s going to be a year and a half of work that’s not in my comfort zone.”

This is Nguyen’s first time running for office — she’s one of more than two dozen candidates who have never run for office before but have announced bids in California’s 13 most competitive congressional races.

Many of them say the election of President Trump, a first-time candidate who rode his reputation as a political outsider to the highest office in the nation, spurred them to run.

Most are concentrated in Orange County, where four of California’s seven most vulnerable Republican House members are based. But newcomers to politics are popping up on both sides of the aisle. The 2018 roster includes scientists, businessmen, doctors, veterans and at least one lottery winner.

Read More

Share

California Politics Podcast: A formal resistance might be forming inside state Democratic ranks

California Democrats found themselves in the springtime facing a bitter battle for the party leadership. Now it appears the loser in that contest may be forming a new faction inside party ranks.

On this week’s California Politics Podcast, we discuss this week’s announcement by Kimberly Ellis, who, while continuing to challenge the results of the state party chair’s race, is suggesting that she and other liberal activists are digging in for the long haul.

We also discuss the departure of a Republican hopeful from the 2018 race for governor, as well as how a group of Democratic state legislators has asked gubernatorial hopefuls to sound off on the issue of affirmative action.

I’m joined by Times staff writers Melanie Mason and Liam Dillon.

Share
Advertisement

Single-payer healthcare supporters take first step to launch recall against California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon

Single-payer supporters rally in the state Capitol in June.
( Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

When Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) halted a measure to establish single-payer healthcare in California, the bill’s most dedicated backers immediately called for him to be removed from office.

Now, more than a month later, single-payer advocates have taken the first formal step to follow through on their threat, giving Rendon’s office this week notice of intent to circulate a recall petition.

Rendon’s move to stop the single-payer bill — which he called “woefully incomplete,” noting it passed the state Senate without a method to pay for it — was the catalyst for the outcry.

“If we recall the Assembly speaker, maybe someone else [will be] willing to push this bill, to get it out of the rules committee and send it to the Assembly to get a vote on it,” said Jessica Covarrubias, a proponent of the effort. “Maybe that will help everyone get healthcare.”

Covarrubias, a 27-year-old law student from South Gate, described the recall campaign as “literally a grassroots effort.” She first learned of the recall campaign when single-payer activists, incensed by Rendon’s action, launched a door-knocking drive to inform voters in his district.

The notice, which proponents mailed on Tuesday and was received by Rendon’s office Friday, was signed by 60 people; at least 40 signatures must be deemed valid, belonging to registered voters of his Southeast Los Angeles County district. It was filed by Stephen Elzie, an Irvine-based USC law professor who is acting as an attorney for the effort.

“Assemblymember Rendon trusts in the fair-minded voters of his district to see through the misleading and false allegations made by the recall’s petitioner, who doesn’t even live in Southeast Los Angeles,” said Bill Wong, a spokesman for Rendon.

The recall effort faces tough odds. As the powerful Assembly speaker, Rendon has been a robust fundraiser, ending 2016 with more than $1.2 million in the bank. Other labor groups, including unions representing construction workers and grocery clerks, publicly sided with the speaker’s decision to shelve the single-payer bill and could serve as as a well-financed cavalry should Rendon face a heated campaign to oust him.

Still, this week’s step forward in the recall effort underscores how activist anger over Rendon’s decision continues to simmer weeks after the measure, SB 562, was blocked.

Last week, the California Nurses Assn., which sponsored the legislation, paid for two mailers to be sent in Rendon’s district, assailing his move as “holding healthcare hostage” and “protecting politicians, not people’s healthcare.” Both mailers encouraged recipients to call or visit Rendon’s office to voice their displeasure, although the flyers stopped short of calling for a recall.

Michael Lighty, policy director for the nurses’ group, said the union was not involved with the recall effort, focusing instead on pressuring Rendon to let the single-payer bill move forward.

Share

Former Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang plans to challenge Sen. Josh Newman if recall measure qualifies

After losing a close race last year for the state Senate, former Republican Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang said Friday that she plans a rematch against Democratic Sen. Josh Newman of Fullerton if pending petitions qualify a recall measure for the ballot.

Chang, a Diamond Bar resident, lost to Newman by less than 1% of the vote last year, and said she thinks he is vulnerable because of the recall drive by Republicans critical of his vote for a gas-tax increase.

Chang noted that she voted to stop tax increases during her two years in the Assembly.

“By contrast, Josh Newman voted to raise gas and car taxes by $52 billion and increased the cost of living for the average [Senate District] 29 family by $300 a year,” Chang said in a statement. “I’m running for state Senate and support the recall because we can’t afford three more years of Josh Newman.”

The California Republican Party has turned in more than 100,000 signatures to put a recall measure on the ballot, while 63,500 of them have to be verified as district voters for the measure to qualify.

If the measure qualifies, voters will be asked to answer whether Newman should be recalled and which candidate should replace him if the recall passes.

Chang’s name and others, including Republican Fullerton Mayor Bruce Whitaker, would be on the ballot as candidates to fill the Senate seat.

Newman campaign spokesman Mike Roth responded: “This is political opportunism to the extreme - just 8 months after voters fired Ms. Chang she’s betting her political future on them believing the bucket of lies they’ve been fed about the recall.”

Updated at 6:20 pm to include a comment from Mike Roth.

Share
Advertisement

Anthony Scaramucci cancels weekend appearances at Politicon convention in Pasadena

(Mark Wilson / Getty Images)

New White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci was going to be among the hottest draws at Politicon, a two-day political convention in Pasadena this weekend.

But on Friday, organizers announced that he had canceled his appearance at the event — shortly after a profanity-laden interview emerged in which he trashed his new White House colleagues.

Organizers of Politicon downplayed the cancelation, pointing to several other guests, including Chelsea Handler and Ann Coulter, who are still scheduled to appear, and poked fun at Scaramucci’s recent tirade.

“At least now we don’t have to worry about violating any local obscenity laws!” they said in a statement.

Scaramucci had been scheduled to take part in three sessions: an hourlong interview, a panel about the likelihood of World War III and a panel about what the United States will look like after President Trump leaves office.

Share

Here’s why a big Bay Area housing project won’t get built

Bill Dettmer, left, tells neighbors gathered at Madhouse Coffee in Brisbane, Calif., why he's in favor of the proposed 4,400-home project.
(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

Lots of California politicians, business leaders, housing activists and others want 4,400 new homes built on 640 acres right outside the city of San Francisco.

But none of them gets to decide what happens on the land. Instead, it’s under the control of the city of Brisbane, whose residents are wary of a project that could triple the city’s population from its current 4,700. Beyond that, California’s tax system ensures the city would earn a lot more revenue if it rejected housing and instead approved more commercial or hotel development on the site.

These reasons, state officials say, show why California is struggling to meet its vast housing affordability problems.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

Volkswagen gets green light for charging stations under settlement plan

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

California regulators approved on Thursday the first phase of Volkswagen’s plan to install electric vehicle charging stations around the state.

The plan, which will be carried out by a subsidiary called Electrify America, is part of a much larger, multibillion-dollar settlement over the automaker’s cheating of emission rules.

Thursday’s decision by the Air Resources Board green lights the first $200 million of the company’s required $800-million, 10-year investment.

The vote came only after Electrify America modified its spending plan to increase the number of charging stations in disadvantaged communities.

“It’s been a long process, but I hope you feel like it’s been worth it,” said Mary Nichols, the board’s chair. “We certainly feel like we’ve gained a lot of confidence that it will be a success.”

Volkswagen’s investment could become an important part of the state’s efforts to increase the number of zero-emission vehicles on the road. It’s estimated that the company’s spending will provide up to 8% of the necessary charging infrastructure in coming years.

This post has been updated to correct the day of the Air Resources Board’s decision.

Share

California’s tax board members aren’t happy about how new disclosure rules are being applied

Members of California’s Board of Equalization objected Thursday to a broad interpretation of a new state law requiring that they disclose their private meetings with taxpayers who are engaged in appeals.

A state attorney said ex parte communications must be disclosed on currently pending matters — even if they occurred before the enactment of the new law on July 1. Tax board members said they did not track who they and their staff talked to before the law took effect.

“No one is prepared to go back,” said Board of Equalization Chairwoman Diane Harkey. “We want to make sure we have no liability here. This is an impossible situation.”

The dispute led the panel on Thursday to delay action by three hours on several tax appeals, while attorneys found a way to temporarily allow the hearings. In the end, each board member announced whether he or she recalled any communications with the taxpayer whose appeal was being heard.

Board member Jerome Horton said attorneys whom he has consulted with disagree that the law applies retroactively.

However, since a reorganization signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, the board currently does not yet have its own attorney. The reorganization shifted most of the board’s responsibilities and employees to a new agency.

“The frustrating part for me is that this reorganization was supposed to be seamless and it is anything but seamless,” said Board Vice Chairman George Runner.

Share
Advertisement

Watchdog panel’s support for lifting some donation limits is likely boost to state senator facing recall

State Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) is facing a recall election.
(Rich Pedroncelli / AP)

A watchdog commission appointed by Democrats opted Thursday to support lifting the limits on donations to officials targeted by recalls — just as a Democratic state senator is facing one.

The change must be finalized at a future commission meeting. The limits still apply until that happens.

Going against the recommendation of its attorney, all but one Fair Political Practices Commission member voted in support of allowing larger contributions than have been allowed in the past.

The change could be a big boost to freshman state Sen. Josh Newman, being targeted for ouster for voting to raise the gas tax.

FPPC attorneys must still draft a new legal opinion subject to public comment and approval by the panel. The attorneys had issued a memo continuing the long-held position that candidate-controlled committees to fight recalls are subject to a $4,400 contribution limit.

Richard R. Rios, an attorney for Senate Democrats, said it is “unfair and creating a playing field that is not level,” to limit contributions to Newman’s committee, while large contributions can be made to the recall.

Commissioner Maria Audero said her reading of the law is that the limit that applies to candidates running for office should not be applied to their committees fighting recall.

“I think the argument that ‘It is so because that is the way we have been doing it’ really has no validity,” she said.

Commissioner Brian Hatch also said that the law, as he reads it, does not limit contributions. He said he regretted it had been interpreted that way in the past.

“Hopefully here today we are going to correct these past injustices,” Hatch said.

Commission Chairwoman Jodi Remke voted against reversing the 15-year-old legal posture setting limits.

Citing the makeup of the commission -- which was appointed by Democrats— and the timing in the middle of a recall targeting a Democrat, Remke said the reversal in favor of Newman “could be considered political, potentially impacting the public’s perception of the integrity of the commission.”

The vote was 3-1.

“I believe that the longstanding commission interpretation is correct,” Remke told her colleagues. “I do not believe there is a sound basis to reverse our decision.”

Carl DeMaio, a Republican activist involved in the recall, denounced the panel’s vote. “With this action to decimate campaign finance rules in favor of big money in politics, California Democrats show they are breaking and bending all the rules to keep power,” said DeMaio, a former San Diego City Councilman.

Updated 1:18 pm to clarify that the contribution limits still apply until a final vote approves the changes.

Updated at 3:40 pm to include comment from DeMaio.

Share

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher accused of violating Russian sanctions by backer of Russian sanctions law

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Financier Bill Browder has accused Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of violating federal sanctions by using information provided by Russian officials to try to convince Congress to overturn those sanctions.

Browder filed a complaint with the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control this week saying Rohrabacher and his staff member, Paul Behrends, violated the Magnitsky Act by taking information from a sanctioned Russian official and using the information to try to change the act.

The act is named for attorney Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison after accusing several prominent Russians of stealing $230 million in taxes. Browder, who was Magnitsky’s boss, persuaded Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act in 2012. It prevents more than 40 prominent Russians involved in the affair from traveling to or banking in the U.S. The act infuriated Russian President Vladimir Putin, who retaliated by halting U.S. adoptions of Russian children.

The complaint relies heavily on a recent Daily Beast report about a memo Rohrabacher received detailing complaints about Magnitsky and Browder during a 2016 meeting in Moscow with a high-ranking Russian justice official who was among those sanctioned under the act.

Congress was considering expanding the act at the time, and there was an intense lobbying effort by a handful of people with Russian ties on Capitol Hill to have Magnitsky’s name removed from it.

In the complaint, Browder alleges Rohrabacher and Behrends “provided services to one of the central figures targeted by the Magnitsky Act” because they got information from the Russian official and used it to try to change the law.

In a statement responding to the complaint, Rohrabacher said he questions why Browder doesn’t want the congressman to get information from multiple sources.

“Anyone who knows me understands that I am the Member of Congress least likely to take directions from government officials, especially foreign government officials. Because of some grotesquely misleading headlines, Mr. Browder flatters himself by claiming that I contemplated conducting a hearing all about him. Perhaps he protests too much,” Rohrabacher said.

Browder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday and called out Rohrabacher as part of Russian efforts to sway Congress to get rid of the Magnitsky Act. It’s unusual for a sitting member of Congress to be called out by a witness on Capitol Hill, but senators didn’t react to the statement.

“We know for sure that part of their campaign was running around Capitol Hill. One of the people that they were able to convince to go along with them is a member of the House of Representatives from Orange County, Dana Rohrabacher, who they have met with on a number of occasions and who has been effectively touting, or spreading their propaganda around the House of Representatives,” Browder said.

Share
Advertisement

Adam Schiff, President Trump and the serendipity of slander

The road to elected office can be long and winding and is not always paved with the best of intentions.

Some politicians — think of the Kennedys, or the Bush family — are born to the trade. Others are borne by tragedy.

Former Santa Barbara Rep. Lois Capps succeeded her husband when he fell dead of a heart attack. Former New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy was spurred to run when her husband was killed and her son gravely wounded in a mass shooting on the Long Island Rail Road.

Typically, though, the ascension is more methodical, one rung after the next, often with a pinch of right-place, right-time fortune thrown in for good measure.

Lately that bit of luck has visited itself upon Adam B. Schiff, in the form of Russian meddling and a president who hurls tweets like poison thunderbolts.

Read More

Share

The cannabis industry has a clear favorite in the race to be California’s next governor

Marijuana for sale at CannaCruz medical cannabis dispensary in Santa Cruz. The company gave $5,000 to Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom's campaign for governor.
(David Royal / For The Times)

The fundraising dinner for Gavin Newsom in Salinas was in most ways a typical night for a political candidate. Local business leaders paid up to $5,000 for a chance to talk with the man aiming to be California’s next governor over cauliflower bisque, strip steak and Meyer lemon pudding cake.

The hosts that March evening were in the agriculture business, in a region known for its lettuce, grapes and strawberries. But they left their signature dish off the menu: candy infused with marijuana.

California will soon have open sales of recreational marijuana, and it needs to decide how to regulate its newest cash crop. Hoping to influence those decisions, the cannabis industry is seeking access to the state’s political leaders.

One candidate in 2018’s open race for governor is actively inviting their support. The industry is responding by following a conventional political playbook and pouring money into the lieutenant governor’s campaign to replace Gov. Jerry Brown.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

California targets pollution with new law, but many activists remain unsatisfied

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Two months ago, Gov. Jerry Brown was in Bell Gardens to tour some of the area’s polluted neighborhoods and hear from activists about their environmental concerns.

On Wednesday he was back in town to sign legislation intended to improve air quality and public health, but some of the same activists he met with haven’t been satisfied.

“It’s a slap in the face,” said Angelo Logan, a member of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, which protested outside the ceremony.

The legislation is part of a broader deal to extend California’s cap-and-trade program for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a key part of the state’s policies on climate change.

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) defended the measure by saying a new effort on air quality would ensure disadvantaged neighborhoods aren’t left behind during the battle against global warming.

“It’s good that we think about our global community … but we need to make sure that communities like this are not left behind,” she said.

Read More

Share

Women gaining political power in California cities as they’ve lost it elsewhere

In California's 10 biggest cities, only one has a woman serving as mayor -- Oakland's Libby Schaaf.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)

While women have lost ground in California’s legislature and its congressional delegation, the state has seen a small increase in women serving on city councils over the past two years, a new report found.

Women now account for 31% of the members on California city councils, up from 29% in 2015. Women also serve as mayor in 28% of the state’s 482 cities.

The report was released Wednesday by California Women Lead, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing the number of women in elected office.

Here are some of the report’s other notes:

  • The number of women in California’s congressional delegation, including the 53 House members and two senators, decreased from 22 in 2015 to 19 in 2017.
  • The number of women in the California Legislature decreased from 31 in 2015 to 26 in 2017.
  • In California’s 10 largest cities, only one has a woman serving as mayor: Libby Schaaf in Oakland.
  • There’s just one city with an all-female council — Blue Lake in Humboldt County. Fifty-six cities have all-male councils.
  • Of California’s eight statewide offices, only one is held by a woman: Controller Betty Yee.
  • California has been represented by female Democrats in the U.S. Senate since 1993: Dianne Feinstein since 1992; Barbara Boxer from 1993-2017; and newly elected Kamala Harris.
Share
Advertisement

Race for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s Orange County seat is now rated a toss-up by election prognosticators

(Don Leach / Daily Pilot)

Nonpartisan analysts say the race for Dana Rohrabacher’s House seat representing Orange County is now a toss-up.

Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) faces more than 10 opponents in the 48th District, most of them Democrats. He is running for a 16th term in the 2018 midterm election.

Rohrabacher joins Reps. Darrell Issa of Vista, Steve Knight of Palmdale and Jeff Denham of Turlock among California Republican incumbents whose chances of reelection are rated toss-ups, according to analysts for Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Democrats are keeping a close eye on the race, which was previously considered to be leaning Republican, and have officially proclaimed it a battleground for 2018. Rohrabacher’s 2016 win with 58% of the vote could make the seat tough to flip, but Democrats are hoping to capitalize on the district’s narrow backing of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.

In his analysis of potentially competitive races, Crystal Ball managing editor Kyle Kondik calls the Orange County race “intriguing, both because of changes in the district and the quirkiness of the incumbent himself” and says national focus on Russia might be a hindrance to Rohrabacher.

“While Clinton did better in some other Republican-held area seats, CA-48 may be one place where the Trump campaign’s potential connections to Russia may have salience given Rohrabacher’s often-expressed warmth toward the Kremlin,” Kondik says.

Rohrabacher, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats, has long been known for encouraging improved relations with Russia, something that’s made him an outlier in the Republican Party.

Rohrabacher’s name has also come up as the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election has heated up. He had multiple interactions with several of the people with Russian ties who attended a Trump Tower meeting with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other campaign officials in June 2016.

Rohrabacher’s most recent fundraising quarter, in which he had $406,616 in the bank at the end, was paltry compared with what some of the other target Orange County incumbents raised.

Share

Emily’s List is putting Republicans ‘on notice’ and seven of them are in California

It’s not just the national Democrats who have a wish list of Republican incumbents they’d like to unseat in 2018.

Emily’s List, the group that aims to elect women who support abortion rights, has identified 50 congressional and Senate seats nationwide as part of their “On Notice” program to flip seats in the midterm election.

The group has identified seven California Republicans, the largest number of any state. They all occupy seats the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has also prioritized. They are:

  • 10th District: Rep. Jeff Denham (Turlock)

  • 22nd District: Rep. Devin Nunes (Tulare)

  • 25th District: Rep. Steve Knight (Palmdale)

  • 39th District: Rep. Ed Royce (Fullerton)

  • 45th District: Rep. Mimi Walters (Irvine)

  • 48th District: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (Costa Mesa)

  • 49th District: Rep. Darrell Issa (Vista)

Emily’s List says the roster of priority seats is their biggest ever and that the incumbents who hold them have built “appallingly anti-woman, anti-family records.” A statement announcing the 2018 targets points out their votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to allow states to defund Planned Parenthood.

Last year, the only California incumbent the group put “on notice” was Denham. This year, the group has already endorsed challengers in two Republican-held districts: pediatrician Mai Khanh Tran, who is running against Royce, and UC Irvine law professor Katie Porter, who’s up against Walters.

While no women have filed to run in the districts occupied by Denham, Nunes or Issa, Emily’s List spokeswoman Julie McClain Downey says they are still recruiting female candidates for those seats.

“We are planning on expending resources in these districts,” Downey said. “Given the environment that we’re in and the increase of women running for office and the excitement we’re seeing, we have targeted the largest contingent to date.”

Share
Advertisement

Californians show broad support for state’s climate goals in new poll

Senate leader Kevin de Leόn, left, Gov. Jerry Brown and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon after lawmakers approved new climate legislation this month.
Senate leader Kevin de Leόn, left, Gov. Jerry Brown and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon after lawmakers approved new climate legislation this month.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Public support for the state’s battle against global warming remains strong and growing, according to a new poll from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Seventy-two percent of California adults back last year’s law requiring the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Fifty percent said climate policies would create more jobs, the highest level since the question was first asked seven years ago.

A majority of Californians said they didn’t know anything about the state’s cap-and-trade program, which lawmakers recently voted to extend until 2030. But once they were read a description of cap and trade, 56% said they supported the program, another record high for the poll.

“Most Democrats and independents and sizable percentages of Republicans are in favor,” said Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California.

Even though a majority of Californians also expect gasoline prices to increase, the results indicate that Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers are on firm political ground as they push forward with ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Both the governor and the Legislature have a 51% approval rating on environmental issues.

The poll included 1,708 Californian adults, and it was conducted from July 9 to July 18. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Share

President Trump’s voter fraud panel asks again for data from California — and again the answer is no

Then-President-elect Donald Trump greets Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach on Nov. 20
(Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)

For the second time in less than a month, California’s chief elections officer has refused to hand over data to President Trump’s voter fraud commission, arguing on Wednesday that the inquiry is still part of an “illegitimate” exercise.

“I still have the same concerns,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said. “I can’t in good conscience risk the privacy of voters in California with this commission.”

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which met for the first time last week, originally asked for the information from California and other states on June 29. A federal court refused last week to block the commission’s request, though as many as 21 states have insisted they won’t hand over details on voter names, addresses and political party affiliations.

“I want to assure you that the Commission will not publicly release any personally identifiable information regarding any individual voter or any group of voters from the voter registration records you submit,” said Kris Kobach, the vice-chairman of the panel and Kansas secretary of state, in the letter to Padilla on Wednesday.

But Padilla insists that while his office does provide some voter information to academics, journalists and political campaigns, state law gives him the power to refuse any request. And in an interview with The Times, he said it is unclear who the commission or its staff would share the information with once it has been submitted.

“He can say that all he wants,” Padilla said about Kobach’s written promise to secure the data. “But the commission has failed to articulate how it would do that.”

Padilla also pointed out that the commission released the email addresses of those who submitted public comments in the wake of last week’s meeting.

“The privacy violations have already begun,” he said.

The panel was established in the wake of the president’s unproven allegations of widespread fraud in last November’s election. Padilla said he’s asked the commission to provide proof to back up Trump’s comments, and has yet to receive a response.

Share
Advertisement

Rep. Darrell Issa complained to city officials about protesters outside his office, records show

Protesters have been showing up at GOP Rep. Darrell Issa’s Vista office weekly in the months since President Trump took office. Though Issa has come out to greet them a few times, he’s also made some phone calls and sent a letter to the city to complain about the protesters, records uncovered by the San Diego Union-Tribune and CBS 8 show.

The congressman and his staff have said that they respect the group’s right to assemble but that the gatherings have impeded work of other businesses in the building — some of which also complained about the protests. They also were concerned about noise. In one voicemail Issa left with the city, he complained that protesters were “sitting on sidewalks and they’re clearly violating their permit.”

“Let me be clear: this isn’t about me or my office,” he wrote in a follow-up June 21 letter to the city of Vista. “I can handle a little heat from some protesters.”

Issa, one of California’s most vulnerable Republicans, sent the letter after the city had reportedly declined to take action because it said protesters weren’t violating the terms of their permit.

Read More

Share

California has too much pot, and growers won’t be able to export the surplus

A leader of California’s marijuana industry warned Wednesday that the state’s cannabis growers produce eight times the pot that is consumed in the state so some will face “painful” pressure to reduce crops under new state regulations that will ban exports after Jan. 1.

ALSO: Candidate Gavin Newsom dominates donations from growing pot industry aiming for influence

Some marijuana growers will stay in the black market and continue to illegally send cannabis to other states, which is also not allowed under federal law, said Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the California Growers’ Assn.

“We are producing too much,” Allen said, adding state-licensed growers “are going to have to scale back. We are on a painful downsizing curve.”

He said some marijuana growers may stop, while others just won’t apply for state permits.

Allen made his comments to the Sacramento Press Club during a panel discussion that also included Joseph Devlin, chief of Cannabis Policy and Enforcement for City of Sacramento, and Lori Ajax, chief of the state’s Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation.

Devlin said estimates he has heard put California production at five times the state consumption; one consultant in the audience said the number may be 12 times what is consumed in the state.

Ajax agreed with Allen that some cannabis cultivators may have to scale back while others may never apply for a state license.

“For right now, our goal is to get folks into the regulated market, as many as possible,” Ajax said. But, she added, “There are some people who will never come into the regulated market.”

Those people, she said, will eventually face enforcement actions for growing marijuana without a state license.

Medical marijuana use was approved by California voters two decades ago. Voters in November approved the legal sale and possession of an ounce of marijuana for recreational use.

Share
Advertisement

Watch: Gov. Jerry Brown signs second piece of landmark climate change legislation

Share

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar heads to L.A. for fundraiser with Hollywood players

(Bennett Raglin / Getty Images)

Amid speculation about a potential future presidential bid, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is headlining a Los Angeles fundraiser for her reelection campaign on Sunday.

Donors are being asked to contribute up to $5,400 to attend the afternoon reception at the Brentwood home of Andy Spahn, an advisor to some of the entertainment industry’s biggest political contributors, and his wife, Jennifer Perry.

Paul Begala and James Carville, former top advisors to President Bill Clinton, are billed as special guests.

Hosts include Hollywood titan Jeffrey Katzenberg, director J.J. Abrams, “Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof, Universal Film Chairman Jeff Shell, and producers Paul Junger Witt and Susan Harris.

Klobuchar is running for a third Senate term in 2018, but she is frequently mentioned on lists of potential Democratic presidential candidates for 2020. She has stoked such speculation by courting Democratic activists and visiting states that are critical in the nominating process, such as Iowa.

Share
Advertisement

On politics, says Schwarzenegger, ‘I mostly argue with myself’

(Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty)

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made a political career out of not toeing the party line of his fellow Republicans, said it’s largely a function of having grown up in a country with very different views on social and economic policy than those in the United States.

“I mostly argue with myself,” Schwarzenegger said on the Politico “Off Message” podcast that published on Tuesday. “There’s the Austrian Arnold and the American Arnold, right?”

The two-term governor said his embracing of after-school programs, which he convinced voters to fund with taxpayer dollars in a 2002 ballot initiative, did not necessarily fit with his otherwise Republican principles about families taking care of their own children.

“The reality out there is a little different,” he said.

Schwarzenegger was on hand Tuesday for Gov. Jerry Brown’s signing of an extension of the state’s cap-and-trade climate program in San Francisco. It was Schwarzenegger who, along with legislative Democrats, championed the original program in 2006.

The former governor again insisted in the podcast that he has no interest in any political job open to him, confirming his announcement earlier this year of being disinterested in running for the U.S. Senate. He’s barred by the Constitution from running for president, and by term limits from running again for governor.

“I would have liked to stay on being governor,” he said. “Because the funny thing is, when you get into this, is you realize very quickly that you want to continue staying on, because you can never get everything done that is on your checklist.”

Share

Backers of another shot at a ‘Calexit’ ballot measure can now gather signatures

Supporters of a plan for California to become independent from the United States are now allowed to gather signatures for their ballot measure.

On Tuesday afternoon, Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra’s office released an official title and summary for the initiative, now called the “California Autonomy From Federal Government” initiative.

The proposal, scaled back from an initially more aggressive version, would direct California’s governor to negotiate more autonomy from the federal government, including potentially putting forward a ballot measure to declare independence.

The initiative wouldn’t necessarily result in California exiting the country, but could allow the state to be a “fully functioning sovereign and autonomous nation” within the U.S.

Backers of the plan, known informally as “Calexit” have 180 days to collect nearly 600,000 valid signatures for the initiative to go on the 2018 ballot.

Backers of an effort for California independence gathered outside the Capitol before turning in their initiative on May 19.
(Liam Dillon / Los Angeles Times)

The initiative’s fiscal analysis says it would cost the state at least $1.25 million a year for an advisory commission to assist the governor on California’s independence plus “unknown, potentially major, fiscal effects if California voters approved changes to the state’s relationship with the United States at a future election after the approval of this measure.”

The earlier effort for a more aggressive ballot measure was pulled by its backers less than three months after it got the green light to start gathering signatures.

Share
Advertisement

Rep. Adam Schiff tries to raise money off Trump’s critical tweet

House Select Intelligence Committee ranking Democrat Adam B. Schiff is using the spotlight from a President Trump tweet that deemed him “sleazy” to raise some campaign cash.

Trump on Monday morning used Twitter to call out Schiff as “sleazy” and “totally biased,” saying he spends too much time on television. It again turned attention toward the Burbank Democrat who is helping to lead the House investigation into Russian attempts to interfere with the 2016 election.

Schiff responded on his official House Twitter account, saying the comment was “beneath the dignity of the office.” Within hours, his campaign Twitter account was promoting an ad asking people to “chip in” and “Stand with Adam.”

We won’t know what he raised from the targeted Twitter ads until the next campaign finance reports are filed in October, but Schiff has raised $840,339 since the beginning of the year and had $2.57 million in the bank as of June 30.

His reliably Democratic seat isn’t considered to be at risk in the 2018 midterm election. But for high-ranking members of Congress, the ability to raise funds, and donate to more vulnerable members, is a way to demonstrate their power.

The money could also help fund a potential run for the U.S. Senate if California’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein retires. Schiff is high on the list of Democrats considered interested in running for the seat.

Share

California’s secretary of state sticks to his refusal to give data to President Trump’s voter fraud panel

Share
Advertisement

Gov. Jerry Brown signs climate change legislation to extend California’s cap-and-trade program

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, left, a Republican, and Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, shown last year, are both cap-and-trade proponents.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation on Tuesday to extend California’s cap-and-trade program, solidifying the state’s battle against global warming as President Trump withdraws from the fight in Washington.

The legislation, Assembly Bill 398, will keep cap and trade operating until 2030 rather than letting it expire in 2020. The five-year-old program, the only one of its kind in the country, requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions.

“You’re here witnessing one of the key milestones in turning around this carbonized world into a decarbonized sustainable future,” Brown said.

It was the same location used by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006 when he signed Assembly Bill 32, which provided the foundation for cap and trade. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, joined Brown on Tuesday, providing a bipartisan display of continuity.

Cap and trade was hotly debated in Sacramento, with some environmental activists fearing the new legislation wouldn’t be stringent enough and some conservatives warning about increased costs for Californians. But Brown pieced together a broad coalition to pass the legislation, winning over several Republicans, national environmental groups and major business organizations.

Read More

Share

As candidates for governor are pressed on affirmative action, Antonio Villaraigosa says it’s vital to California

Gubernatorial candidates, who have been pressed to offer their thoughts on affirmative action by Latino and black state lawmakers, began to weigh in Monday evening.

Antonio Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, gave the most concrete response.

“Mayor Villaraigosa agrees with both caucuses that keeping this issue at the forefront is vital to the future of California,” a campaign spokeswoman said in a statement. “He went to UCLA on an affirmative action program and was on the frontline against Prop. 209. Villaraigosa believes California can’t truly be progressive unless we’re all making progress together, which means we must support and expand programs that lift more families into the middle class.”

Villaraigosa was responding to a questionnaire sent to six Democratic and Republican gubernatorial candidates about affirmative action and the ramifications of a 1996 voter-approved law that banned it in publicly funded institutions of higher education.

The letter by the chairmen of the Latino and black legislative caucuses, which was mailed Friday, injects a potentially volatile racial issue that has previously splintered California Democrats into the 2018 contest.

The questions also raise a divisive 2014 effort to repeal the ban on affirmative action.

While polling shows that Democratic voters tend to favor efforts to increase opportunities for underrepresented minorities, schisms emerged between Latino and black lawmakers, and their Asian American colleagues, when Democrats tried to repeal the ban. It was ultimately shelved.

A spokesman for GOP candidate John Cox used the letter to poke the Latino caucus for not being inclusive. (The caucus has come under fire for not including Republican Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside.)

“We did not receive this questionnaire from the caucuses, but suggest that the Latino caucus take the first step towards greater diversity by allowing Republicans to join their closed caucuses,” spokesman Matt Shupe said.

Representatives for Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former state schools chief Delaine Eastin, both Democrats, said they had not yet received the letter, while the campaigns for Democratic state Treasurer John Chiang and Republican Orange County Assemblyman Travis Allen did not respond to requests for comment.

Share
Advertisement

Special election date set to replace Jimmy Gomez in the Assembly

Share

Latino, black state lawmakers press California gubernatorial candidates on affirmative action

Latino and black state lawmakers are calling on gubernatorial candidates to publicly state their opinion about affirmative action, injecting into the 2018 contest a potentially volatile racial issue that has previously splintered California Democrats.

“Each of our caucuses, as you may know, is driven by a mission to further the interests of all Californians through advocacy for programs and policies that promote diversity and empowerment. To that end, we would appreciate your candid thoughts and official position on affirmative action and related topics,” wrote state Sen. Ben Hueso and state Assemblyman Chris Holden, the chairmen of the Latino and black legislative caucuses respectively, to the six most prominent gubernatorial candidates.

The candidates are being asked to describe their views on affirmative action, their thoughts on the ramifications of the 1996 law that bans its use at publicly funded colleges and universities, their track record on diversity and equity efforts, and specific proposals they would try to enact on such matters in schools, state government, businesses and nonprofits if elected governor.

A 2003 report by the University of California found that implementing race-neutral admissions policies led to a “substantial decline” in the proportion of black, Latino and American Indian students entering the system’s most selective institutions.

The question raises a 2014 effort led by Latino and black Democratic members of the Legislature to repeal the ban on affirmative action. While polling shows that Democratic voters tend to favor efforts to increase opportunities for underrepresented minorities, schisms emerged on racial lines in the party when state lawmakers tried to repeal the ban.

The measure quietly sailed through the state Senate before it caught the attention of Asian American activists, who vocally argued that their children would be harmed if affirmative action were reinstated.

On popular Chinese-language social media networks, some said the number of Asian students admitted to UC schools would be slashed, called the measure the “Yellow Peril Act” and compared it to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which restricted Chinese immigration.

The activism worked – Asian American senators who supported the move expressed new reservations, and others in the state Assembly vowed to oppose it, leading then-Assembly Speaker John Perez to shelve it.

The caucuses’ letter was mailed Friday to Democrats Gavin Newsom, Antonio Villaraigosa, John Chiang and Delaine Eastin, and Republicans John Cox and Travis Allen. Some of those campaigns did not respond to a request for comment on Monday, while others said they had not yet received the letter or were formulating a response.

Share
Advertisement

Kimberly Ellis to contest ruling that upheld her loss in race for California Democratic Party chair

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

The drama and division over the California Democratic Party chairperson’s election does not appear to be ending anytime soon.

Kimberly Ellis, who narrowly lost the race to lead the party, announced Monday that she planned to appeal a party committee’s affirmation of the election results two days ago, a potential precursor to a lawsuit.

“While I, perhaps more than anyone, want immediate closure, I also understand my tremendous responsibility to the thousands of delegates and supporters who are counting on us to see this through to its final conclusion. No doubt, this is not the easier path, but often times the righteous one is not,” she wrote in a fundraising plea to supporters. “To turn away now would be a betrayal to my own sense of integrity and ethics.”

The election took place during the state party’s annual convention in May, and longtime Democratic activist Eric Bauman was declared the winner. Ellis’ campaign has repeatedly contested the results, reviewed every ballot cast and called into question the validity of hundreds of votes.

On Saturday, the party’s compliance review commission held an all-day hearing in Sacramento to determine the fate of 355 ballots deemed questionable. In the end, 47 votes were invalidated — 25 for Bauman and 22 for Ellis. That action, however, did not change the outcome of the election. Bauman won by 1.9%

Ellis, a Bay Area Democrat, called the review an “inherently biased process” and said she would file an appeal within 12 days, though she said she didn’t expect the commission to overturn its decision. She alleges that the six-member commission includes several Bauman supporters. The members were appointed by former chairman John Burton.

The bitter campaign exposed schisms in the state Democratic Party that echo the divide between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’ supporters during the 2016 presidential primary. Some party leaders worry that the infighting will hobble the party, which dominates California politics and is at the center of the opposition to President Trump.

Ellis did not mention a lawsuit in Monday’s email to supporters, though she has previously indicated one was likely. She also warned state party officials that she and her supporters will remain active in trying to reshape the party.

“What happens next rests on a lot of shoulders because this progressive movement to redefine what it means to be a Democrat is not going away…because we are not going away,” Ellis wrote. “We’re going to organize for progressive policies and around candidates who share our vision and be vocal against those who don’t. We all agree that Democrats need to come together; the question is what are we truly fighting for? No more same old, same old. We must have the courage of our convictions for a bigger, better, bolder vision for California – and the rest of our nation.”

FOR THE RECORD

4:30 p.m.: A previous version of this post said Bauman won by less than 1%. He won by 1.9%

Share

Al Gore praises Gov. Jerry Brown for climate change victory while touting new documentary

Former Vice President Al Gore has been promoting a new documentary, “An Inconvenient Sequel” — the follow-up to his Oscar-winning film about climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth.” The media tour brought him on Monday to San Francisco, where he was interviewed on stage during an event organized by the Commonwealth Club.

California lawmakers just approved extending the cap-and-trade program, the centerpiece of the state’s global warming battle. Gore noted the victory for Gov. Jerry Brown.

Gore said he was optimistic that the United States could meet its climate goals under the Paris accord, despite some research suggesting otherwise.

Some of the questions and answers drew laughs from the crowd at the Marines’ Memorial Theater.

Share
Advertisement

Watch live: Former Vice President Al Gore talks about climate change in San Francisco

Share

At Comic-Con, California treasurer John Chiang explains what infrastructure repair has to do with superhero movies

John Chiang
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Comic-Con is, at its root, an escapist event for fans and obsessives of pop culture. This year it made room for public policy wonks as well.

In a lively panel called “Who Cleans Up the Mess?” at the conference Saturday morning in San Diego, a collection of politicians and civil servants looked at how civic life would be different if the dazzling superhero battles seen in blockbusters year after year came to life.

Among them was California Treasurer and gubernatorial candidate John Chiang, who used “X-Men” footage as a jumping-off point to talk about the need for infrastructure repair, and a scene of Tobey Maguire‘s Spider-Man damaging high-rises while trying to stop a runaway train to talk about the need for more affordable housing.

Another panelist, former California State Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, referenced his military training in first restoring communications, order and human needs in crisis areas. And California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones looked at the potential for a homeowner’s recovery.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

Early fundraising numbers show some congressional candidates building war chests, others with a long way to go

California’s congressional races are pivotal to Democratic efforts to flip the House, and there are already more than 60 candidates in more than a dozen battleground districts for the 2018 election.

Political insiders and donors are looking at the most recent campaign finance reports for indicators of who has fundraising ability. A strong early fundraising figure can deter potential rivals or draw support from the national political parties. Weak fundraising can encourage new opponents to enter the race.

Read More

Share

Major Democratic donor hosts Sen. Kamala Harris in the Hamptons as speculation mounts about her political future

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

Speculation over California Sen. Kamala Harris’ political ambitions was stoked over the weekend by her appearance at the Hamptons home of major Democratic donor Michael Kempner, a top bundler for former President Obama and bankroller for liberal causes across the country.

“So great hosting Senator Kamala Harris @kamalaharris at our Hamptons summer home today,” he wrote in a private Instagram post that featured a picture of Harris, her husband, Douglas Emhoff, and Kempner and his wife, Jacqueline. “She’s a star!”

Kendall Glazer, granddaughter of billionaire Malcolm Glazer, the late owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team and the Manchester United soccer team, replied, “Yes she is!!”

Harris’ appearance at the Hamptons event comes as rumors swirl that she is pondering a 2020 presidential run. Harris and her team have tamped down on talk of her future, arguing that she is focused on her new Senate job that she was elected to in November.

But notable events in recent months, including her speech at the women’s march on the day following President Trump’s inauguration in January and repeated interruptions by male colleagues during Senate hearings earlier this year, have thrust Harris into the spotlight.

And the former California attorney general’s visit with Kempner is sure to add fuel to such speculation. Kempner has been a top fundraiser for Obama, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, Senate and congressional candidates, and state parties and politicians across the country.

He was among Obama’s top bundlers, raising more than $4.5 million for the former president’s campaigns and aligned Democratic efforts between 2007 and September 2012, according to the New York Times.

Share
Advertisement

California’s Rep. Adam Schiff gets a Trump nickname: ‘Sleazy’

President Trump on Monday morning criticized the Democratic leader of the House investigation into Russian attempts to interfere with the 2016 election, calling Burbank Rep. Adam Schiff “sleazy” and “biased.”

Schiff is the highest ranking Democrat on the House Select Intelligence Committee, which is examining whether the Trump campaign assisted in Russia’s efforts. The committee is meeting behind closed doors Tuesday to hear from Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

The investigation has catapulted Schiff into the national spotlight. Schiff has become a frequent guest on cable and Sunday morning news shows, and has turned to Twitter, the president’s preferred medium, to respond directly to Trump.

It is not clear whether a particular Schiff comment angered the president. But Schiff was on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning to discuss Kushner’s anticipated testimony and whether Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller should look into Trump’s finances as part of the Russia investigation.

Trump told the New York Times last week Mueller would be crossing a line if he looked at the financial dealings of Trump’s business or his family.

Schiff pushed back on that in the CBS interview, saying Trump’s finances would fit the scope of the FBI special investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

“The president is clearly worried that Bob Mueller’s going to be looking into allegations, for example, that the Russians may have laundered money through The Trump Organization [the president’s company]. That is really something in my opinion he needs to look at. Because what concerns me the most is anything that could be held over the president’s head that could influence U.S. policy,” Schiff said.

Share

Dave Cogdill, who paid a political price for his role in ending the 2009 budget crisis, dies at 66

Former state Sen. Dave Cogdill (R-Modesto), seated on the floor in 2010.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Dave Cogdill, a Central Valley Republican whose support for temporary taxes during the state’s economic meltdown ended his legislative career, died Sunday after battling pancreatic cancer, his family said. He was 66.

A real estate appraiser in Modesto, Cogdill served three terms in the state Assembly, and served as assessor of Stanislaus County after his departure from the Legislature. Since 2013, he has been the president and CEO of the California Building Industry Assn.

“He selflessly dedicated his life to his family and community,” said his son, David Cogdill Jr., in an emailed statement about his father’s death. “Throughout his life, he made such a difference in the lives of so many people.”

Cogdill was less than a year into his tenure as Republican leader of the state Senate when the state’s fiscal crisis, exacerbated by the national recession, forced lawmakers to consider a $42-billion deficit-reduction package in February 2009. The proposal included more than $14 billion in temporary taxes, embraced as a necessity by Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger but angrily denounced by most Republicans.

Cogdill helped craft the deal as one of the Legislature’s leaders, but found it a hard sell with his fellow GOP senators. Over the course of several days, no Republican in the Senate would join Cogdill in supporting the plan. Two other GOP senators ultimately agreed to the deal, which Schwarzenegger immediately signed into law.

Shortly after midnight on Feb. 15, 2009, a majority of members of Cogdill’s caucus fired him as leader during a heated closed-door meeting — during which reporters gathered in the hallway could hear the shouting. Cogdill calmly returned to his seat on the Senate floor as Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth (R-Murrieta) was announced as the Republican leader.

Three days later, Schwarzenegger praised Cogdill, telling reporters that the Republican “did what was right for the people.”

On Sunday, the former governor took to Twitter to praise his fellow Republican.

“Dave Cogdill was a fantastic friend, a great leader & a true public servant who put the people above all else,” Schwarzenegger wrote.

Gov. Jerry Brown echoed those comments, writing in a tweet that the late GOP leader “always put [California’s] interests above party.”

Cogdill did not run for reelection to the state Senate in 2010, and returned home to Modesto. That same year, he and the three other legislative leaders who crafted the multibillion dollar deficit package were awarded the Profile In Courage award by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

“It’s an example for legislators across the country and also for Americans that we really need to solve the problems that our country faces,” said Caroline Kennedy, the late president’s daughter, in a 2010 television interview on the award presented to California’s four legislative leaders.

Cogdill is survived by his wife and two adult children.

Update July 24 9:51 a.m.: This story has been updated with comments from former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gov. Jerry Brown. It was originally published at 10:21 a.m. on July 23.

Share
Advertisement

Eric Bauman confirmed as leader of California Democratic Party as rancor over close vote continues

Eric Bauman, center, addresses the California Democratic Party's annual convention in May.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
Kimberly Ellis addresses the California Democratic Party Convention in Sacramento in May.
(Rich Pedroncelli / AP)

After spending weeks sifting through allegations of vote stuffing and corruption, a California Democratic Party panel on Saturday affirmed the election of Eric Bauman as the party leader.

The decision is not expected to bring the bitter fight over the election to an end.

Bay Area Democratic organizer Kimberly Ellis, who lost the race for party chair to Bauman by just 57 votes, has indicated she will likely mount a court challenge.

She has accused the party’s six-member compliance review commission of being biased in Bauman’s favor, and Ellis’ political consultant dismissed Saturday’s hearing as “bad political theater” before it even started.

The bitter fight has exposed schisms in the state Democratic Party that echo the divide between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’ supporters during the 2016 presidential primary. Some of the state’s top Democratic Party leaders and activists worry that the internal feud may fracture the party, which dominates California politics, and hobble the state’s role in opposing the policies of President Trump and the Republican Congress.

Christine Pelosi of San Francisco, chair of the party’s Women’s Caucus and daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, said she has urged Bauman and Ellis to do everything they can to mend the rift.

“There needs to be a very very strong showing form the party that the Ellis voters are included, are empowered,” Pelosi said.

At the very least, some of Ellis’ supporters should be appointed to lead the state party committees, allowing them to shape the party’s platform and policies, Pelosi said.

Shortly after the May election, Pelosi said she had urged Bauman to hire Ellis as a top party executive, hoping that would help bring Democrats together.

After recently reviewing every ballot cast in the election for chair, the party’s compliance review commission held an all-day hearing in Sacramento on Saturday to determine the fate of 355 ballots deemed questionable.

In the end, 47 votes were invalidated — 25 for Bauman and 22 for Ellis. That did not change the outcome of the election. Bauman won by 1.9%.

The hearing was chaired by party official Michael Wagaman, who said the review found no evidence of vote stuffing or ballots being destroyed, which were among the allegations made after the election. He added that there was “no evidence of bias” by the party to favor any one candidate.

Along with affirming Bauman’s election, the panel rejected a request by Ellis for an independent audit of the election. Wagaman said a thorough review was done by the commission and in full view of representatives from the Ellis and Bauman campaigns.

“It was a transparent process,” Wagaman said.

Ellis challenged the election results in June. She alleged that her campaign found hundreds of voting deficiencies during a review of the ballots and other election material. Those questionable votes may have swayed the election to Bauman, Ellis alleged.

The party held elections for chair and other officers during its annual convention in Sacramento in May. Nearly 3,000 party delegates cast ballots in the election.

There were a variety of reasons the panel disqualified the 47 ballots Saturday. In some cases, delegates failed to pay their party dues or receive an official waiver for the dues, which would make them ineligible to vote. Ballots also were tossed because proxy voters were determined to be ineligible, including a few who weren’t registered Democrats.

Among the ballots reviewed by the panel were those cast by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, state Treasurer John Chiang, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Senate leader Kevin de León. All of them came under scrutiny because they had staff members sign them into the convention. All their votes were deemed valid.

However, the panel threw out the vote of Secretary of State Alex Padilla, the state’s chief elections officer. Padilla did not pay his party dues, the panel found.

FOR THE RECORD

July 24, 4:19 p.m.: A previous version of this post said Bauman won by less than 1%. He won by 1.9%.

UPDATES

3:20 p.m.: This story was updated with information about Secretary of State Alex Padilla.

Share

California Politics Podcast: The winners and losers in the new cap-and-trade agreement

No topic in Sacramento this year has been the focus of more intense, high-level negotiations than extending the state’s cap-and-trade program.

And the political ramifications of Monday’s final vote by the Legislature are likely to be felt for a long time.

This week’s California Politics Podcast is devoted entirely to digging deep into the bipartisan deal, one that extends the life of the state’s key climate change program by an additional decade.

The deal was a major victory for Gov. Jerry Brown, and put a handful of Republican legislators in the spotlight for their decision to cross the aisle and support a program that critics say will cost Californians money in the long run.

I’m joined by Times staff writer Melanie Mason, as well as Anthony York of the Grizzly Bear Project and Marisa Lagos of KQED News.

Share
Advertisement

Becerra and 19 other attorneys general pen letter to President Trump urging him to defend DACA

Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, left, and Rep. Jimmy Gomez speak about immigration at Cal State L.A.
( (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times))

State Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra and 19 of his counterparts from across the country sent President Trump a letter Friday urging his administration not to touch an Obama-era policy that shields as many as 750,000 young immigrants from deportation.

The letter comes a month after Texas and nine other states threatened to sue the Trump administration if President Obama’s landmark Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy was not scrapped.

“We urge you to affirm America’s values and tradition as a nation of immigrants and make clear that you will not only continue DACA, but that you will defend it,” the attorneys general wrote. “The cost of not doing so would be too high for America, the economy, and for these young people.”

Becerra was met with cheers at Cal State L.A. when he told a crowd of students — including some DACA recipients — that he thought the program would survive legal challenges it could face in the future.

“It has been a great boon for the California and American economy to have the ‘Dreamers’ come out of the shadows, and so we are here to say we stand with them because they are working for us,” he said.

Becerra’s statements come after Trump and his administration have sent mixed messages about the future of the program, leaving many on both sides of the immigration debate frustrated.

The president has said DACA is “one of the most difficult subjects” he faces because there are “incredible kids.”

Becerra, a former congressman who was appointed California’s top law enforcement official after Kamala Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate, was joined by his newly elected successor Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles).

Gomez, just two weeks into his new job, told the group of students Friday that he was looking into using his position on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to call for hearings on the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement actions.

“Are they really going after DACA recipients and ‘Dreamers’? We are going to try and put them on the witness stand and really push on that,” he said.

“A lot of times the Trump administration says one thing and then they do something else over here so we have to show people what they are actually doing over here,” Gomez added. “So that is an idea we are kicking around in my office.”

Melody Klingenfuss, an organizer with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles who came to the U.S. from Guatemala at age 9, is among the DACA recipients.

She was pleased Becerra took a stance Friday.

“Having a public face to defend ‘Dreamers’ and who believes in the contributions we have made to this country is key,” she said. “We still have a long fight ahead of us.”

Share

Affluent Marin County can continue to limit home building under bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown

Gov. Jerry Brown
(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)

Marin County will continue to limit home building beyond what other regions of California are allowed under affordable housing laws after Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Friday afternoon.

The measure, Senate Bill 106, lets Marin’s largest cities and incorporated areas maintain extra restrictions on how many homes developers can build. Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-San Rafael) inserted the provision into the bill, which was tied to the state budget and didn’t have to go through the regular committee process.

Levine has argued that the measure would allow for more affordable housing in Marin, the state’s wealthiest county, because smaller buildings would lower construction costs. But housing advocates were universally opposed because they said it was counter to the state’s push for more development to stem a housing shortage.

Levine wrote a bill in 2014 that gave Marin an exemption from state housing laws until 2023. This measure extends that exemption for five more years.

Share
Advertisement

Gov. Jerry Brown marks the start of Caltrain’s electrification project with rare praise for the federal government

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Celebrating rare cooperation between California and the Trump administration, Gov. Jerry Brown and federal officials on Friday marked the start of a more than $1.3-billion project to convert the Caltrain service between San Jose and San Francisco from diesel to electric trains.

The Brown administration, which has disagreed with Trump over issues ranging from climate change to immigration, joined congressional Democrats in aggressively lobbying the White House and U.S. Department of Transportation for federal funding of the project when it appeared to be in jeopardy.

“Today, we are recognizing a successful train [project],” Brown said at the ceremony at the Millbrae Caltrain station. “It’s about the future. It’s about clean air. It’s about efficiency, speed. It’s about not sitting on the freeway for a couple of hours bumper to bumper.”

With the state using money from bonds for its bullet train, the 50-mile project has been touted by supporters as an important step in converting systems for high-speed rail.

Eventually, the bullet train would use the same electrical system and the same tracks.

After Trump initially delayed a decision on the project in February, Brown met with the president’s Transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in Washington, D.C., to seek approval of the grant.

Chao released the first $100 million and committed her department to prioritizing an additional $408 million in appropriations for the project in the future. Other money is being provided by local, regional and state agencies.

Caltrain serves some 65,000 riders every weekday from San Francisco to San Jose, a number that has nearly doubled in the last 10 years and is straining the system, Brown said.

Shortly after Trump took office, he proposed spending $1 trillion on infrastructure projects throughout the country. The Caltrain Peninsula Corridor Electrification Project was on a list of $100 million in key infrastructure projects submitted by Brown’s office to the federal government in February.

Brown said the federal government needs to do more for the nation’s infrastructure.

“This is a good example of cooperation between local, state and federal [agencies],” agencies, he said. “We need to do more of it, a hundred times more than what this train represents.”

Share

Assembly Republicans defend climate vote as ‘protecting Californians from higher costs’

Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley)
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

A cadre of Republicans have spent days taking slings and arrows after breaking with party activists and many of their colleagues to support California’s premiere climate change program.

Now some of them are defending themselves in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.

“We served our people and did our jobs as legislators by rolling back taxes, cutting regulations and protecting Californians from higher costs,” wrote Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley and Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside, two of the eight Republicans who voted for the legislation on Monday.

Assemblyman Rocky Chavez (R-Oceanside)
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

The Journal had criticized some Republicans for supporting the extension of the state’s cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions. The newspaper’s editorial board said California Republicans are “so beaten down in the minority that they now confuse surrender with victory.”

Cap and trade could boost gas prices by 24 to 73 cents a gallon by 2031, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

But Mayes and Chavez argued that the program is preferable to other, more costly regulations that would have been needed to meet the state’s climate goals, which became law last year. The final legislation also included two other Republican goals: the rollback of a fire prevention fee, which has been levied on landowners, and the extension of a tax credit for manufacturers.

“Republicans in California must live with the realities of a deep-blue Democratic state,” they wrote. “This isn’t Washington, D.C., or Kansas. We have to cut taxes and regulations every chance we get.”

Share
Advertisement

After bitter fight, decision expected on challenge to election of California Democratic Party leader

Kimberly Ellis and Eric Bauman.
(Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times; Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

A California Democratic Party commission reviewing allegations of voting irregularities in the election of a new leader is expected to announce its findings on Saturday.

Democratic organizer Kimberly Ellis, who narrowly lost the race for party chair to Eric Bauman, formally challenged the election results in June. Ellis blamed her 62-vote loss on possible ballot stuffing and other voting improprieties.

Earlier this month, the party’s compliance review commission inspected the nearly 3,000 ballots cast by Democratic Party delegates and found 223 ballots that required further review — 104 were cast for Ellis and 119 for Bauman.

The commission has since been contacting those delegates. In some cases, there were questions about whether a delegate had paid their party dues, which may be required to cast a ballot, or whether a proxy voter was properly registered.

The commission will review those ballots Saturday morning at state party headquarters in Sacramento. The 10 a.m. hearing is not open to the public but will be broadcast on the party’s Facebook page.

“We have full confidence in the Compliance Review Commission, which has conducted an exhaustive, open audit in full view of representatives of each candidate’s campaign in accordance with our party’s bylaws,” party spokesman Mike Roth said in a statement.

Ellis, however, already is indicating that she will not accept the findings of the commission, which she has accused of being biased in Bauman’s favor.

“Despite the toxic response from some in leadership, the CDP by its own admission has validated our original concerns. As demonstrated by their own actions, the CDP has proven that there is little to no interest in getting to the truth or resolving this matter outside the courts,” said Joe Macaluso, Ellis’ campaign advisor. “What we’re watching is bad political theater. Very few have real faith in the independence, authenticity and fairness of Saturday’s matinee.”

Bauman has been serving as party chairman since the election. Ellis had called on the party to have an independent audit of the election done, but Bauman rejected that request, saying the party already has a process in place to review contested elections.

The party’s compliance review commission is made up of six members who were appointed during former Chairman John Burton’s tenure.

The bitter fight to be the next state party leader highlights the lingering tensions in the Democratic Party that arose during the 2016 presidential primary when Hillary Clinton beat Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for the nomination.

UPDATE

1:38 p.m.: This post was updated to include a comment from the Ellis campaign.

Share

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher draws a Republican challenger in 48th Congressional District

Following a spate of Democrats announcing runs in the 48th Congressional District, GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher now has a challenger from his own party.

Orange County businessman Stelian Onufrei, a Romanian immigrant who owns a construction business, announced Thursday that he’s running against the Costa Mesa Republican.

In a statement, Onufrei, 52, called Rohrabacher an “entrenched career politician” who has “become a political lightning rod.” Much of that controversy has stemmed from critiques on the left, particularly over Rohrabacher’s long-held belief that the U.S. should normalize relations with Russia.

Onufrei, who like many candidates this cycle has never run for public office before, said tax reform, “restoring religious freedoms” and instituting congressional term limits would be among his top priorities if elected. (The last one would probably require a constitutional amendment.)

Onufrei joins the race just after the latest campaign finance filing deadline, but said he would contribute $500,000 of his own money to fund his run.

Share
Advertisement

For young California homeowners, a proposed 2018 initiative could make buying a new house a lot less expensive

(Bryan Chan/Los Angeles Times)

Under a ballot measure filed Thursday, California’s landmark Proposition 13 property tax breaks would be extended to young homeowners who sell their residence and buy a new one.

The proposal, which aims for a spot on the November 2018 statewide ballot, would allow homeowners of any age to carry a portion of their existing property tax rate across county lines when they purchase a new house. Homeowners often are reluctant to switch houses, given that Proposition 13’s cap on annual property taxes ends once they sell and move somewhere else.

“A lot of people kind of feel locked into their properties,” said Alex Creel, a lobbyist for the California Assn. of Realtors, who filed the proposed initiative. “This will free up those folks.”

The new tax rate, Creel said, would be based on a “blended” value of the old and new properties, and could be considerably lower than the market rate property tax otherwise assessed once a new home is bought.

Creel filed three different versions of the proposal, all of which would create tax incentives for selling one house and buying another.

Homeowners older than 55 in certain counties can already transfer existing property tax rates to a new home of equal or less value. Creel’s initiatives, though, would expand the program. One version would retain the age restriction, but make the program available statewide. Two other versions would remove all age limits, likely enticing young homeowners to sell and buy homes.

Unlike current law, the proposal would allow homeowners to take advantage of the tax break as many times as they want.

Creel said the broader impact on statewide property tax revenue is unclear, and that the realtors group won’t decide until the fall whether to mount a political campaign to place one of them on the 2018 ballot.

Share

A top Assembly Republican quits her leadership role to protest climate vote

Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore) resigned a leadership post Thursday to protest Republican leader Chad Mayes' vote for cap and trade.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Fallout continued Thursday over Assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes’ support for the cap-and-trade extension, with one of his top lieutenants resigning her leadership position in protest.

Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, from Lake Elsinore, was among the majority of Republicans who voted against the bill Monday because of concerns that it would increase gas and energy costs for Californians. In total, eight Republicans joined most of the Democrats backing the measure.

“Californians are struggling to make ends meet, and unfortunately, what I have witnessed by the Assembly Republican Leader is a dereliction of duty to preserve and promote the American Dream for every single Californian,” Melendez said in a statement.

She stepped down as the assistant Republican leader. The move came a few hours after Mayes talked with the Assembly GOP and said everything was “all good.”

“Assemblyman Mayes’ actions on cap-and-trade demonstrate we no longer share the same leadership principles,” she said. “I was elected by the people of my district to fight for a more affordable and decent California, a place where every Californian knows their child will have a better life than their own. Regrettably, I can no longer, in good conscience, serve as the Assistant Republican Leader.”

Mayes was not immediately available for comment.

Share
Advertisement

California House members sued for displaying rainbow flags outside their Capitol offices

Southern California Reps. Susan Davis, Alan Lowenthal and two other House members have been sued for displaying a rainbow flag in the hallway outside their Capitol Hill offices.

The plaintiff is Chris Sevier, an attorney who has an ongoing campaign against same-sex marriage and has also unsuccessfully sued states for the right to marry a laptop computer in order to try to make a point about rulings on same-sex marriage.

Besides Davis of San Diego and Lowenthal of Long Beach, Sevier sued Reps. Don Beyer of Virginia and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. All are Democrats.

Sevier’s 38-page complaint asks the federal district court in Washington, D.C., to determine that “‘homosexuality’ and other forms of self-asserted sex-based identity narratives are a ‘religion,’” and that the colorful banners are a religious symbol for the “homosexual denomination.” He is seeking to force the members of Congress to remove the flags.

Read More

Share

Ed Royce stopped Dana Rohrabacher from going to Russia last spring, senior GOP aide says

(Don Leach / Daily Pilot)

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has made several trips to Moscow during his 15 terms in Congress.

But the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats canceled a publicly announced trip to meet with the Russian parliament last spring with little notice.

Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) told the Times on Wednesday that he decided not to go because he was worried the national focus on Russia would make it difficult to have serious conversations with Russian officials.

“In the middle of a chaotic, public brouhaha, you’re not going to be able to get the serious job done that you need to get done,” he said.

But a senior House GOP aide who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to reporters said Thursday it was House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) who declined Rohrabacher’s request to travel to Moscow shortly after President Trump’s inauguration. The aide said such a trip would have been inappropriate.

At the time, Congress was just beginning its investigations into Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election.

Rohrabacher’s interest in a friendlier relationship with Russia has puzzled the GOP establishment for years. Rohrabacher’s spokesman, Ken Grubbs, said Thursday both Southern California congressmen agreed it would be best for Rohrabacher to stay home.

“Dana and Ed were of one mind at the time,” he said.

In a related matter, longtime Rohrabacher committee aide and ally Paul Behrends no longer works on the Foreign Affairs Committee, a committee spokesman confirmed. The spokesman said he couldn’t comment further on a personnel matter. Grubbs said Rohrabacher wasn’t notified of the change in advance.

Behrends is a shared employee, meaning he worked for both the committee and Rohrabacher, and Grubbs said it “is not quite settled yet” what Behrends’ employment status is if he’s not working for the committee.

At least three news outlets have refreshed previous reports in the last few weeks about Rohrabacher’s plan to hold a subcommittee hearing on removing Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s name from an anti-corruption law opposed by the Russian government. The Daily Beast reported that the meeting was arranged at the prompting of Russian officials, who hoped it would change minds about the law’s sanctions.

Magnitsky was a whistle-blower who alleged officials in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government stole $230 million. He died in prison under suspicious circumstances.

The act named after him banned officials accused of involvement in his death from visiting the U.S. and using American banks. In response, Putin banned adoptions of Russian children by Americans. People with connections to the Russian government have been lobbying against the Magnitsky Act ever since, and according to recent media reports, Behrends was a main point of contact for them on Capitol Hill, and arranged meetings with Rohrabacher and Russian officials overseas.

Several of the people with Russian ties who lobbied Rohrabacher against the act also attended a Trump Tower meeting with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other campaign officials in June 2016, news of which has catapulted Rohrabacher’s legendary affinity for a better relationship with Russia into the national spotlight.

Share
Advertisement

Assembly GOP leader Chad Mayes survives challenge over cap-and-trade vote, but party activists will push for his removal

Assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley is facing criticism for voting to extend California's cap-and-trade program.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Under pressure from some party activists to step down, Assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley met with his caucus for more than an hour Thursday and emerged saying he remains its leader.

“It’s all good. ... I’m the leader,” Mayes told reporters after the closed session meeting.

The unscheduled gathering of the 25-member Assembly Republican Caucus is not expected to relieve pressure on the leader who has been criticized for standing with Gov. Jerry Brown as he and six other Assembly Republicans voted to extend California’s cap-and-trade program.

Harmeet Dhillon, a member of the Republican National Committee, had called Wednesday night for Mayes to be replaced. She said she had support from enough members of the California Republican Party board to conduct an emergency meeting by phone, but that Mayes called the caucus before it could happen. Dhillon said she would bring the matter before the board during the next month, rather than hold an emergency recommendation that Mayes be replaced.

Dhillon said there were “a number of legislators” who had told her they wanted to vote Mayes out of the leadership role, but that by calling a quick meeting, Mayes acted before any challengers could muster the votes.

“I think it’s a weak move,” she said of Mayes forcing an early choice. “What eventually happens is leaders who vote against the interests of their caucus and who take a minority vote like that and present that that’s the party’s position, they lose their leadership position. I’m going to keep campaigning for him to lose it.”

The Assembly heads out on a monthlong vacation Friday and Dhillon said the matter will be revived when lawmakers return.

Most Republicans opposed extending the program, which requires oil companies and others to purchase permits to emit greenhouse gases. Republican lawmakers cited independent studies that the program could eventually increase the cost of gas by 73 cents per gallon.

“The people I’ve talked to in California are furious at the cap-and-trade vote,” said Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach) on Wednesday. “They feel betrayed by their elected officials that were sent to represent them.”

After the caucus meeting Thursday, Allen would only say “at the moment, [the caucus] is having conversations.”

Assemblyman Brian Dahle (R-Bieber) said there was no vote on the leadership in the caucus meeting.

“We just talked about a change of leadership and none of that took place,” he said. “I got the feeling there were a lot of people who wanted a better line of communication between all of us. And we’re probably going to do that more often, I think.”

Share

Sen. Kamala Harris wants to study whether cash bail is the right way to decide if someone stays in jail pretrial

Share
Advertisement

California’s newly revised rules on recall elections are being challenged in court

State Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton)
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Backers of an effort to remove an Orange County Democrat from office believe their effort would have forced a special election this November, if not for a change in state election law enacted last month.

On Thursday, they took their complaint to a state appeals court.

The lawsuit seeks to invalidate the law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown that could delay a recall election against state Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) until next year.

Read More

Share

Tom Steyer rebrands his political group for anti-Trump mission

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

Tom Steyer, a major donor to Democratic causes and a potential candidate for California governor, has long signaled his political ambitions stretched far beyond climate change, his signature issue.

Now he’s making it official, rebranding his organization as NextGen America instead of NextGen Climate. The new name reflects a broader desire to oppose President Trump and support progressive policies.

“This is a fight for the soul of American democracy, and we have expanded our mission to meet the challenge at hand,” Steyer said in a statement.

Steyer backed efforts to extend California’s cap-and-trade program, which lawmakers approved on Monday. He’s also pushing new initiatives on economic inequality and healthcare.

Last month, Steyer launched NextGen Rising, another campaign to motivate young voters in key states such as Florida, Ohio and Michigan before next year’s midterm elections.

Share
Advertisement

Compromise and hardball politics earned Gov. Brown a big legislative win on climate change

Gov. Jerry Brown, flanked by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, urges members of the Environmental Quality Committee to approve a pair of bills to extend cap and trade.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

One particular message to the agriculture industry was simple: You want Gov. Jerry Brown to be a friend or an enemy the rest of his term?

Friends will support his climate change legislation, it was made clear.

To business leaders: This legislation provides tax and regulatory breaks that you’ve long sought. Grab them now or forget it.

To agriculture and business: You don’t like this cap-and-trade program? Wait until you see what replaces it if it’s not extended.

Brown’s hardball messages, his willingness to compromise and personal dealings with lawmakers were persuasive enough for him to win arguably his biggest legislative victory as governor.

It was a model of how to finesse controversial bills through a Legislature. And it stood in stark contrast to the bumbling we’ve been watching in the White House and Congress, most notably the failed, humiliating efforts on healthcare.

Read More

Share

Republican David Hadley drops out of California governor’s race two weeks after entering

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Former GOP state lawmaker David Hadley announced Wednesday he is dropping out of the gubernatorial race two weeks after he jumped in.

In an evening email to supporters, Hadley said he concluded that he could not win the race despite receiving encouragement since announcing his candidacy.

“No matter how much preparation you put in, there are certain things you cannot learn until you step into the arena,” he wrote. “What I have learned since I announced my candidacy has led me to conclude that I cannot responsibly ask donors, endorsers, volunteers, supporters or my family to invest in this campaign right now… We would not have the time and resources to make the case we need to make to all California voters.”

Past gubernatorial candidates in California have entered the race and dropped out after deciding they could not win, including Democrat Gavin Newsom and Republican Tom Campbell in the 2010 contest, though it is difficult to recall anyone making such a move so quickly out of the gate.

Both Newsom and Campbell ran for other offices that year, and some political strategists wondered if Hadley will do the same in the 2018 elections.

Hadley said Wednesday night that he had no intention to seek another office.

The 52-year-old is a social moderate and fiscal conservative who some thought had the potential to galvanize the GOP establishment in next year’s gubernatorial race. The former assemblyman from Manhattan Beach, who was the third prominent Republican to enter the race, said he had won the endorsement of a majority of the state’s GOP legislators and would have raised more than $1 million in July.

Hadley wrote that a factor in his decision was the possibility that because of the state’s top-two voting system, more GOP gubernatorial candidates would make it more likely two Democrats would face off in the general election — a repeat of what happened in the state’s 2016 U.S. Senate contest.

“I am not prepared to increase the likelihood of that outcome by pressing on in a crowded field,” he wrote, adding that all donations would be refunded and all of his endorsers were free to back other candidates.

The two remaining Republican candidates in the field are businessman John Cox and Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach).

Cox, who has poured $3 million into his own bid, on Monday announced he would contribute an additional dollar to himself for every dollar donated to Hadley’s campaign, up to $1 million, in July.

A spokesman for Cox cheered Hadley’s decision as best for the state Republican Party on social media.

Hadley did not mention Cox’s announcement in his email to supporters, which caught his own donors and party insiders off guard Wednesday evening.

He did address Cox and Allen, urging them to avoid focusing on tumult in Washington and instead talk about California’s needs. He also urged them to drop out if they could not mount a campaign that has a realistic chance of success — an uphill battle in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 19 points in voter registration.

“Run a race with the plausible goal of winning, or get out of the race,” Hadley wrote. “This 2018 governor’s race is too important to have a meaningful debate derailed by selfish politicians who cannot win, but can rob Californians of a real debate in the general election.”

------------

Updates

8:48 p.m. This article was updated with an additional comment from David Hadley.

8:03 p.m. This article was updated to add context and reaction.

This article was originally published at 6:48 p.m.

Share
Advertisement

Dana Rohrabacher dismisses new report on request he got from Russia as a ‘nothing burger’

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Yes, the Russian government asked Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to push back against sanctions on Russians, and he doesn’t see what the big deal is.

Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) dismissed fresh reports on Wednesday detailing how the Russian government asked him to change his colleagues’ opinions about Russian sanctions as a “nothing burger trying to distract the American people from real issues.”

Many of the details in a Daily Beast article published Wednesday had been previously reported in a lengthy Politico article in November. The Politico story gave Rohrabacher, who has long been known for encouraging improved Russian relations, the nickname “Putin’s favorite congressman.”

But the story is getting new life amid an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the effort’s potential ties to the Trump campaign. And it’s a pretty complicated story.

Rohrabacher has had multiple interactions with several of the people with Russian ties who attended a Trump Tower meeting with Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign officials in June 2016.

About the same time as the Trump Tower meeting, two of the attendees were working with Rohrabacher to remove Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s name from an anti-corruption law opposed by the Russian government. Magnitsky was a whistle-blower who alleged officials in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government stole $230 million. He died in prison under suspicious circumstances, and the act named after him banned officials accused of involvement in his death from visiting the U.S. and using American banks. In response, Putin banned adoptions of Russian children by Americans. People with connections to the Russian government have been lobbying against the Magnitsky Act ever since.

During a trip to Russia in April 2016 and amid discussions in Congress about expanding the act, Rohrabacher received a document outlining the Russian government’s case against it.

“Changing attitudes to the Magnitsky story in the Congress… could have a very favorable response from the Russian side,” the document said, according to the Daily Beast.

Months later, Rohrabacher tried to hold a subcommittee hearing to discuss the act and challenge the assertions that led to the sanctions, but he was waylaid by Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Fullerton), who instead arranged for the full committee to discuss it. At the hearing, Rohrabacher expressed skepticism about the expanded Magnitsky Act and advocated for removing Magnitsky’s name from it.

Rohrabacher, who has previously said he accepted Russian documents on the case during the spring 2016 trip, acknowledged it again on Wednesday in an interview.

“The criminal justice department in Moscow had done a study of the Magnitsky case and had investigated it, and I was asked if I would look at it, and I said sure,” said Rohrabacher, who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats. “I’m the chairman of the subcommittee that’s supposed to focus on Russia. It’s absolutely appropriate, and I think anybody that doesn’t spend that time focusing on their responsibility is derelict in their duty.”

Rohrabacher said he’s gotten similar documents from other countries’ governments when they want something from Congress.

“Whenever there is some controversy, you get information from those people all the time, whatever government you are talking to has all the information you need right here to prove their case,” Rohrabacher said.

Rohrabacher had scheduled a similar trip to Moscow to meet with the Russian parliament this spring, but he said Wednesday that he didn’t end up going because he was worried the current focus on Russia would make it difficult to have serious conversations with Russian officials.

“In the middle of a chaotic, public brouhaha, you’re not going to be able to get the serious job done that you need to get done,” he said.

Share

California is working to avoid a shortage of legalized marijuana, state pot czar says

With Nevada suffering a shortage of legalized marijuana, California’s state pot czar said Wednesday that efforts are being made in her state to make sure sufficient licenses go to farmers, testers and distributors to supply retailers.

Providing temporary, four-month licenses to support some businesses including growers is planned “so we don’t have a break in the supply chain,” Lori Ajax, chief of the Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation, said in testimony at a legislative hearing.

Legal sales began July 1 in Nevada, but it immediately became clear there was not enough supply to meet demand, in part because unique rules provide alcohol wholesalers exclusive distributor rights. California does not have the same limits on who can distribute cannabis.

In California, licensing to grow, test, distribute and sell marijuana for recreational use is required by law to begin Jan. 2, but Ajax told lawmakers her agency will make sure that sufficient licenses are provided to growers and testers before the start of the year.

State Sen. Mike McGuire (D-San Rafael), chairman of the Senate Governance and Finance Committee, said there may be 20,000 marijuana growers who will want licenses. He urged consumers to be patient.

“This is not going to be a perfect process,” he said. “We are going to make mistakes.”

Another challenge is that marijuana cultivation and excise taxes will be collected by a new state Department of Tax and Fee Administration, which was created July 1 and is still in the process of organizing.

With federal banks refusing to process pot sale proceeds because the drug remains illegal under federal law, Richard Parrott, a manager for the new tax agency, said it is prepared to begin accepting cash payments for taxes from as many as 250 cannabis distributors.

“We believe we are on track to meet our implementation dates,” Parrott told the panel.

Share
Advertisement

California doesn’t have an official state fruit, but it does have four official state nuts

The quest to learn more about the why the almond, pecan, walnut and pistachio were each officially declared California’s state nut led down an interesting path.

Turns out the campaign for an official nut started in a fourth-grade classroom at Margaret Sheehy Elementary School in Merced. Even though Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom did once proclaim the almond as the state nut, his proclamation never became law.

(That means the avocado is not actually the state fruit and the artichoke isn’t the state vegetable, even though Newsom’s action got a lot of fanfare.)

Assemblyman Adam Gray (D-Merced) took up the cause and in May, the class of 25 fourth-graders paraded to Sacramento’s Capitol and made their case.

Lobbyists for California’s walnut, pistachio and pecan growers were also there, arguing that their respective nuts were just as valuable as the almond.

The bill was amended to include the rest. No word yet if the avocado or artichoke will have their day.

Read More

Share

Former Obama advisor jumps in to challenge Rep. Mimi Walters in Orange County

Orange County Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine) just got another challenger in her closely watched reelection campaign.

Brian Forde, who previously served as senior advisor on technology to former President Obama, announced Wednesday that he’ll join several other Democrats hoping to unseat the two-term Republican.

In a statement announcing his run, the Tustin native said he would “fight against the Trump-Walters agenda.”

Forde, 37, is a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., and moved to Lake Forest — within Walters’ 45th Congressional District — in April. He plans to commute between California and Massachusetts to teach.

A former Republican, Forde switched his voter registration to Democratic about a year ago, according to campaign spokeswoman Audrey Carson, but voted for Obama for president twice.

Democrats have identified Walters’ district, which presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won by more than 5% in November, as a top battleground in California. Others running against Walters in 2018 include Ron Varasteh, Katie Porter, Dave Min, Kia Hamadanchy and Eric Rywalski, all Democrats.

Share
Advertisement

Looking toward a 2018 rematch, Rep. Steve Knight’s opponent is catching up in fundraising

Democrat Bryan Caforio, left, is again challenging Rep. Steve Knight (R-Palmdale), center.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

At one point last year, GOP Rep. Steve Knight of Palmdale was labeled by an analyst as “the most vulnerable incumbent in California.”

But despite his sometimes shaky fundraising and the attack ads unleashed by Democrats seeking to unseat him, Knight went on to defeat Democratic challenger Bryan Caforio by more than 6 percentage points in November.

Caforio is back for more, announcing a repeat run in May, but Knight doesn’t seem to be flinching.

In the latest fundraising reports filed Saturday, Caforio reporting raising $223,018 in the second quarter of the year, nearly as much as Knight’s $256,328.

Knight still has a cash advantage, with $403,301 in the bank. Caforio reported having $175,635 in the bank as of June 30.

But Caforio has demonstrated an ability to catch up: In October of last year, as the race became increasingly heated, the Democrat reported raising a whopping $619,687 over three months, while Knight raised just over half of that amount.

It remains to be seen whether outside groups, which spent more than $5 million on the race last year, will step in.

Two other Knight challengers, Katie Hill and Jess Phoenix, raised $168,408 and $77,001, respectively.

Share

The Democrat running against Rep. Darrell Issa has more money than any challenger in California’s hottest races

Out of more than a dozen closely watched congressional seats that Democrats and Republicans are trying to flip in California, the one that belongs to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) has drawn some of the most robust fundraising.

Issa, a nine-term congressman who won by fewer than 1,700 votes last year, shows all the signs of being in a competitive race, raking in nearly half a million dollars in the second quarter of the year.

But one of his newest challengers, environmental attorney Mike Levin, is quickly trying to catch up. Levin, who announced his run March 8, has amassed more money than any other challenger running against an incumbent in California. That includes Doug Applegate, a fellow Democrat and retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel who came within striking distance of Issa last November and is running again in 2018.

Between April 1 and June 30, Levin took in $333,537 and has $416,345 in the bank. Issa raised $455,207 during that period and has $671,529 in the bank.

Levin already has spent a significant chunk: about $181,413 on fundraising consultants, campaign staff, digital advertising and door-knocking services.

The reports show Levin could be a formidable challenger in what was already expected to be a tough race for Issa.

Applegate raised $281,143 in the most recent quarter and had $262,730 cash on hand as of June 30.

Other congressional challengers that brought in big sums this time included Democrats Katie Porter and Dave Min, who are both challenging Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine) and raised $311,571 and $304,208, respectively.

A potential candidate, Orange County Republican Scott Baugh, has raised no money in 2017 but is sitting on a war chest of $546,915. He previously said he was raising money for a potential campaign if or when Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) decides not to seek reelection.

------------

FOR THE RECORD

12:35 p.m.: An earlier version of this article misidentified Applegate as a retired Air Force colonel. He is a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel.

------------

Share
Advertisement

Here are the political ripple effects from this week’s big climate vote in California

Gov. Jerry Brown is flanked by Republicans Chad Mayes, left, Tom Berryhill and Devon Mathis
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

How peculiar are the politics of climate change in California? Just look at this week’s vote on cap-and-trade, which saw a Republican former grape farmer from Modesto and a Democratic former math teacher from Bell Gardens aligned against a mild-mannered Santa Cruz liberal and a provocative anti-tax crusader from Huntington Beach.

It’s not often that a contentious vote yields a roll call as unusual as the one Monday, when lawmakers approved a measure to extend the life of the state’s cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to purchase permits to emit greenhouse gases.

But when aforementioned lawmakers Sen. Tom Berryhill and Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia find themselves in the “yes” column, while Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach) and Assemblyman Mark Stone (D-Scotts Valley) notch “no” votes, it indicates just how much cap-and-trade has upended the political status quo.

Monday’s vote put an end to months of backroom negotiations, but the aftermath rippled throughout the state Tuesday.

Here’s how the political repercussions are playing out.

Read More

Share

Rep. Barbara Lee won’t get her war vote after all

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

House Republicans have stripped from a Defense Department spending bill Rep. Barbara Lee’s amendment to reconsider the authority the president has to wage war.

Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee unexpectedly opened the door last month to ending the authorization approved by Congress in 2001 when Lee’s amendment was added to a Defense Department measure after 16 years of attempts. Congress would have had 240 days to debate a new authorization. At the end of that time, the 2001 authorization would have been repealed.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was uncomfortable with the amendment, with his spokeswoman AshLee Strong telling the Hill newspaper last week after Lee and Ryan met to discuss it that, “There is a way to discuss this debate, but this [amendment], which endangers our national security, is not it.”

The version of the Defense Department bill approved by the House Rules Committee overnight removes Lee’s amendment and replaces it with an amendment from Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) that gives the White House 30 days to tell Congress its strategy for defeating Al Qaeda and Islamic State, and how the administration believes the current Authorization for the Use of Military Force applies.

The Rules Committee decides what debate on a bill will look like on the House floor, including what amendments can be considered.

Lee was was livid when learning the news, and blamed Ryan.

“Over the years, I’ve seen Republican leadership deploy every manner of undemocratic, underhanded tactics in Congress. But stripping my bipartisan amendment to repeal the 2001 AUMF – in the dead of night, without a vote – may be a new low from Speaker Ryan,” Lee said in a statement.

Lee, an Oakland Democrat, was the only member of Congress to object in September 2001 to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, a resolution in response to the terrorist attacks that paved the way for the war in Afghanistan.

The resolution has since been used by President George W. Bush, President Obama and now President Trump to justify more than 35 military actions in nearly 20 countries around the world without going back to Congress for new permission to send troops into harm’s way.

Share
Advertisement

Housing will be California lawmakers’ big debate in August, but a deal won’t be easy to pass

After pushing lawmakers to increase the gas tax and reauthorize the cap-and-trade climate change program, Gov. Jerry Brown has put the state’s housing crisis next on his agenda.

But a deal to increase funding for low-income developments and ease home building regulations is far from assured. A key lawmaker is already saying the bills being considered for a housing package aren’t promising enough to gain his support.

Read More

Share

‘Is it possible that there was a civilization on Mars thousands of years ago?’ Rep. Dana Rohrabacher asks NASA scientist

Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology’s subcommittee on space. On Tuesday, he begged some extra time from the subcommittee’s chairman to ask a panel of NASA scientists a question: Was there once a civilization on Mars?

Watch a scientist’s answer:

Share
Advertisement

Embattled Rep. Duncan Hunter picks up another challenger from his own party

Another Republican has stepped up to challenge Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine), who is under investigation by the FBI over alleged misuse of campaign funds.

Daniel Casara, a 43-year-old retired Army sergeant and motivational speaker, announced Tuesday that he’s running against Hunter, a six-term Republican who represents inland San Diego County and a sliver of Riverside County.

“Washington is failing us,” Casara said in a statement announcing his run, adding that if elected, he would push for better services for veterans and pursue tax reform that “benefits every American.”

Casara received a Purple Heart medal after surviving an attack on his tank in Iraq that killed two other soldiers. He has undergone numerous surgeries and now makes a living as a motivational speaker, according to his campaign.

Earlier this year, Casara participated in a joint interview with George W. Bush after being featured in a book of portraits the former president painted of wounded veterans. A Chicago native, Casara currently lives in San Diego, outside of Hunter’s 50th Congressional District.

Hunter was recently added to the Democrats’ list of targeted Republican incumbents for 2018. In addition to Casara, he faces Republican Andrew Zelt and Democrats Patrick Malloy, Josh Butner, Glenn Jensen, Pierre Beauregard, Gloria Chadwick and Ammar Campa-Najjar.

Campa-Najjar, a media consultant, raised more money than Hunter in the latest quarter ending June 30, while Hunter spent nearly all of the $155,624 he raised that period on legal fees and services. His campaign has another $114,412 in unpaid legal fees.

The House Ethics Committee disclosed in March that Hunter was under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice and said Hunter may have used campaign funds to pay for personal expenses. His campaign expenses included oral surgery, jewelry, garage door repairs and $600 in airline fees to transport his family’s pet rabbit.

Share

With FBI investigation looming, Rep. Duncan Hunter has spent $336,664 on lawyers

Under investigation by the FBI for possibly misusing campaign funds, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine) has spent $336,664 with seven law firms this year.

Hunter’s most recent campaign finance report shows $152,859 in spending and $114,412 in debt to seven law firms in the San Diego and Washington areas in the months since the House Ethics Committee disclosed the FBI’s investigation in late March to explain why it was not pursuing its own probe of the San Diego-area congressman.

The fifth-term Republican raised just $155,625 in the same time frame, nearly the same amount he paid out in legal fees, according to his campaign finance report.

Hunter can use campaign funds to pay for legal defense of himself, family or staff as long as the alleged crimes are related to the campaign or his job as an elected official.

The biggest fees have gone to some of the Washington firms best known for campaign finance and election law.

That includes $46,976 this quarter to Berke Farah LLP of Washington, which has represented Hunter since 2016.

He also paid $55,533 to Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky PLLC of Warrenton, Va., and still owes the firm $57,056.

Back in San Diego, he hired Seltzer Caplan McMahon Vitek, which has a variety of specialties. He paid the firm $28,787 this quarter and owes it another $33,292.

Hunter also spent $69,393 on attorney’s fees in the first three months of the year, according to his reports.

Federal election officials and the San Diego Union-Tribune repeatedly raised questions over the last year and a half about unusual spending by Hunter’s campaign, including flying the family rabbit on a plane and payments to nail salons, his children’s private school and a Phoenix resort, among others.

The House Ethics Committee released a report that stated Hunter “may have converted tens of thousands of dollars of campaign funds from his congressional campaign committee to personal use to pay for family travel, flights, utilities, healthcare, school uniforms and tuition, jewelry, groceries and other goods, services, and expenses.”

Hunter has already reimbursed his campaign some $62,000 in payments for things including oral surgery, a family trip to Italy and Disneyland gift shop purchases.

Hunter has said he’s reviewing all of his campaign’s spending, and his attorneys have said he is cooperating with the FBI investigation.

“Congressman Hunter intends to cooperate fully with the government on this investigation, and maintains that to the extent any mistakes were made they were strictly inadvertent and unintentional,” Hunter’s attorneys, Elliot S. Berke and Gregory A. Vega, said in a statement in March.

Hunter’s office did not respond to a request for additional information Tuesday.

Share
Advertisement

Watch: Republican Assemblyman Devon Mathis explains his vote to extend California’s climate program

GOP Assemblyman Devon Mathis on cap and trade vote

California lawmakers voted Monday evening to extend the state’s premiere program on climate change, a victory for Gov. Jerry Brown that included unprecedented Republican support for fighting global warming.

In a break with party leaders and activists in California and Washington, eight Republicans joined with Democrats to continue the cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Some, including Assemblyman Devon Mathis (R-Visalia), grew emotional as they spoke on the floor.

Read More

Share

Arnold Schwarzenegger on California’s climate change vote: ‘The Republican Party has moved forward in a big step’

(Jordan Strauss / Invision)

Fighting climate change was a lonely undertaking at times for Arnold Schwarzenegger while he was the last Republican governor in the liberal state of California. The landmark global warming law he championed more than a decade ago received only a single vote from a member of his party in the Legislature.

He relied on Democrats to seal the deal, providing the foundation for the state’s cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions. But the political landscape is different now, and Gov. Jerry Brown’s successful bid to extend the program received eight Republican votes on Monday.

We spoke to Schwarzenegger about it on Tuesday morning.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

Nancy Pelosi: Democrats are willing to work with Republicans on healthcare fixes

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

House Democrats are willing to come to the table on healthcare if Republicans abandon their attempt to do it alone, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said in a letter to Speaker Paul Ryan (D-Wis.) on Tuesday.

“Democrats extend the hand of friendship if Republicans will set aside repeal, abandon cuts to Medicaid, and abandon huge tax breaks for the wealthy,” Pelosi states.

With the GOP healthcare bill seemingly dead in the Senate, and senators unwilling to consider a straight repeal of the Affordable Care Act, many on Capitol Hill are wondering what will happen next to President Obama’s signature healthcare law that Republicans have pledged to kill for nearly a decade.

The overture from Pelosi doesn’t include many details on what she thinks the next moves should be, except that they should begin before Congress leaves for its August recess.

Share

Rep. Anna Eshoo asks Trump’s election commission to withdraw voter information request

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Menlo Park) is asking the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to withdraw its request for voter information from all 50 states.

“At a time when the personally identifiable data of Americans is under constant attack from hackers and criminals seeking to engage in identity theft, the commission’s request to collect and centrally store the personal data of hundreds of millions of Americans poses risks that cannot be fully mitigated,” she states in a letter to Kris Kobach, the secretary of state of Kansas who serves as vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

Seventy-five House Democrats joined Eshoo in signing the letter that will be released later Tuesday, including 15 from California. The commission’s first meeting is scheduled for Wednesday.

Kobach sent letters to all 50 states on June 28 asking for information he said would help the group examine rules that “enhance or undermine the American people’s confidence in the integrity of federal elections processes.”

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla denied the voter fraud commission’s request for names, addresses and other personal information of California’s registered voters the next day, saying that handing it over would only “legitimize” the president’s false claims of massive election cheating last fall.

More than half the states in the country followed suit and refused to hand over some or all of their voter rolls to the commission, saying they were concerned the information wouldn’t be secure.

Eshoo echoed that in her letter.

“It is not at all clear what security measures you plan to put in place to protect the information you propose to collect and store,” Eshoo’s letter says. “It is also not clear that it would be possible to fully protect this information once it is in the hands of the federal government.”

Share
Advertisement

Sen. Kamala Harris is optimistic criminal justice reform can pass Congress

Sen. Kamala Harris said Tuesday there’s enough common ground on criminal justice reform that she’s optimistic Congress can come together to pass a new plan.

“There’s some room for getting legislation passed,” the California Democrat, who is a former prosecutor and state attorney general, said after giving opening remarks at a conference on women in prison. “This is something that should not be thought of as even bipartisan; it should be a nonpartisan issue, and I feel optimistic that we can appeal to people across the aisle.”

Addressing the nation’s overcrowded prisons has been a sticking point in American politics for decades. In recent years, a bipartisan group of senators has worked on a comprehensive criminal justice reform bill that would reduce maximum minimum sentencing and increase treatment options, but the group hasn’t been able to get it to the floor for a vote. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions has pushed for federal prosecutors to pursue the harshest sentences possible, saying it will deter crime.

Harris is working with other senators on writing two prison policy overhaul bills. One would ensure that women in prison have access to basic health and reproductive care, and the other would examine whether bail based on money favors those who can afford to pay it and get out of jail while awaiting trial.

“We are talking about a population of people that are, for the very most part, invisible. They don’t have any political capital. They aren’t writing checks. They aren’t voting,” Harris said during her speech.

Harris visited the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, which is the largest women’s prison in the country, and said she was struck while watching the women silk-screening U.S. flags.

“There was something about the symmetry, some symmetry there in my mind, that I walked away thinking about. Isn’t it part of who we are as Americans that we believe in second chances?” Harris said.

FOR THE RECORD

12:17 p.m.: An earlier version of this article stated that neither bill on which Harris is working has been filed. The bill about access to care was filed last week.

Share

L.A.’s newest congressman gets assigned to powerful House oversight committee

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

New U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) will serve on the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee.

Sworn in July 11 as the lowest-ranked member of Congress, Gomez wasn’t expected to have much sway over his committee assignments, which were approved Monday morning in the Democratic caucus’ weekly private meeting.

“Gomez is a proven champion for California’s working families and a strong voice to hold the Trump Administration accountable for its conduct,” Pelosi said in a statement.

Gomez has not yet commented on his assignments.

He had asked to serve on the Natural Resources Committee to continue his work on climate change from the state Assembly. Gomez joins 11 Californians who serve on the committee.

The Oversight and Government Reform Committee is charged with oversight of the executive branch. Gomez joins California Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) and Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) on the committee.

Share
Advertisement

Rohrabacher draws new opponent in Orange County

Nestle executive Michael Kotick is entering the race to unseat Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in Orange County’s 48th Congressional District.

Kotick, 33, of Laguna Beach, said his management background has prepared him to serve in Congress.

He has a bachelor’s in economics and an MBA from Michigan State University and earned a masters in global management at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Kotick is brand director at Nestle. He published a book in May titled “Create Brand Attraction: A New Strategy That Uses the Laws of Human Attraction to Decode Marketing in a Digital and Social Media Age.”

“I have been preparing for this moment for a very, very long time,” Kotick said. “I’ve always known that I would lead and I would be a leader of this community.”

The 48th Congressional District is one of the California seats that have been targeted by Democrats seeking to harness anti-President Trump sentiment in their fight to reclaim a House majority. Kotick joins more than half a dozen others who’ve announced they will challenge Rohrabacher in 2018.

“This campaign is going to need to bring people together in order to flip this seat,” Kotick said. “This community is not being heard and that is what is going to be different.”

Share

How did your lawmaker vote on California’s climate change program?

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), right, is congratulated by Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes (D-Grand Terrace) after the vote.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

California legislators approved an extension of the state’s signature climate change program known as cap and trade.

The measure passed 55 to 21 in the Assembly and 28 to 12 in the Senate.

It was a rare bipartisan vote, with seven Republicans joining all but three Democrats in the Assembly. In the Senate, just one Republican, Tom Berryhill of Modesto, voted for the proposal.

All of the Senate Democrats backed it.

The bipartisanship did not go unnoticed.

Find out if your lawmaker voted for the plan here.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

Bipartisan coalition stands together for news conference after vote to extend California’s cap-and-trade program

Share

California lawmakers approve cap-and-trade extension

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

In a big victory for Gov. Jerry Brown, state lawmakers approved a 10-year extension for California’s cap-and-trade program.

The vote came with bipartisan support, a significant shift from previous years where climate policies squeaked by along party lines or with only a handful of Republicans in favor.

Cap and trade requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions. The legislation approved on Monday, Assembly Bill 398, will continue the program until 2030.

Lawmakers also approved related legislation, Assembly Bill 617, to improve air quality in polluted communities.

“With this important package we are continuing California’s global leadership on climate change and we are protecting the public health by improving air quality in communities throughout our state,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said in a statement.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

California Senate approves cap-and-trade extension

State senators advanced legislation to extend California’s cap-and-trade program in a narrow vote Monday.

All Democrats voted yes, and they were joined by one Republican, Sen. Tom Berryhill (R-Modesto).

The measure, Assembly Bill 398, now goes to the Assembly for another vote before it can reach Gov. Jerry Brown‘s desk.

“No plan is perfect when you’re required by design to have a compromise,” said Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles). “We can’t let the perfect get in the way of the good.”

Cap and trade requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions, a system intended to provide a financial incentive for companies to clean up their operations. The program was launched almost five years ago, and the new legislation would keep it operating until 2030.

Most Republicans argued in opposition. Sen. Andy Vidak (R-Hanford) said it was a mistake to extend the program because the state only represents a fraction of the world’s emissions.

“We could shut down the entire state of California, and it would have absolutely no effect on the global climate,” he said.

Berryhill defended his support for the legislation by saying he was able to prevent even more onerous climate policies.

“Instead of sitting on the sideline and watching everything go off a cliff, I was able to ensure farmers, small-business owners and rural Californians were well-represented and protected in the negotiation,” he said in a statement.

A second measure, Assembly Bill 617, was also approved by senators to tackle air pollution that causes local public health problems.

In addition, senators passed another related bill, Assembly Constitutional Amendment 1. The proposal would place a measure on next year’s ballot that would require a one-time higher vote threshold for spending cap-and-trade revenue.

The proposal was a request from Assembly Republicans who hope it gives them more influence on how the money is used.

This post has been updated with details about ACA 1 passing the Senate.

Share

GOP establishment figures Pete Wilson and George Shultz endorse California cap-and-trade plan

Two well-known names in the Republican Party establishment are weighing in to back Gov. Jerry Brown‘s cap-and-trade proposal.

Former Gov. Pete Wilson and former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz issued letters Monday backing the proposal, which faces a decisive vote.

Update: Climate change legislation passes Legislature in bipartisan agreement >>

Wilson, in a letter to Republican lawmakers, pitched the plan as the least negative option within the state’s existing efforts to combat climate change.

“The choices are limited, and unfortunately you are faced with what you can do to make a bad situation better,” Wilson said, noting alternative efforts, such as a carbon tax, would be “truly disastrous for our state.”

The fight against climate change in California gains an unlikely ally: Republicans >>

Shultz, meanwhile, praised the plan as something that would make Ronald Reagan “proud,” calling it a “commonsense, free-market approach.”

The appeal had limited effect in the Senate: Only one Senate Republican — Tom Berryhill of Modesto — voted for the proposal, which secured enough votes to pass but has not officially cleared the Senate yet.

Share
Advertisement

FPPC attorney recommends lawmakers face contribution limits in recall fight

Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton)
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

The top attorney for the state’s campaign watchdog agency recommended Monday that it deny a request to boost the limit for contributions to a highly charged recall election.

Democrats had asked the Fair Political Practices Commission to allow elected officials to donate more than $4,400 each to a committee defending Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) against a recall effort.

The FPPC has said for years that the limit applies to recalls, but Richard R. Rios, an attorney for the Senate Democratic Caucus, argued there should not be one.

The panel will meet July 27 to consider a recommendation by Jack Woodside, its general counsel, to deny the request for a new opinion lifting the limit.

“The FPPC’s interpretation … is well – reasoned and legally sound,” Woodside wrote in a memo. “Indeed, the FPPC’s position is based on the plain language, legislative history, and policies of the relevant statutes.

“More importantly, the transfer restriction has been in place and applied to every recall since 2003,” he added. “And Mr. Rios provides no basis to suggest the FPPC’s interpretation needs to be reversed.”

Share

Gov. Jerry Brown, California legislative leaders commit to push an affordable housing plan next month

A gardener works in the yard at the former Linda Vista Hospital that is now affordable housing.
(Christina House / For The Times)

With time running out before lawmakers break for summer recess, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders announced Monday that they were postponing a vote on a package of bills to address the state’s housing affordability crisis until August.

“The package of legislation we are all working on will help ensure Californians won’t have to pay an arm and a leg to have a roof over their head,” Brown, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said in a joint statement.

The package of housing bills, the statement said, will include ongoing funding for low-income development, a bond on the 2018 statewide ballot and regulatory changes to make it easier to build housing. Notable is Brown’s support for a bond measure, which he has been resistant to in the past.

“This comprehensive approach does what’s long been needed in California — build new homes and improve access to housing,” the statement said.

The bond will require a two-thirds supermajority vote of the Legislature to pass and it is likely so will a decision to create a new funding source for low-income projects.

Some Democratic lawmakers had pushed for a vote on a housing package prior to leaving for the summer at the end of the week. But a deal to extend cap and trade, the state’s signature program to combat climate change, has controlled the discussion at the Capitol. Legislators were debating the cap-and-trade extension when Brown, De León and Rendon released their statement.

Share
Advertisement

California climate change vote could mean a long night ahead

Senators are breaking ahead of an expected late-night vote on extending cap and trade, the state’s signature program to combat climate change.

There will likely be three measures voted on today as part of the cap-and-trade package:

  • Assembly Bill 398: This is the main cap-and-trade bill, which would extend the program, now set to expire in 2020, for an additional decade. Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders are aiming for a two-thirds supermajority vote of the Legislature to insulate the decision from legal challenges.
  • Assembly Bill 617: This is a companion bill designed to strengthen air quality rules across California. It was designed to address concerns from Democrats that cap and trade wasn’t doing enough to protect communities from pollution. This measure requires a simple majority vote.
  • Assembly Constitutional Amendment 1: This is a potential 2018 ballot measure written by Assembly GOP leader Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley. It would require one-time supermajority approval in 2024, as opposed to the majority vote typically necessary, to spend money generated by cap-and-trade auctions as a way to ensure that Republicans have more influence in doling out those revenues. This measure also requires a supermajority vote before it goes on the ballot.

All three measures are starting in the Senate, and if they pass they’ll move to the Assembly for final approval. You can watch the Senate debate live here.

Share

Legislation to extend California’s cap-and-trade program clears state Senate committee hurdle

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens)
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

The Senate Appropriations Committee advanced hotly contested legislation on climate change and air quality on Monday afternoon, setting the stage for a vote of the full Legislature later in the evening.

The two measures would extend the cap-and-trade program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions, and require tougher regulations on pollution in disadvantaged communities.

The legislation is the product of intense negotiations with Gov. Jerry Brown, environmentalists, industry lobbyists and lawmakers.

“It’s a comprehensive approach that’s been needed for a long time,” Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) told the committee.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

Lawmakers won’t vote on housing legislation today — leaving one day to act before summer recess

Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles)
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

California lawmakers will not vote on a package of bills Monday designed to address the state’s housing crisis, according to the leader of the state Senate.

A bloc of legislators, led by progressive Democrats in the Assembly, have pushed for action on housing amid a broader debate over the future of the state’s climate change policies. Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said last week they were delaying a vote on extending the state’s cap-and-trade program in part to “allow our discussion on long-term housing affordability solutions in California to catch up to the climate effort.”

But De León spokesman Jonathan Underland said lawmakers won’t be voting on housing Monday.

“Today is all cap and trade, all day long!” Underland said in an email.

The decision leaves legislators with just one regularly scheduled session on Thursday to decide on housing bills before they break for summer recess. Late last week, lawmakers changed a series of bills designed to increase funding for low-income developments and ease home-building regulations in preparation for possible votes. Key bills to increase funding require a two-thirds supermajority vote to pass.

Share

Former Obama official joins race to unseat Rep. Ed Royce in Orange County’s 39th District

Former Obama administration employee Sam Jammal is running in Orange County’s 39th Congressional District, saying his immigrant background is representative of its constituents.

Jammal, 35, of Fullerton, was raised in La Mirada by a Colombian mother and Jordanian father. The district has a heavy Latino and Asian population.

“This is where I grew up, so it’s personal,” Jammal said. “I know these communities and I know their values.”

He graduated from USC with a political science degree and attended George Washington University Law School before working with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

“I wanted to work in civil rights and make sure my communities had a seat at the table,” he said.

He worked as legislative counsel to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and as chief of staff to Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Los Angeles) and was special assistant to the undersecretary for industry and security in Obama’s Commerce Department. Most recently, he’s worked as regulatory counsel at Tesla.

Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) had held the seat for 13 terms. It is one of several Republican-controlled districts that backed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 and present turnover potential for 2018.

Jammal joins other Democratic challengers to Royce — pediatrician Mai Khanh Tran, former chemistry professor Phil Janowicz and philanthropist Gil Cisneros — as well as independent candidate Julio Castañeda.

“We’re going to run a campaign that gets back into the community,” Jammal said, promising “old-fashioned organizing.”

Share
Advertisement

Agriculture groups give boost to cap-and-trade

Share

My observations of Gov. Jerry Brown as California’s cap-and-trade evangelist

Brown testifies before the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, arguing for his cap-and-trade legislation.
Brown testifies before the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, arguing for his cap-and-trade legislation.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

I’ve never seen Gov. Jerry Brown as animated, emotional and tenacious as he was before the state Senate Environmental Quality Committee, arguing for his embattled cap-and-trade climate control legislation.

He resembled a cross between the Clint Eastwood character Walt Kowalski in “Gran Torino” — “Get off my lawn!” — and some street-corner preacher warning that the end is near. He’s also the most effective politician Sacramento has seen in a very long time.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

Here’s what to watch for in today’s big showdown over cap-and-trade

The stacks from Valero's refinery in Benicia, Calif.
The stacks from Valero’s refinery in Benicia, Calif.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

The effort to extend the life of the cap-and-trade program, California’s signature tool against climate change under which companies must buy permits to emit greenhouse gases, is slated for a make-or-break vote in the Legislature on Monday.

It was never going to be easy. Gov. Jerry Brown is seeking a two-thirds vote to reauthorize cap-and-trade until 2030, a threshold that would help guard the program against future legal challenges. Scrounging up a super-majority is always tough — particularly when Democrats approved a politically fraught gas tax just a few months ago.

Here’s what you need to know ahead of the high-stakes vote.

Read More

Share

Navy veteran/lottery winner to challenge Orange County Rep. Ed Royce for Congress

Orange County Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) has picked up another election challenger. Philanthropist and Navy veteran Gil Cisneros, a Democrat, has entered the race to unseat Royce in the 39th Congressional District.

A statement announcing his run also touted the endorsement of VoteVets, a liberal veterans advocacy group.

Cisneros, 46, is a former shipping and distribution manager at Frito-Lay who won a lottery jackpot of $266 million with his wife in 2010. Since then, the couple has started two nonprofits focused on education for Latino students and established scholarship programs in their names.

“I think there’s an injustice going on in this district with Ed Royce, who hasn’t really served the community,” Cisneros said, pointing to Royce’s vote in favor of repealing Obamacare.

While defending healthcare would be his top priority, Cisneros said, if elected he would focus more efforts on improving education.

Cisneros lives in Newport Beach, about 20 miles outside of Royce’s district, but says he and his wife plan to move soon to Yorba Linda, within the district, to be closer to her mother.

A registered Republican until 2008, Cisneros said he switched parties because he thought the GOP was becoming too ideological.

“This is a diverse country that we live in and we need to be inclusive. And right now I don’t think the Republican Party is being very inclusive.”

Cisneros joins two other Democratic challengers to Royce — pediatrician Mai Khanh Tran and education consultant and former chemistry professor Phil Janowicz — as well as independent candidate Julio Castañeda.

Royce’s seat is one of several Republican-held districts being targeted by Democrats in 2018, in part because Hillary Clinton won there in last fall’s presidential election.

Share
Advertisement

Caitlyn Jenner considering a bid for U.S. Senate in California

(Rich Polk/Getty Images for Life is Good)

Caitlyn Jenner, the Olympic gold medalist, reality show star and transgender activist, is weighing a run for the U.S. Senate representing California.

“I have considered it. I like the political side of it,” Jenner said in a radio interview with New York’s AM 970 that aired Sunday, adding that she planned to make a decision within the next six months or so.

“I gotta find out where I can do a better job,” she said. “Can I do a better job from the outside, kind of working the perimeter of the political scene, being open to talk to anybody? Or are you better off from the inside, and we are in the process of determining that.”

Jenner has been in the spotlight for decades – first as Bruce, an Olympic athlete and the long-suffering husband and father in the Kardashian reality television empire, and then as the activist who transitioned to Caitlyn in 2015, becoming one of the most famous transgender voices in the world.

The Malibu resident is a lifelong Republican. The next opportunity to run for Senate will be in 2018, when Democrat Dianne Feinstein is up for reelection. Feinstein, 84, has not yet said if she will run again. No prominent Republican candidate has publicly announced interest in the seat.

Jenner, 67, is a supporter of President Trump, which would likely be an issue in a state the president lost by more than 4 million votes. But Jenner has clashed with Trump over transgender bathroom policy, and has been working to make the Republican Party more inclusive to the LGBTQ community.

In the interview, she said she had plans to meet with Nikki Haley, the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations, to discuss the international ramifications for being involved with the LGBTQ community.

“I hope to change the perception of the Republican Party and make it the party of equality,” she said, adding that she believes the GOP would be unstoppable if it kept its small-government, fiscally conservative values while being more accepting of people who have not traditionally been part of the party.

In early 2015, Jenner was involved in a four-car accident on Pacific Coast Highway that resulted in the death of one driver.

Authorities declined to file charges, finding that Jenner was complying with the speed limit and not distracted, though driving too fast for road conditions at the time. Jenner has settled at least two civil lawsuits stemming from the accident.

The California Republican Party has a history of electing celebrities, notably President and former Gov. Ronald Reagan, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Palm Springs Mayor and congressman Sonny Bono and former Carmel Mayor Clint Eastwood.

If Jenner runs, she will not be the only famous Republican on the ballot – soap actor and underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr. is running to represent the southern central coast and most of Ventura County in Congress, and singer Kid Rock is toying with running for a Senate seat representing Michigan.

5:15 p.m.: This story was updated to reference Jenner’s car accident.

This post was originally published at 3:32 p.m.

Share

Assembly speaker defends action on single-payer bill: It was ‘lacking in virtually every respect’

The speaker of the California Assembly is unapologetic for his decision to sideline the year’s closely watched single-payer healthcare bill, calling it “lacking in virtually every respect.”

On this week’s California Politics Podcast, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Los Angeles) talks about some of the early challenges in his time leading the lower house of the Legislature. Those have included the difficulty of creating a consensus-based leadership structure in a house more used to top-down decision-making.

He also admits there may be limited value to Democratic legislators continuing to offer nonbinding resolutions critical of President Trump.

“To a large extent, you start to wonder if it’s preaching to the choir too,” he said in a Times interview July 5.

Share
Advertisement

Lawsuit alleges state is trying to sabotage initiative to repeal gas tax increase in California

Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach) wants to repeal the gas tax increase approved by the governor in April.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

The state attorney general allegedly drafted a misleading title and summary for an initiative that would repeal increases to California’s gas tax, and the wording should be changed, according to a lawsuit filed Friday by supporters of the proposed ballot measure.

The lawsuit alleges the title and summary drafted by the office of Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra is “a nakedly partisan attempt to derail what Petitioner expects to be an initiative of considerable public interest.”

Attorneys for Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach) and other proponents of the initiative asked a Sacramento Superior Court judge to alter the title and summary so those asked to sign petitions can better understand that they are repealing the gas tax.

“This is an intentional misrepresentation of the initiative by Atty. Gen. Becerra with an agenda to deceive the voters of California,” Allen said. “Californians have a right to an honest description of the initiative, and we have filed a lawsuit today in Superior Court to make sure voters get the transparency they deserve.”

Allen needs to collect 365,000 signatures of registered voters in 150 days to qualify a measure for the November 2018 ballot that would repeal SB 1, which increases gas taxes and vehicle fees to raise $5.2 billion annually for road repairs and mass transit. The tax measure was signed in April by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The title and summary are placed at the top of petitions that will be circulated to qualify the initiative for the ballot, so misleading descriptions may convince some voters not to sign, Allen said.

The title drafted by the attorney general says the proposed initiative “Eliminates recently enacted road repair and transportation funding by repealing revenues dedicated for those purposes.”

The lawsuit objects that the title of the initiative makes no use of the words “tax” or “fee.”

Allen, who is running for governor in 2018, also objected that the summary says that the ballot measure “Eliminates Independent Office of Audits and Investigations, which is responsible for ensuring accountability in the use of revenue for transportation projects.”

Such an office is called for in the gas-tax law but does not yet exist.

“The title and summary clearly explain the ballot initiative,” said Chris Moyer, a spokesman for the attorney general, in response to Allen’s complaint.

Allen hopes to get a court decision in three to four weeks.

Share

In California’s climate negotiations, Assembly GOP seeks check on cap-and-trade spending

Assembly GOP Leader Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley)
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

A proposal introduced Friday evening by Assembly GOP Leader Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley) could give the minority party more say in spending money generated by the state’s signature climate policy, cap and trade.

The measure would effectively create a midway check-in point for doling out cap-and-trade cash. Usually, allocating the revenues raised by the program’s auctions only requires a majority vote.

Under this legislation, that spending would have to have to clear a higher threshold — a two-thirds vote — for money generated by auctions starting in 2024. The supermajority hurdle would only need to be cleared once before returning to the standard requirement for a majority vote.

The development means Republicans are working to ensure they have a role in haggling over how to spend the money.

The proposal is a constitutional amendment, which would require approval by voters in June 2018.

Mayes’ office did not comment on the measure, and it is unclear if it will be sufficient to secure crucial GOP votes for a proposal to reauthorize the cap-and-trade system. But the bill’s appearance late Friday, after a week Gov. Jerry Brown spent courting Republicans, underscores the breakneck negotiations still occurring as the governor presses for a Monday vote on his reauthorization legislation.

Share
Advertisement

California corrections officials want to know what you think about the state’s new parole guidelines

Pelican Bay State Prison, shown in a 2001 file photo.
Pelican Bay State Prison, shown in a 2001 file photo.
(Rich Pedroncelli / AP)

California corrections officials on Friday began accepting public comments on the new set of regulations that have overhauled the state parole system, allowing thousands more inmates to be considered for early release.

State regulators gave the guidelines initial approval in April. They have been used to implement Proposition 57, which was approved by 65% of voters in November and is expected to reduce the statewide prison population by 11,500 inmates over the next four years.

The sweeping initiative provided new ways for all inmates to earn time credits toward their sentences for good behavior and for enrolling in certain career, rehabilitation and education programs. It also allows the State Board of Parole Hearings to grant early release to a whole new population of inmates: prisoners whose primary sentences are for crimes not designated as “violent” under California law and have served the full term of their sentences.

The state corrections department previously provided such a process only for nonviolent inmates who had been charged with a second strike under the state’s three-strikes law, and served 50% of their sentences.

With the initial approval of the new guidelines, changes to the credit system began in May and the new parole eligibility requirements took effect this month. Final approval is expected in the fall.

The rules have come under fire. Law enforcement officials and prosecutors who oppose Proposition 57 argue that the regulations include loopholes that could make some violent or serious felons eligible for parole consideration.

Meanwhile, some inmates argue they should be eligible. Among them are offenders convicted of sex crimes, in which there was no contact with the victim, and those with a “third strike” for a nonviolent offense.

The voter initiative did not include language exempting sex offenders from the process, and a Los Angeles-based nonprofit is challenging the exclusion in court on behalf of some prisoners.

People can submit their comments by phone, mail or email or at a public meeting Sept. 1 at the Resources Building Auditorium in Sacramento.

Share

O.C. Rep. Rohrabacher was lobbied by the former Soviet military intelligence officer who attended Trump Jr. meeting

A former Soviet military counterintelligence officer who met with President Trump’s son, son-in-law and campaign manager in June 2016 had previously lobbied Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) at least twice about U.S. relations with Russia.

News broke Friday that Rinat Akhmetshin, who received U.S. citizenship and became a Washington lobbyist after emigrating from Russia more than a decade ago, was also present at the Trump Tower meeting with campaign officials and Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The New York Times first reported the news about the meeting aimed at potential negative information about Hillary Clinton.

Several outlets have reported on Akhmetshin’s past lobbying of Rohrabacher to help remove Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s name from a global anti-corruption law. Magnitsky was a whistleblower who alleged that officials in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government stole $230 million. He died in prison under suspicious circumstances.

The Magnitsky Act banned officials alleged to be involved in his death from visiting the United States and from using U.S. banks. In response, Putin banned all adoptions of Russian children by U.S. parents. Akhmetshin lobbies for Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative, a group started by Veselnitskaya reportedly to lift the adoption ban.

Rohrabacher has long been known for encouraging improved relations with Russia, something that’s made him an outlier in the Republican Party.

He has said as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, he gathers information from a variety of sources and then weighs its accuracy.

He once described Akhmetshin to CNN as someone with “an ulterior motive” who is “involved with people who’ve got an agenda.” He also said he could not rule it out that Akhmetshin was still connected to the Russian security services, something the former official has denied.

Rohrabacher defended the Trump campaign’s meeting in a speech on the House floor Friday.

“If someone says to you that they want to give you information, there is nothing wrong with that,” Rohrabacher said. “It is not illegal to receive information from someone, especially if you are engaged in an activity that’s aimed at trying to secure understanding for policies that you plan to implement as a leader in the United States. Absolutely, there is nothing wrong.”

Rohrabacher’s opinions on normalizing relations with Russia have been known for decades, and several opponents have tried to make them a campaign issue without much luck.

His district backed Clinton for president in 2018, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and his opponents have attacked him over the news of his meetings with various people related to Russia or the Baltic states.

Share
Advertisement

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra goes to court to defend state program helping unaccompanied minor immigrants

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

State Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of an unaccompanied minor immigrant who is fighting deportation.

The court filing urges a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to follow a process created by the state that helps give “Special Immigrant Juvenile” status to minors who immigrate to the United States and cannot reunite with a parent outside of the country because of abuse, neglect or abandonment.

“California has a parens patriae interest in protecting the welfare of these youth and ensuring they can pursue potential claims for remaining lawfully in the country,” the brief said.

Becerra said there are potentially thousands of minors in similar situations.

“Imagine a child you know fleeing to our country because she was being abused, abandoned or neglected by her parents,” Becerra said in a statement Friday, a day after filing the papers. “As people, can we really turn our back on them? Californians have answered ‘no’ by passing laws that provide a clear and consistent process so that these children can seek refuge by obtaining legal status.”

Becerra said he filed the court papers at the invitation of the the Los Angeles Superior Court and the suggestion of the California Supreme Court.

Share

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy comes out against California’s cap-and-trade plan

Share
Advertisement

Rep. Mimi Walters raised over $700,000 for her reelection

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine) raised $701,697 for her reelection campaign between April 1 to June 30, according to her campaign.

Walters’ Orange County district backed Hillary Clinton for president, and is among Democrats’ top battlegrounds for 2018.

Walters’ quarterly financial report will show she had more than $1.1 million on hand June 30, according to her campaign.

Walters has drawn multiple opponents. UC Irvine law professor and Democrat Katie Porter’s campaign said she’ll report raising $310,000. UC Irvine law professor and Democrat Dave Min’s campaign said he’ll report raising more than $302,000.

The rest of Walters’ opponents have not yet reported their fundraising to the Federal Election Commission.

Juy 14, 7:25 a.m.: This post was updated with Dave Min’s fundraising figures.

Share

Darrell Issa raises nearly $500,000 for 2018 reelection campaign

(Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) will report raising $455,207 for his reelection campaign in the last three months, according to his campaign.

Issa won reelection by a razor-thin margin last November and is one of the Democrats’ top targets in 2018. The three Democrats who have filed to run against him had not yet submitted their quarterly fundraising reports, which are due Saturday.

Issa had $671,529 on hand as of June 30, according to his campaign.

Share
Advertisement

It’s legal in California to break into a car to save a dog you think is in distress. But there are caveats.

A California law that went into effect in January says that if you’re concerned for a vehicle-bound animal’s safety on a hot summer day and can’t find its owner, you’re legally allowed to break into the car to rescue the dog — but only if you call authorities first. You would be expected to wait with the dog until an authority — animal control, fire department, law enforcement or 911 emergency service — arrives at the scene.

The understanding of the law is that if you were to follow the steps above, you’d be in the clear and protected from civil and criminal liabilities that exempt you from paying for property damage or trespassing. But there are some gray areas here, namely pertaining to perception. In response to a tweet about the law (from this author), several people chimed in to argue that if you’re a person of color, a police officer or bystander might not realize that you’re trying to save an animal.

Assemblyman Miguel Santiago — a coauthor of the bill — said race was not a topic of discussion when it was put forward.

“When you have a good bill with a bipartisan effort, that transcends boundaries of gender, race, religion and sexual orientation. This is based on one’s love for their pets,” he said.

While the hope is that discriminatory action or confusion would not occur if the law was put into practice, it can’t be guaranteed.

Ultimately, the law is intended to save an animal in need.

Read More

Share

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck tells Senate Democrats ‘all of us are less safe’ with more aggressive immigration enforcement

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck in October 2016.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck told Democratic senators Thursday that increased random enforcement of immigration laws has caused fewer people to call 911, report crimes and come forward as witnesses.

“It makes all of us less safe when that social contract we have between each other breaks down, and that’s what this does,” Beck said.

California Sen. Kamala Harris invited Beck to the Senate Democrats’ weekly luncheon to present his perspective as the police chief of a large city where many immigrants live.

“He knows how these policies impact real human beings and it was so important that his voice be heard among leaders of policy in this country,” Harris said.

Share
Advertisement

Gov. Jerry Brown makes full-throated public and private pitches for climate change deal

Gov. Jerry Brown
(Renee. C. Byer / Associated Press)

Gov. Jerry Brown warned in a legislative committee hearing Thursday morning of threats to human existence and American democracy should lawmakers not pass his plan to fight climate change.

“A lot of you people are going to be alive, and you’re going to be alive in a horrible situation,” Brown said turning to the crowd in the Senate Environmental Quality Committee hearing. “This isn’t for me, I’m going to be dead. This is for you, and it’s real!”

The 79-year-old Brown, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) on Monday unveiled a plan to extend through 2030 the state’s cap-and-trade program, which forces businesses to pay to pollute, and strengthen the state’s air quality rules. Thursday morning was the first public hearing for the legislation.

In his remarks before the committee, Brown positioned California as a world leader in the fight against climate change and contrasted the state with the federal government’s position. He warned that unless lawmakers approve the deal, state regulators would act to reduce carbon emissions in a less efficient way.

“The science will only get clearer, and we’re not going to pull back,” Brown said. “The only question is: How do we go forward?”

The governor remained in the hearing, which continued into the afternoon, turning in his chair to listen to a long line of supporters and opponents who testified on the plan. As they spoke, the governor took notes on a legal pad.

Brown also made his case to Assembly Democrats in a closed-door caucus meeting earlier Thursday. And the cavalry of outside interests have stepped up their advocacy for the legislation, with groups backing the deal — including labor unions such as the Service Employees International Union, utility companies and green businesses — releasing letters of support.

The California Chamber of Commerce endorsed one component of the package, the reauthorization of the cap-and-trade system, as “balanced [and] well-designed,” while staying silent on a companion measure meant to reduce local air pollution.

But the support from business interests so far hasn’t swayed Republicans, who Brown has been wooing to secure a two-thirds vote to guard the program against legal challenges. Assembly GOP Leader Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley) said there were no “yes” votes among his caucus members for the proposal “in its current form.”

“Today, we are in sight of a bipartisan agreement to cut taxes, roll back regulations and government overreach, and reduce costs for ordinary Californians and businesses while doing our part to protect the environment for future generations,” Mayes said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this historic agreement remains elusive.”

Senate Republicans also staked out opposition. Senate GOP Leader Patricia Bates (R-Laguna Nigel) wrote in a letter to Brown that cap-and-trade’s reauthorization, coupled with the higher gas taxes approved earlier this year, would be a “crushing blow” to Californians. All but two members of her caucus, Sens. Anthony Cannella of Ceres and Tom Berryhill of Modesto, signed on.

Read More

Share

California’s senators vow to stop water bill that passed House on Wednesday

The sun sets over Middle River in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the hub of California’s water works.
(Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

Some of California’s decisions about how to use its water would be relegated to the federal government under a bill passed by the House on Wednesday.

Republicans say the bill would bring more water to the parched Central Valley. California’s Democratic senators have promised to fight the bill in the Senate because it weakens California’s ability to manage its own resources.

The Gaining Responsibility on Water Act, sponsored by Central Valley Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), was approved in the House by a 230-190 vote largely along party lines.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

Gov. Jerry Brown testifies on climate change

The science will only get clearer, and we’re not going to pull back. The only question is: How do we go forward?

— Gov. Jerry Brown, testifying on climate change before the state Senate Environmental Quality Committee

Share

Packed house for cap-and-trade hearing and Gov. Jerry Brown testimony

The hearing is being streamed here.

Share
Advertisement

Affordable housing pushes ahead amid climate change talks in California Legislature

The leaders of the California Senate and Assembly pushed off a decision to renew cap and trade, the state’s landmark program to fight climate change, until next week.

Why? In part because lawmakers want to pass legislation dealing with the state’s housing affordability crisis at the same time.

“Housing is the biggest problem facing the state of California,” said Assemblyman Todd Gloria (D-San Diego), who has been pushing for faster action on housing. “While climate change, of course, is an existential threat, we can do both.”

There’s no formal package of housing bills ready yet, but Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators have been working this week to finalize bills that would increase funding for low-income developments and ease home building regulations.

Read More

Share

Cap-and-trade plan to get first hearing Thursday, with special guest witness Gov. Jerry Brown

Share
Advertisement

Gubernatorial candidate John Chiang to speak at Comic-Con

State Treasurer John Chiang has honed a reputation as a policy wonk and numbers guy, credentials he hopes will boost him above his rivals in the 2018 California governor’s race.

But he plans to show off a different side next week when he speaks at Comic-Con, the annual comic and pop culture festival in San Diego.

On July 22, Chiang and other state and local officials will speak on a panel about how they would deal with the damage wrought on localities by superhero battles such as those involving Superman and the Hulk.

The hour-long panel will take place at 11 a.m. at the convention center in San Diego.

It’s not the first time the state treasurer and former controller has alluded to an interest in pop culture — he is a known devotee of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

Share

Emily’s List endorses Orange County pediatrician in bid to unseat Ed Royce

Emily’s List, the national abortion-rights advocacy group focused on electing women, is backing Orange County pediatrician Mai Khanh Tran in her race against Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton).

Royce represents one of several Republican-held districts where Hillary Clinton outperformed Donald Trump in last year’s elections, and which Democrats have made priority targets for 2018.

Tran, an immigrant who fled Vietnam as a child, spent summers picking strawberries in Oregon and later supported herself through college in part by doing janitorial work. A political neophyte, Tran told The Times last month that she was inspired to run because of Royce’s vote for the GOP healthcare plan.

In a statement, Emily’s List president Stephanie Schriock called Tran a “transformational candidate.”

“As a pediatrician, Mai Khanh knows how devastating the Republican attack on healthcare will be for our country’s most vulnerable communities,” Schriock said. “In 2018, Democrats are going to flip the House because of candidates like Mai Khanh getting into the fight.”

Emily’s List has only endorsed one other California congressional candidate so far in the 2018 cycle: Democrat Katie Porter, who has already drawn support from U.S. Sens. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. She is hoping to oust Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine).

Until recently, Tran, 52, lived in Fountain Valley and was represented by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa), who has already drawn a crowded field of Democratic challengers. She recently moved to Yorba Linda, within Royce’s district, and faces fellow Democrat Phil Janowicz and independent Julio Castaneda in her bid to unseat Royce.

FOR THE RECORD

10:34 a.m.: A previous version of this post stated that Mai Khanh Tran lives outside the district. She recently moved to Yorba Linda, within the district.

Share
Advertisement

With state legislators from L.A. County divided, panel recommends plan to expand Board of Supervisors

Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) wants to expand the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

State legislators from Los Angeles County were divided Wednesday over a proposal to expand the Board of Supervisors and create a new elected position of county executive, but the proposal in the end won a recommendation from a key Senate panel.

Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) said his proposal for a statewide ballot measure that would expand the board from five to seven members would make the panel more representative and accessible. Currently each board member represents about 2 million people.

“Representing more than 1 million people makes access to a supervisor nearly impossible for an individual when they need help to access county services, a key function of local government,” Mendoza told the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee, which voted 4 to 1 to approve Senate Constitutional Amendment 12. It must go through another committee and be voted on in each chamber.

Sen. Henry Stern (D-Woodland Hills), the committee’s chairman, voted against the measure. He said he was wary of having the government of Los Angeles County set by the Legislature and voters in other counties, including San Francisco.

“I am uncomfortable making these decisions here in the Legislature,” Stern said. On board members, Stern added, “If we feel they are not representing us well, we can vote them out of office.”

The measure is opposed by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which said in a letter to lawmakers that the decision should be for county voters to make, not voters statewide. County voters have rejected board expansion measures eight times going back to 1926.

“SCA 12 completely undermines the ability of county residents to self-govern,” the board letter says.

The measure was supported on the panel by Democratic Sens. Benjamin Allen of Santa Monica and Robert Hertzberg of Los Angeles, among others.

“All I know is the people in the San Gabriel Valley don’t have a hell of a lot in common with people of the San Fernando Valley in terms of issues that affect them on a day-to-day basis,” Hertzberg said describing one district. “It is just too damn big.”

Share

Rules for collecting racial profiling data in California are delayed

Earlier this month, California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, right, shakes a man's hand after a legislative committee hearing on police shootings.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Police departments in Los Angeles and other large cities across California won’t have to collect data in an effort to combat racial profiling until next July, delaying by six months the timeline called for under state law.

California police officers will have to track the perceived race, gender, age and other demographic information of those they pull over in traffic, pedestrian and bike stops, and detail the reasons for the stop. But writing the rules has been complicated, deputies in California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra’s office told a committee responsible for overseeing the regulations during a Wednesday meeting in San Diego.

“It’s too important to rush,” said Kelli Evans, a special assistant attorney general in charge of civil rights issues.

The regulations were supposed to be finished before Becerra’s predecessor, Kamala Harris, left the office in January. Law enforcement groups have argued that the proposed data collection rules developed by the state oversight body are too onerous for officers.

Once Becerra took the job, he met with those groups as well as academics and civil rights organizations to review them. In late April, Becerra also enlisted Los Angeles police officers and eight other departments across California to test how officers would tally the demographic information. Officers took an average of two and a half minutes to fill out the data collection form at every stop, state Justice Department officials said.

Becerra’s office expects to release revised data collection rules in a couple of weeks.

Under the law, the state’s largest police departments — those with more than 1,000 officers — will have to issue a report detailing the demographics of their stops by April 2019, and all departments in the state will have to do so by 2023. The delay in finishing the regulations means the first reports for the largest departments will have six months of data instead of a year.

Share
Advertisement

Without trust between immigrants and police, crimes won’t be reported, victims tell California lawmakers

Tri-Valley University appeared legitimate. The Bay Area school had a website, a roster of professors and a single building with classrooms in Pleasanton. When Vishal Dasa, a native of India, enrolled in 2009, he had hopes of completing a master’s degree in healthcare management.

Instead, he said he ended up painting walls, cleaning utensils and building heavy office equipment, hours of unpaid labor that he said were assigned to him by the university president, Susan Su, under the threat of deportation.

“I was afraid and used to obey her all the time because I didn’t want to lose my [immigration] status,” he said on Wednesday at the state Capitol. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Dasa was one of two crime victims who shared their stories with state lawmakers in a call for support of Senate Bill 54. The legislation, filed by Democratic lawmakers in response to the Trump administration’s expanded deportation orders, would prohibit law enforcement agencies from using their resources to enforce immigration laws.

The bill is pending before the Assembly’s fiscal committee and has garnered the support of some law enforcement officials, including police chiefs in Los Angeles and Long Beach. But Republican lawmakers and many county sheriffs remain vehemently opposed.

In endorsing the bill last month, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said sexual assault reports had dropped 25% among the city’s Latino population since the beginning of 2017, as compared with the same period last year. Domestic violence reports have fallen 10%, he said.

At a Wednesday press conference, Assemblymembers David Chiu (D-San Francisco) and Eloise Reyes (D-Grand Terrace) said the Trump administration’s rhetoric against immigrants was instilling fear in neighborhoods and preventing victims and witnesses from reporting crimes.

“During this time of history, we have a president who has declared wars on our immigrant communities,” Chiu said. “I can tell you as a former criminal prosecutor how important it is that we build trust with our immigrant communities.”

Su is serving 16 years in prison for fraud, among other charges, related to the multimillion-dollar sham university that embroiled 31-year-old Dasa and dozens of other students, predominately from India. His collaboration with police, Dasa said, helped put her behind bars.

Share

Could Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra join Trump in the fight to defend DACA? It depends

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra.
California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said Wednesday he is prepared to do everything in his power to defend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program – including standing with the Trump administration against a legal threat from Republican states.

But he and fellow allies first need clarity from the president on the fate of the federal immigration program, Becerra said on a conference call with Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Maura Healey.

“We are prepared to work with the Trump administration and support President Trump’s previous declarations that the DACA program was one he was not prepared to rescind,” Becerra said. “It is very important to have an idea of where [the president] stands on the issue.”

Trump has vacillated on his support for DACA, an Obama-era policy that has provided temporary legal status to roughly 800,000 immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children. The president has repeatedly said he does not want to see these so-called Dreamers deported, and some advisors have urged federal officials to leave DACA in place.

But not all within his administration agree, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last month rescinded another Obama-era program for immigrant parents. Some states are pressuring Trump to stick with his promise to repeal DACA.

In a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton and officials from nine other states urged Trump to end the program by Sept. 5 or face a court challenge.

Becerra and Healy said there would be “overwhelming evidence” that DACA was legally sound and a boon to the economy.

Research from UC San Diego has found businesses in the U.S. could stand to lose $4 billion in costs to hire and train employees to replace workers who could lose their status if the program is ended. That number is more than $1 billion in California alone.

For now, Becerra and Healy said they are waiting to make a move.

They are among nine state attorneys general who in June filed an information request with Homeland Security seeking records that would clarify how the Trump administration is enforcing federal immigration law.

The request seeks the number of immigration detentions, deportations and detainer requests, and the rationale for each, as well as clarifying information on how the administration is treating DACA recipients.

“There have been many reports out there about DACA recipients being arrested,” Healy said. “We need far more clarity, transparency from the Trump administration of how they are implementing federal immigration policy.”

Share
Advertisement

Lawmakers plan Monday vote on extending cap and trade

Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) issued a joint statement Wednesday afternoon confirming a Monday vote: “Due to the late hour in which the cap-and-trade package becomes eligible for a vote tomorrow evening, we have decided to schedule the vote instead for Monday, July 17. Taking up AB 398 and the companion air-quality measure AB 617 next week will also allow our discussion on long-term housing affordability solutions in California to catch up to the climate effort.”

Share

Rep. Brad Sherman introduces articles of impeachment against Trump

Los Angeles-area Rep. Brad Sherman has introduced articles of impeachment against President Trump, making good on a promise to move the process forward.

Sherman’s move has put him at odds with House Democratic leaders, who have tried to quiet talk of impeachment, hoping instead to focus on the economy, healthcare and the investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election.

Sherman, an 11-term Democrat who represents part of the San Fernando Valley, was the first to draft and circulate articles of impeachment last month. He formally introduced the measure, HR 438, on the House floor Wednesday afternoon.

The measure accuses Trump of obstruction of justice and seeking to “use his authority to hinder and cause the termination” of an investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn, including “through threatening, and then terminating, James Comey.”

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), who had previously held a joint news conference with Sherman supporting the effort to impeach Trump, was the only co-sponsor of the measure.

Sherman had previously said no other members had signed on to support his proposal. After House Democratic leaders expressed concern about his effort, Sherman said he assured House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi that he wouldn’t ask for a floor vote on impeachment without consulting the Democratic caucus.

Asked for comment on the impeachment effort, Pelosi responded with a statement calling again for independent commission to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

The impeachment measure is a long way from a floor vote and is expected to be referred to the House Judiciary Committee. It faces substantial resistance in the GOP-controlled House.

In a statement, Sherman said he and Green will push the Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on the matter. He added that he hopes introducing articles of impeachment would “inspire an ‘intervention’ in the White House.” He called his move “the first step on a very long road,” and said he believed that Republicans would join the effort “many, many months from now” if Trump’s “incompetence” continues.

UPDATE

12:36 p.m.: This article was updated to include statements by Sherman and additional context.

This article was originally published at 11:24 a.m.

Share
Advertisement

Gov. Jerry Brown and Michael Bloomberg launch an effort to collect climate data

Gov. Jerry Brown continues to add to his resume as global climate crusader, announcing on Wednesday a partnership with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to measure how states, cities and businesses are cutting their greenhouse gas emissions.

The initiative is yet another repudiation by Brown of President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate. Last week, the governor told an international audience that Trump “doesn’t speak for the rest of us” on global warming, and announced plans to host a climate summit in San Francisco next year.

Brown also assumed the role of quasi-ambassador in a recent trip to China, meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing to discuss climate change. And in Sacramento, Brown hosted the Fijian prime minister, the president of this year’s United Nations conference on climate change, who bestowed on the governor the title of “special advisor for states and regions” for a November confab in Germany.

As Brown draws more attention to global efforts on climate, he is battling in Sacramento to win approval for his plan to extend the state’s most high-profile tool to combat global warming, the cap-and-trade system.

His proposal, unveiled earlier this week, faced a lukewarm reception among lawmakers and ambivalence among environmentalists, who are torn between the need for the most stringent possible regulations and promoting a program that holds broad political appeal.

Read More

Share

State lawmakers advance bill that would make ‘stealthing’ sexual assault but question whether it’s enforceable

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

The state Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday advanced a bill that would define “stealthing” as a form of rape, though lawmakers said it was unclear whether or how it would be enforced.

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) introduced the legislation in May through the “gut and amend” process, stripping the contents of an unrelated bill to insert the new language. It targets stealthing, or the practice of intentionally removing or tampering with a condom during sexual intercourse without consent.

The latest version of the bill would make it a crime of felony sexual battery to remove or tamper with a condom or intentionally use, without consent, a condom that has been tampered with during sex. It also goes further, making it a felony to lie about being on birth control or another form of contraception other than a condom.

The stealthing bill follows another proposal by Garcia to expand the legal definition of rape that became law this year. It moved out of the Senate committee with a 4-2 vote, but members questioned how it could be enforced and whether it could potentially entangle innocent people.

Garcia conceded the latter “is a possibility like with any of our laws.”

She said she amended the bill to criminalize lying about birth control at the request of the Senate Public Safety Committee. It was a compromise, she said, but not at the stake of losing what she sees as the purpose of the legislation: elevating the discourse on rape culture.

“The goal here is to call it what is, to put in the books, so that people know it is a crime,” she said. “It is part of the process to allow discretion of district attorneys and judges to do their job, and more often than not the judicial system is on the right side of not sending innocent people to prison.”

The issue is personal for Garcia, who said she has been a victim of stealthing several times in the past.

“People are really having a hard time [with this bill] because it involves consensual sex, but ‘yes’ doesn’t mean everything,” she said. “We need to be clear about what consent is and we need to have those discussions in society.”

4:00 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Garcia.

This article was originally published at 6:00 a.m.

Share
Advertisement

New state law aims to limit where California judges place violent sex offenders out on conditional release

A state law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown this week would make it harder for violent sex offenders released under a court’s conditions to live in counties where they have no work or family ties.

Assembly Bill 255 will require judges to consider additional factors, such as residential, family or employment connections, when weighing where to release offenders who fall under the Sexually Violent Predator Program.

Offenders in the program have been convicted of a sexually violent offense and diagnosed with a mental disorder making them likely to repeat their crime. Inmates must complete rehabilitation treatment at a state hospital after fulfilling their prison sentences before they are released into the community.

Under the new law, courts will have to find that there are extraordinary circumstances in a case in order to place offenders outside the county where they previously lived.

The state has grappled with removing barriers to housing for sex offenders in recent years after controversial blanket restrictions, approved by voters, once prohibited all sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park.

But bill signed Monday had the support of police and county officials across the state and sailed through the legislative process with little to no opposition. Assemblyman James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), who introduced it, said violent inmates are often placed in rural counties like his own.

“These repeat sexual offenders pose a serious threat, and rural counties shouldn’t be a default dumping ground for them,” he said in a statement.

Share

Jimmy Gomez sworn into Congress

Rep. Jimmy Gomez is sworn in as representative of the 34th Congressional District

Rep. Jimmy Gomez was sworn in as Los Angeles’ newest congressman in a ceremony between House votes Tuesday, saying in brief remarks afterward that his approach to policy and politics is driven by personal and community experience.

“As the son of immigrants who believes in this country and everything it promises, I am a living embodiment of that promise, [and I] have a profound commitment to protecting the rights of other immigrant families, no matter where they are from or the god they worship,” he said.

The 34th Congressional District is one of the most diverse in the country, and includes downtown, Koreatown and much of L.A.’s Eastside.

With many of the 53 members of California’s House delegation surrounding him, Gomez took the oath of office. Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) dove in for the first handshake before Gomez was swamped by Democrats pounding him on the back.

Gomez’s wife, Mayor Eric Garcetti aide Mary Hodge; his mother, Socorro Gomez; his mother-in-law, Sarah Hodge; and his brother Gerry Gomez watched from the gallery.

Gomez replaces Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), who resigned in February after he was tapped to be California’s attorney general.

Gov. Jerry Brown had reportedly wanted Gomez to stay in the Assembly long enough to vote to extend the state’s cap-and-trade program and ensure a two-thirds vote to guard the program against potential legal challenges.

After McCarthy sent a letter that the seat had been left open too long and demanding that Gomez appear in Washington, Gomez’s swearing-in was scheduled.

Despite round-the-clock negotiations, Brown and state legislative leaders weren’t able to reach an agreement on expanding the program, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas, in time for Gomez to vote Monday. Instead, the cap-and-trade vote is expected later this week.

Gomez started his brief comments with a tweak to McCarthy and the letter, which spurred editorials and articles in newspapers around the country.

“I also want to thank the Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy for all the attention he’s given me for the past several weeks. Thank you so much,” Gomez said.

McCarthy stood and bowed toward Republicans as the representatives laughed.

Share
Advertisement

House votes to rename Bakersfield post office for Merle Haggard

The House of Representatives voted unanimously Tuesday to honor one of the creators of “Bakersfield sound,” Merle Haggard, by renaming a post office in his hometown.

The bill, sponsored by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), would rename the post office at 1730 18th St. in Bakersfield as the ‘‘Merle Haggard Post Office Building.”

Such bills are considered noncontroversial and tend to move through Congress easily. It still needs to be considered by the Senate and signed into law by President Trump.

Some immediately questioned if a post office was the sufficient recognition for the legendary country musician who, while an inmate at San Quentin State Prison, was inspired by watching Johnny Cash perform. Haggard died last year.

Share

San Diego real estate investor joins other Democrats challenging Darrell Issa

Real estate investor Paul Kerr announced Tuesday that he will challenge nine-term Republican Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), one of the Democrats’ top California targets for 2018.

Issa won reelection by a razor-thin margin last November.

In a statement announcing his run, Kerr, 62, emphasized issues affecting lower- and middle-income families, including healthcare, wage stagnation and veterans’ services.

He said his mother’s struggle with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and the fact that he graduated from college with student debt help him relate to the daily struggles voters face.

“My initial call to action was what I saw coming down the pike as Trump’s policies” on healthcare, the environment and immigration, Kerr said in an interview. “But I’m not running simply to bash Trump. My thing is what can I do to help the low-income and middle-class families and to help immigrants.”

Kerr will face at least two other Democrats who hope to unseat Issa in the 49th Congressional District: Doug Applegate, a retired Marine Corps colonel who was less than 1,700 votes shy of defeating Issa in 2016, and environmental attorney Mike Levin.

The coastal district, won by Hillary Clinton in last year’s presidential race, stretches from Dana Point in Orange County to La Jolla in San Diego County.

Share
Advertisement

California’s top cop says local law enforcement should investigate police shootings

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

State Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said local law enforcement in California should continue to investigate and prosecute shootings by police officers when appropriate, contrary to an initial proposal from a Sacramento lawmaker.

“I think any time you can keep things as local as possible it’s always the best way to do it,” Becerra said Tuesday.

Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) had originally wanted to expand Becerra’s authority to criminally investigate police-involved shootings. McCarty modeled his legislation after similar laws in Connecticut and Wisconsin that require agencies other than the department that employs an officer involved in a shooting to handle the investigation. McCarty had said the bill was a way to help promote public trust after a rash of controversial police shootings in California and across the country. That legislation passed the Assembly last month without Becerra weighing in.

But McCarty agreed to change his measure last week, gaining the support of Becerra. Assembly Bill 284 advanced out of the Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday after Becerra spoke in favor. If enacted, the bill would fund a study by Becerra’s office of police shootings in the state in 2015 and 2016. with a report to be issued by July 2019.

After Tuesday’s hearing, Becerra said his office would step in to investigate police shootings in cases where he determined local law enforcement wasn’t thorough or transparent. He said that the study would allow the state to understand what’s driving police shootings and better prevent them.

“It’s always better to prevent than remediate,” Becerra said. “We have to make sure the investigations in any incident are thorough and lead to justice. But we also have to try to figure out how we can prevent incidents from occurring that leave some families without loved ones.”

According to Becerra, California had 230 police shootings that resulted in death or serious injury in 2016.

Share

State Senate bill to change California bail system advances — with concerns over costs

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)

A state bill that would change the way courts assign bail for defendants before trial cleared its final policy committee hurdle on Tuesday with amendments meant to ease concerns over its cost and impact on victims.

In approving the measure, members of the Assembly Public Safety Committee said disadvantaged communities with a high police presence can’t wait any longer for lawmakers to fix a broken bail system that harms the poor. But they urged its co-authors to address the financial and logistical burden it could impose on counties.

Senate Bill 10 was approved by the committee by a 4-2 vote and now heads to the Assembly Appropriations Committee for consideration. Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego), chair of that committee, voted in favor of moving the legislation out of the Public Safety Committee.

But she said Tuesday that she was “really worried about where this bill is at this point. I just don’t see how without spending a lot of money – a lot of money – on this bill that this works.”

Lobbyists, advocates and supporters on both sides of the issue packed the committee room and flooded the hallway during the hearing.

The legislation would require counties to establish their own pretrial services agencies that would develop a “risk-assessment tool,” or model analysis, to evaluate people booked into jail. Release would depend on two main factors: What threat does the defendant pose in the community and how likely is he or she to come back to court?

But the latest version of the bill requires courts to hold a pretrial detention hearing within 48 hours of an arrest, unless the defendant waives the proceeding. Law enforcement officials, including a representative from the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, warn that that requirement could prove costly and lead to longer wait times behind bars.

At Thursday’s committee meeting, the bill’s co-authors, Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) and Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), said they added about a dozen amendments to address such concerns and would continue working with the Judicial Council of California on further changes.

“It is no longer the same version that the committee heard this year,” Hertzberg said.

The latest amendments give counties a two-year period to phase in the provisions and would require that victims of serious felonies receive notice of an offender’s release, per state law.

The changes allow courts to continue taking into account offenders’ criminal history in weighing their release and ensure that courts honor out-of-county arrest warrants.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

L.A.’s newest congressman’s first day in Washington through his mother’s eyes

Rep.-elect Jimmy Gomez is scheduled to be sworn in during House votes Tuesday as downtown Los Angeles’ newest member of Congress.

Gomez, a former state Assemblyman, sat down with The Times this week to talk about the transition from Sacramento to Washington.

His mother’s reaction has been particularly poignant, especially watching her get emotional at seeing the U.S. Capitol, Gomez said. His parents came to the country illegally from Mexico before he was born and since have become U.S. citizens.

“It’s about giving people inspiration and hope that once they come here and once they become citizens or they’re born here that they’re a part of this country. I didn’t know that that is how this would feel for her,” he said.

Read MoreHis mother, Socorro Gomez, took over the congressman-elect’s Twitter feed this week as she road-tripped to Washington. Also on the journey are his wife, Mary Hodge, and her mother. The Twitter takeover includes a few choice childhood photos, along with the mother’s first views of her son’s new office.

Share

Outside the Capitol, nurses union rallies again for single-payer healthcare

Share
Advertisement

Legislation making it harder to punish police officers accused of lying isn’t happening this year

Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles)
(Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)

A bill that would have made it harder to punish California police officers accused of lying is done for the year.

Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) pulled his Assembly Bill 1298 from Tuesday morning’s Senate Public Safety Committee agenda and will no longer pursue it this year, his office said. The legislation would have required police departments that wanted to discipline officers for lying to have unequivocal proof that an officer had lied. Currently, departments must show that it’s more likely than not that an officer has lied before punishing them.

Santiago and the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the bill’s principal supporter, argued that determing that an officer has lied is tantamount to ending their career, so a higher burden of proof should be used. But police chiefs, sheriffs and civil liberties organizations contended it was already too difficult to punish officers.

Share

Los Angeles’ new congressman to be sworn in today

Share
Advertisement

Here is what the gas tax repeal initiative title will say. Proponents say it is misleading and will sue

Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach) wants to repeal a law that increases the state gas tax.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

The state attorney general’s office on Monday released a title and summary for a proposed initiative to repeal a gas tax increase. Proponents of the ballot measure say the state-drafted title and summary are misleading and they will go to court to have them changed.

The way language on measures is written can affect whether voters sign the petitions.

Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach), the leading proponent of the initiative, said he will go to court to have the title and summary changed.

“We’re going to challenge it in Superior Court,” Allen said late Monday. “Gov. Brown’s attorney general has issued a misleading title and summary,” Allen said. The lawmaker said “almost everything” in the short summary would mislead voters. We will wait to win in court and then we will be gathering signatures up and down the state.

The office of Democratic Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra approved language that describes the repeal thusly: “Eliminates recently enacted road repair and transportation funding by repealing revenues dedicated for those purposes.”

Critics of the new law have said it lacks sufficient safeguards for the money to be spent only on road repairs and transportation and could allow money to be spent on other functions.

The summary also highlights that the ballot measure “Eliminates Independent Office of Audits and Investigations, which is responsible for ensuring accountability in the use of revenue for transportation projects.” Such an office has not existed and is called for by the new law.

Allen said the lawsuit to be filed this week will detail how the statements are misleading.

Allen, who is running for governor in 2018, needs to collect 365,0000 signatures of registered voters in 150 days to qualify a measure for the ballot that would repeal SB 1, the legislation signed in April by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Updated at 8:20 pm to include comments from Assemblyman Travis Allen.

Share

Gov. Brown and lawmakers unveil proposal to extend California climate program

Gov. Jerry Brown
(Fred Dufour / AFP / Getty Images)

After weeks of back-and-forth between environmentalists and business interests, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders introduced a proposal Monday to reauthorize California’s cap and trade program, the centerpiece of the state’s efforts to battle climate change.

The plan consists of two separate bills: AB 398, which would extend the life of the program until 2030 and modify how the cap-and-trade market operates, and AB 617, which aims to address concerns about air quality in communities by increasing monitoring and imposing stricter penalties on polluters.

The proposal would make several significant changes to how the current system operates, including giving the California Air Resources Board the authority to set a ceiling on the price of carbon — which determines how expensive emissions permits are — as a way to guard against price spikes at the pump. It would also decrease the amount of offsets, in which businesses pay for environmental projects in California and throughout the country to ease the cost of complying with the program, and require that half of such projects take place in California, a mandate that doesn’t currently exist.

Businesses would get a boost by the continuation of free allowances, or permits to pollute that are meant to keep California companies competitive with those in states without such regulation. Many of those allowances were set to expire, but under the proposal, they would be extended into the program’s new phase.

Brown is seeking a two-thirds vote on the cap-and-trade bill, which would guard the program against potential legal challenges. The measure includes several provisions to lure Republicans, whose support could be pivotal for supermajority approval, including a repeal of a fire prevention fee that the GOP has attacked as an illegal tax and an extension of a tax credit for manufacturers.

The second measure on local air pollution would require a majority vote. The proposal, which aims to address concerns from environmental justice advocates, would require companies to retrofit their equipment to comply with the state’s environmental goals.

The bills were introduced at the close of the business day Monday, paving the way for a potential Thursday evening vote.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

California attorney general backs study of police shootings

Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra is backing new legislation that would lead to an analysis of police shootings across California.

The measure, Assembly Bill 284 from Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), authorizes Becerra’s office to examine the circumstances, policies, training and oversight involved in police shootings that resulted in deaths or serious injuries. The attorney general would look at shootings between 2015 and 2016 and issue a report by July 2019.

“We must proactively do what we can to achieve safer outcomes and reduce the likelihood of future incidents,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement.

The bill is substantially weaker than the one McCarty had originally proposed, which aimed to expand Becerra’s authority to criminally investigate police shootings. McCarty’s initial bill passed the Assembly last month, but Becerra didn’t take a position on it. Lawmakers didn’t allocate the $10 million in the state budget that Becerra said he would have needed to hire investigators. After that decision, McCarty said his bill was done for the year.

McCarty said that despite pushing for more state involvement in police shooting investigations, he was pleased Becerra was engaged.

“People want the change tomorrow,” McCarty said. “And it’s not going to happen tomorrow. This sets up a process where a year or so down the road we could potentially come back with a significant reform ready to pass into law.”

Some initial supporters of the bill aren’t happy. A coalition of civil rights organizations, including chapters of the NAACP and Jewish Federation, plans to protest the bill’s changes after the bill’s hearing in the Senate Public Safety Committee Tuesday morning, said the Rev. Jonathan Moseley, vice president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Action Network.

“They totally gutted the bill,” Moseley said.

AB 284 will take effect only if the Legislature adds money to Becerra’s budget to fund the study. Becerra’s office said a cost analysis of the measure will be done this week and the office would support the funding request.

Share

California Assembly deadlocks over bill to allow shorter sentences in some gun crimes

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) received permission to take the measure up on another day if she can muster the votes.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

The California Assembly deadlocked Monday over a bill that would allow judges to not impose sentence enhancements of 10 or more years in cases where firearms were used in committing a felony.

With some Democrats joining a Republican bloc in opposition, the vote was 32-32, but Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) received permission to take the measure up on another day if she can muster the votes.

Weber said the current mandate for such penalty enhancements means judges cannot use discretion in deciding whether cases warrant a longer time behind bars.

“[Judges] are prohibited from considering the facts of the case and whether a penalty would serve the interests of justice,” Weber said, adding that the law disproportionately hurts people of color.

The bill was introduced by Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena).

Republican lawmakers including Assemblyman Tom Lackey of Palmdale said the legislation, SB 620, would make the state less safe.

“This sends a message that those who unlawfully use firearms to inflict harm should be shown lenience,” Lackey said during the floor debate.

Share
Advertisement

Extending California’s cap-and-trade program hits a speed bump: Jimmy Gomez’s departure for Congress

Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez thanks supporters in Eagle Rock at a kickoff event for his congressional campaign. He is headed to Congress Tuesday.
(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)

A breakneck effort to extend the life of cap and trade, California’s signature program to combat climate change, has gotten more difficult — thanks to one assemblyman starting his new job.

Despite round-the-clock negotiations last week, including on the July 4 holiday, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders came up short in their bid to have a bill to reauthorize the program ready for a vote today, the last day that Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) would have been able to cast a vote before he is sworn into Congress on Tuesday.

Acting before Gomez’s departure on a measure to extend cap and trade, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gas emissions, was the Brown administration’s unofficial goal in hopes of retaining a reliable Democratic vote.

The governor is seeking a two-thirds vote to guard the program against potential legal challenges. Without Gomez, Democrats have a bare supermajority of 54 votes in the Assembly; the Senate Democrats also have the exact number of votes for a two-thirds supermajority.

Read More

Share

Senate leader visits Dodger Stadium

Share
Advertisement

Gavin Newsom continues to dominate gubernatorial campaign fundraising

(Nick Ut / Associated Press)

Gavin Newsom continues to dominate fundraising in the 2018 race for California governor, raising millions more than his Democratic opponents in the reporting period that recently closed, according to preliminary information filed with the state.

Newsom, the state’s lieutenant governor, raised nearly $3.6 million in large donations in the first six months of this year, a quarter of which dropped in the final week of June. In the same time period, state Treasurer John Chiang raised more than $1.1 million and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa raised nearly $1.2 million in large donations, according to the filings with the secretary of state’s office. Former state schools chief Delaine Eastin, also a Democrat, raised $69,000 in large donations.

The reporting period closed June 30, but full disclosure reports are not due until the end of July. However, candidates are required to immediately report campaign donations of $5,000 or more.

Once the smaller donations are made public, the candidates’ fundraising numbers will increase. But this snapshot of preliminary data for the first six months of the year is notable because it is the first reporting period when the top Democrats were all in the race.

Overall, Newsom started the year with a large edge in fundraising, partly because he entered the race in early 2015. He raised $10.3 million through the end of 2016. Chiang launched his campaign last spring and raised $4.2 million last year, while Villaraigosa raised $2.7 million in the seven weeks after entering the race in November. Eastin did not report any fundraising until this year.

Among the GOP candidates, Rancho Santa Fe venture capitalist John Cox reported raising $3,075,000 in large donations this year, $3 million of which he donated to himself. Assemblyman Travis Allen of Huntington Beach and former Assemblyman David Hadley, who recently entered the race, did not report raising any money before June 30.

The Times’ data team takes a closer look at the numbers in a campaign finance dashboard that will be updated throughout the race.

Read More

Share

Democrats protest outside Rep. Steve Knight’s office with an eye toward 2018

Protesters outside Rep. Steve Knight's office.
Protesters outside Rep. Steve Knight’s office.
(Javier Panzar / Los Angeles Times)

The liberal protesters targeting GOP Rep. Steve Knight aren’t going anywhere — but their numbers are dwindling in the summer heat.

Organizers from some of the nearby “Indivisible” protest groups had boasted in a news release that “hundreds” would be outside Knight’s Simi Valley offices to “speak up about the Millions of people losing access to Healthcare.”

The groups specifically wanted to highlight what they say will be negative effects of a bill to overturn Obamacare. Knight voted for an early version of the measure, which is pending in the Senate.

In reality, about 50 protesters showed up and braved low-90s temperatures Thursday for the 3 p.m protest, a largely subdued affair compared with the protests that targeted Knight earlier this spring and summer. Some wore fake bandages and neck braces.

Some in the group seemed driven toward a larger goal, and chatted about voter registration drives scheduled for future weekends at a nearby grocery store that caters to Latino customers.

“We cannot stop protesting,” said Jon Cummings, a 51-year-old Westlake Village resident and organizer with an Indivisible group in the Conejo Valley — outside Knight’s district.

Still, he acknowledged that if Democrats want to flip Knight’s seat, rallies alone won’t do it: “It’s one thing to come out and rally, it’s another thing to do the very hard work of electoral politics.”

Knight won reelection by six percentage points last fall, but because Hillary Clinton was able to beat Donald Trump by about the same margin in Knight’s district, Democrats consider the seat to have prime pickup potential.

Knight has had a busy week in the district. He addressed the protesters Thursday on Facebook.

8:55 a.m. July 7: This post was updated with a Facebook post from Rep. Steve Knight.

It was originally posted July 6.

Share
Advertisement

Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan for a climate summit in California draws cheers from activists

Gov. Jerry Brown has announced a summit on climate action that will take place next year in San Francisco. He spoke Thursday to a crowd of concertgoers at the Global Citizen Festival in Hamburg, Germany, following sets from pop singers Shakira and Pharrell Williams.

Brown made the announcement a few hours after President Trump touched down in Germany’s second-largest city for the G-20 summit, where the United States’ withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate agreement cast a shadow over his talks with other world leaders on Friday and Saturday.

Christiana Figueres, a former top United Nations official who was in charge of negotiations on the Paris agreement, introduced Brown at the Global Citizen concert as a “climate optimist.”

The crowd burst out in applause when Brown said Trump doesn’t speak for the rest of the U.S.

“It’s really good to hear that not all Americans feel the way Trump does about climate change. I think a lot of people in Germany see that,” said Sarah Schmerse, 32, who attended the concert.

Trump was not invited to speak because his policies don’t match up with the concert’s goal of supporting global health, climate and gender equality, said a source involved in organizing the concert. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Argentine President Mauricio Macri and other leaders took the stage to speak about climate change to the crowd of 12,000.

“I think [Brown’s] message was really important. It sends a signal to the G-20 to be brave and stand up to Trump,” said Christoph Schott, a campaign director at Avaaz, an activist group that organized a protest outside a G-20 preparation meeting in Berlin last week.

Lutz Weischer, a climate campaigner for the advocacy group Germanwatch, said Brown’s message “shows that it is not the United States that are withdrawing from the Paris agreement, but only the U.S. federal government.”

Share

Low-income housing funding bill clears key hurdle in California Senate

Senate Bill 2 from Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) would add a $75 fee to real estate transactions, such as mortgage refinances, to fund state housing subsidies.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

A bill that could provide roughly $250 million a year in new funding for low-income housing development passed the state Senate on Thursday, a key hurdle that keeps on track a potential larger housing package pending in the Legislature.

Senate Bill 2 from Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) would add a $75 fee to real estate transactions, such as mortgage refinances, to fund the state housing subsidies. Home and commercial property sales would be exempted from the fee.

Because the bill adds a new fee, it needs a two-thirds supermajority vote of the Legislature to pass. The measure received exactly that number in the Senate with all 27 Democratic senators voting in support. The bill now heads to the Assembly.

“After today’s vote, I am increasingly hopeful that relief is coming soon for many hard-working people,” Atkins said in a statement.

Atkins’ bill is part of a group of pending measures that aim to increase spending on low-income housing development and lower restrictions to make it easier and cheaper to build. Senate Bill 3, a $3-billion low-income housing bond, has also passed the Senate and is awaiting a vote in the Assembly. But Assembly Bill 71, which would end the state’s mortgage interest deduction on second homes and redirect that money to low-income housing funding, remains stuck in the Assembly.

Share
Advertisement

Bill to let Marin County bypass state housing rules heads to governor’s desk

Mission San Rafael Arcángel in Marin County
(Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

Legislation allowing Marin County to continue bypassing California’s affordable housing laws is headed to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk.

The measure, which passed the state Senate Thursday morning, was included in Senate Bill 106 at the request of Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-San Rafael). It lets Marin’s largest cities and incorporated areas maintain extra restrictions on how many homes developers can build.

Housing advocates criticized it as counter to the Legislature’s push for more housing. Since the bill is tied to the state budget, it didn’t have to go through the regular committee process.

The measure extends to 2028 Marin’s exemption from state housing law that’s supposed to ensure low-income developers can build at sizes that are financially viable. Levine wrote a bill in 2014 that gave Marin an exemption until 2023, and argued that the smaller buildings Marin is allowed would result in more housing production by lowering construction costs. But a report on the first measure’s impacts isn’t due until 2019, and SB 106 gives the county a further extension now.

Brown, who negotiated the provision as part of state budget talks, is expected to sign the legislation.

On the Senate floor, the bill faced opposition from Republicans and some Democrats, who were critical about its effects on the state’s housing problems.

Read More

Share

Gov. Jerry Brown to Hamburg Global Citizen Festival: ‘It’s time to join together’

California Gov. Jerry Brown appeared on video to address the crowd of the Global Citizen Festival in Hamburg, Germany, inviting people who care about climate change to join him in San Francisco next year for a Climate Action Summit.

He was introduced as “a fantastic stubborn optimist” on the issues of curbing carbon emissions and protecting the environment.

Here’s a transcript of his video, which included German subtitles.

Hello, Hamburg. I’m Gov. Jerry Brown. Greetings from California.

Look, it’s up to you and it’s up to me and tens of millions of other people to get it together to roll back the forces of carbonization and join together to combat the existential threat of climate change. That’s why we’re having the Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, September 2018.

Come join us entrepreneurs, singers, musicians, mathematicians, professors, students we need people that represent the whole world because this is about the whole world and the people who live here. We have to do something, and we can do it. That’s why we want to join together in this Climate Action Summit in 2018 in San Francisco.

Yes, I know President Trump is trying to get out of the Paris agreement, but he doesn’t speak for the rest of America. We in California and in states all across America believe it’s time to act, it’s time to join together and that’s why at this Climate Action Summit, we’re going to get it done.

So, see you there. Thanks.

Share
Advertisement

Republican business executive and Marine veteran challenges Rep. Ami Bera in Northern California race

Business executive and Marine Corps veteran Andrew Grant is challenging Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove) for a Northern California congressional seat coveted by both parties.

Grant, a Republican, is a newcomer to politics but has had a career steeped in defense, national security and foreign policy, including serving in the U.S. State Department after he left the military.

Grant said he plans to keep the campaign for the 7th District focused on the issues most critical to the county and his district, including healthcare, the economy and threats to national security. He said he wants to avoid getting caught up in the political “noise” in Washington.

And he’s well aware that Bera’s last three congressional races have been bruising political contests.

The 2016 race between Bera and Republican Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones was the most expensive in the state, drawing in more than $14.3 million. Mudslinging and allegations of wrongdoing were the focal point of the race, with ads that focused on Bera’s father being convicted of illegally funneling money to his son’s earlier congressional campaigns, and Jones being accused of sexual harassment.

“I’ve seen what happened in the past, and that’s unfortunate,” Grant said Thursday. “From me, you’re going to get honesty and accountability.”

Grant is the president and CEO of the Northern California World Trade Center in Sacramento, which supports U.S. export businesses, and used to be an executive with the Raley’s supermarket chain.

The U.S. Naval Academy graduate was born and raised in the east San Francisco Bay area. While an intelligence officer in the Marines, he served in combat duty in Kosovo, the Middle East and Afghanistan. At the State Department, he served as a specialist on North Korea and threats posed by terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Grant said that he voted for President Trump in November and that while all the president’s decisions have not been perfect, he has rightly focused on the concerns of working-class Americans.

Grant said he still is formulating detailed positions on issues such as healthcare and immigration. But he said he generally supports a market-based approach for healthcare. He was skeptical about the need for a massive wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and expressed sympathy for immigrants who seek a better life in the U.S.

Grant, 45, and his wife, Mary Ellen Grant, live in Folsom with their three children.

Bera, who won by 2.4% in November, also is being challenged by Republican Omba Kipuke, an immigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Share

Gov. Jerry Brown to call for a 2018 global climate summit in San Francisco

Gov. Jerry Brown
(Fred Dufour / AFP / Getty Images)

Continuing his bid to act as an envoy for the U.S. on climate change, Gov. Jerry Brown plans to issue a call Thursday for a global summit on “climate action” to be held in San Francisco in the fall of 2018.

The announcement is slated to come Thursday night in a video message for attendees of the Global Citizen Festival in Hamburg, Germany.

“It’s up to you and it’s up to me and tens of millions of other people to get it together to roll back the forces of carbonization and join together to combat the existential threat of climate change. That is why we’re having the Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, September 2018,” Brown will say in the recorded address, according to prepared remarks released by his office. The announcement was first reported by the New York Times.

“Yes, I know President Trump is trying to get out of the Paris Agreement, but he doesn’t speak for the rest of America,” Brown plans to say in his remarks. “We in California and in states all across America believe it’s time to act, it’s time to join together and that’s why at this Climate Action Summit we’re going to get it done.”

Brown has embraced a global role in his climate advocacy. He most recently traveled to China as America’s unoffical climate ambassador, and hosted the president of this year’s United Nations conference on climate change, Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento.

Closer to home, Brown has trained his energies on reauthorizing cap and trade, California’s signature program to combat climate change, which requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases. But so far, a proposal that would secure a supermajority vote in the Legislature has proved elusive.

Share
Advertisement

Kamala Harris works to forge relationship with Central Valley

The drought may be over in the minds of urban Californians, quite literally washed away by huge accumulations of rain last year that filled reservoirs and left the state’s mountains covered with snow even now.

But the farmers and others in the Central Valley, veterans of multiple drought-and-flood cycles, know the reprieve is only temporary. On Wednesday they pressed new U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris to work to ensure a more reliable source of water for the nation’s most bountiful farming region.

“This area is drying on the vine,” Ryan Jacobsen, executive director of the Fresno County Farm Bureau, told Harris during a roundtable with Central Valley officials.

A long-term solution can only come through federal and state action to protect the area’s water supply, he said.

Jason Phillips, chief executive of the Friant Water Authority, said recent rainfall had done little to stem problems caused by nearly a decade of drought.

A canal that runs from Fresno to north of Bakersfield sunk in some places as much as 2 feet in two years, he said, wreaking havoc on a system that operates on the force of gravity.

“We cannot get all the water to our growers,” he said.

The meeting between Harris and nearly two dozen agriculture and water officials was meant to ease what is typically a fraught relationship between the state’s Democratic leaders — all of whose power bases are in metropolitan areas — and the mostly Republican Central Valley powers that traditionally look at them with skepticism.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has worked for two decades to aid the agricultural industry — at the roundtable, several nodded as Harris referred to the senior senator as an “incredible warrior” for the area.

But Harris’ predecessor, former Sen. Barbara Boxer, was allied more with environmental groups that have fought dams and other water systems. As a result, she was viewed negatively by many here.

Harris was intent Wednesday on persuading the Central Valley representatives of her interest in places beyond her base in Alameda and San Francisco counties.

They, on the other hand, worked to convince her to be more in the Feinstein mold on issues important to the area — from reliable water to immigration programs to environmental protections that take into consideration the area’s needs.

President Trump was highly popular in much of the Central Valley, apart from Fresno County, which leans Democratic because of its metropolitan shadings. But some issues important to the valley cut in politically unorthodox ways.

Republicans here are more concerned than those elsewhere with passing a plan that would give legal status to immigrants, on whom agriculture depends. With undocumented workers worried about deportation, and the border tightening to those not yet here, the labor supply has already shrunk, farmers said.

“They’re out there working, being productive people,” said farmer Joe Del Bosque. “They work hard for us, and we have nowhere to reach.”

Del Bosque said he recently held a training session for new workers. Of the 200 people who showed up, only a handful were born in the United States, he said.

Environmental regulations prized by Democrats elsewhere are often frowned on by some party members here and blamed for the area’s water difficulties.

Several of the participants lobbied Harris for her support of dams that have long been under consideration by federal and state officials, particularly the Temperance Flat Dam, which would be constructed on the San Joaquin River.

Harris offered no assurances on the topic to the group on Wednesday. Afterward, speaking to reporters, she also did not take a position.

“One of the things that we’re going to have to figure out ... is what is the right solution for that,” she said of a plan to construct the Temperance Flat Dam and several others. “Is it going to be about the building of dams? Is it also going to be about looking at — also looking at — other sources of renewable and sustainable reliable sources?”

Both sides signaled they did not expect an alliance on all fronts. But Harris said she would serve as an advocate for farmers during the crafting of a new farm bill and other measures before the Senate.

William Bourdeau, executive vice president of the politically influential Harris Farms, told the senator he wished the majority of her supporters who reside in urban areas would have a “better understanding” of the risks and challenges of farming.

“We need somebody to explain the symbiotic relationship we have,” he said.

“I agree with you completely,” she replied.

Share

Rep. Jeff Denham gets a seventh Democratic challenger in bid for Central Valley’s 10th District

Democratic engineer TJ Cox will challenge Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock) in the 10th Congressional District, making him the seventh Democrat to sign up to oppose Denham.

Cox, 53, has already run for Congress in the area. In 2006, he lost to Rep. George Radanovich with 39.4% of the vote in what was then the 19th Congressional District. Denham succeeded Radanovich in 2011, and the district boundaries have since been redrawn.

Cox said the same “excesses and outrages” that motivated him to run in 2006 are spurring him to run again, and with more voters registering as Democrats or with no party preference, he thinks the odds are better that a Democrat could win the district.

“I have to; I feel like we have to,” he said. “It’s the duty of every American who cares about this country and about our values to stand up and do something.”

Cox has an engineering degree from the University of Nevada and a master’s in business administration from Southern Methodist University. Born in California but raised in Nevada and New Mexico, Cox moved to Fresno with his family in 2000, where he’s been registered to vote since 2003. He said on Wednesday he’ll soon be moving his family to a Modesto home that is within the congressional district. He registered to vote at that home June 12.

Cox in 2011 founded Central Valley NMTC Fund, an organization that invests millions in public and private funds in economically disadvantaged Central Valley communities. The group’s projects include building community health clinics, agricultural education programs and the North Fork Bioenergy Plant, according to his campaign. He also owns an organic nut processing plant in Madera.

The district includes all of Stanislaus County and the southern third of San Joaquin County, and includes Modesto, Tracy and Turlock. It’s dependent on the agricultural industry and is among the poorest areas of the country.

Denham won reelection by less than 5% in 2016 after Democrats sought to tie him to now-President Trump, who lost the district. Democrats are aiming for him again.

Cox indicated he plans to pursue a similar strategy in 2018, saying Denham is “complicit” in Trump’s policies, especially because he supported the GOP healthcare bill, which would potentially reduce the number of people who qualify for Medi-Cal.

“He’s an unabashed shoe shiner for Trump,” Cox said.

Cox said he wants to focus on healthcare, job creation and infrastructure, such as the high-speed rail project that Denham opposes.

“Most of our tax dollars, they go to Washington and they don’t come back,” Cox said. “We need more support from the federal government, at least our fair share of dollars coming back.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee responded to Cox’s candidacy by saying he and the rest of the Democrats in the race will battle “it out in a bloody race to the left.”

“TJ Cox may not even live in the district he’s running in, but we can assume he will fall in line with Nancy Pelosi’s single-payer, tax-hiking liberal policies,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Jack Pandol said.

6:58 p.m. For the record: A previous version of this post misstated the number of people who have filed to run against Denham. Seven Democrats and one independent candidate are running for the seat, not seven people total.

This post was originally published at 3:34 p.m.

Share
Advertisement

California candidate for lieutenant governor uses Arabic and Urdu ads to ‘reach every community we can’

Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Asif Mahmood has launched a social media campaign in Arabic and Urdu hoping to tap into what he sees as a potentially influential pool of voters in California’s Muslim and South Asian communities.

Mahmood, a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan and a Los Angeles physician, uses President Trump as a political foil in this Facebook ad campaign. Trump called for a “Muslim ban” when he was running for president and a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June allowed a limited version of Trump’s 90-day ban on travel from six mostly Muslim countries to go into effect.

“As a Muslim immigrant from California, he’s a triple threat to Donald Trump. And he’s going to fight against Trump and stand up for our families,” the ads say in both Arabic and Urdu.

The ads also tout his support for “healthcare for all Americans” and environmental protections.

Mahmood said in an interview he hopes the social media campaign will captivate people from those communities who have not been active in politics.

“We’re trying to reach every community we can,” he said.

Urdu is one of the official languages of Pakistan, and is spoken in parts of India, Bangladesh and other countries in South Asia. Arabic is spoken in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world.

A 2015 census study found that more than 153,000 Californians spoke Arabic and just over 45,000 spoke Urdu.

In his bid for lieutenant governor, Mahmood faces a crowded field of Democrats that includes Azusa state Sen. Ed Hernandez, former U.S. ambassador to Hungary Eleni Kounalakis and former U.S. ambassador to Australia Jeff Bleich.

Share

Why are not enough homes are getting built? Your questions on California’s failed housing supply law

Times readers had great questions in response to our deep dive into California’s housing supply law.

They wanted to know why costs are still rising if some cities are meeting their housing goals, the causes of the housing shortage, whether new home building only benefits affluent people and why the state is involved in local development decisions at all.

Here are our answers.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

The race for California governor gains a new Republican candidate

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Arguing that California is at a crucial crossroads, Republican David Hadley has announced a bid to be the state’s next governor. The former one-term Assemblyman, who worked in finance before founding an investment banking firm, could galvanize the GOP establishment in a state where it is at a significant disadvantage.

Hadley, 52, is the third prominent Republican to enter the field, joining businessman John Cox and Assemblyman Travis Allen. The Democratic field is similarly crowded.

“I’ve decided that I can fill an important role in this election. I think we can win this race, I think we can bring important changes and important reforms to California and I think I’m the right guy to do it,” Hadley told The Times, saying that it was key to have a GOP voice make the general election. “We can’t have this race be a debate between a Democrat and a socialist.”

Read More

Share

At naturalization ceremony and healthcare rally, Kamala Harris goes after Trump and his GOP allies

California Sen. Kamala Harris employed subtlety and a sledgehammer on Monday during a set of local appearances meant to rally supporters against President Trump and his Republican allies in Congress.

At a naturalization ceremony for 40 children aboard the battleship Iowa in the Port of Los Angeles, the Democratic Harris did not mention the president’s name. But her words evoked the travel ban he sought to impose one week into his tenure and the protests his plan incurred at airports and elsewhere.

She said the meaning of Tuesday’s Independence Day extended beyond fireworks and picnics to those protests.

“Whenever you feel the future is threatened … you must speak up, you must speak out,” she told new citizens aboard the vessel, now a maritime museum moored in San Pedro. “That’s the whole point of the freedoms we cherish.”

She pushed back repeatedly at Trump’s characterizations of immigrants. The president has sought to eradicate illegal immigration and has announced he wants to curb legal immigration, ranking those with proven financial standing over immigrants with family ties.

“A reminder that immigrants don’t just believe in America; immigrants have built America,” said Harris, the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica. “When I see you, I see our future. I see patriots who will make our future more inclusive and more innovative.”

At her next stop, a rally of Obamacare supporters at Harbor- UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Harris’ tone grew mocking as she called on hundreds of healthcare workers and union members to protest Republican efforts to repeal the measure.

She took particular aim at the language used by the GOP plan’s opponents: that it would cause tens of millions of Americans to “lose” healthcare coverage.

“It’s not like we left our healthcare on the bus, or at the club or in an Uber,” she said. “This is not about losing something. They’re trying to take our healthcare.”

“Don’t take our stuff,” she added, a refrain that was repeated by later speakers.

Harris said Obamacare opponents were “fixated” on the program’s nickname and their desire to punish former President Obama by repealing his signature domestic act.

She also mocked the team of Republicans who came up with the Senate plan — all white men, whom she described as “this group that looks exactly like each other and not like most of us here.”

“They’re pretending this is about healthcare. This is about a tax cut” that would benefit only the wealthiest Americans, she said. “Not on our watch.”

The reality of California politics is that Harris does not face the cross-pressures being leveled this holiday week on senators representing competitive states. She encouraged supporters to push Republican senators from those states to block repeal efforts.

And she had advice for the senators: “Look in your backyard. Look in the mirror and check yourself and do the right thing.”

Share
Advertisement

Single-payer healthcare backers fan out at California Capitol to protest shelving of bill

Supporters of a stalled single-payer healthcare bill returned to the Capitol in Sacramento on Monday to express their anger that Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) shelved the measure more than a week ago.

Backers of the bill, SB 562, disrupted a separate hearing on the Assembly floor by unfurling a banner from the gallery before being escorted out. They also attended a hearing of the Assembly Rules Committee, the panel in which Rendon held back the bill, holding up signs on which they’d written personal healthcare stories. And a small contingent staged a “sit-in” near Rendon’s office, chanting “SB 562.”

Rendon called the bill “woefully incomplete” and has shown no appetite to advance the bill, but Pilar Schiavo, an organizer with Healthy California, an advocacy group backing the measure, said supporters plan to keep up the pressure.

“We continue to build. There is incredible grassroots movement around this,” Schiavo said, adding of the enthusiasm around single-payer, “it’s too late to put it back in the box.”

Share

Hate crimes rise in California, state report says

California is seeing an increase in hate crimes.

There were 931 incidents in 2016, an 11.2% spike over 2015, the state Department of Justice reported Monday.

More than half of those involved bias based on race, ethnicity or national origin. The second-most-common incidents were based on sexual orientation.

Race-based hate crimes jumped 21.3%, the report said.

Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the state, saw the most hate crimes: 375.

State Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said the report is consistent with findings of an increase in national hate crimes motivated by biases against racial minorities, Muslims, people with disabilities, women, immigrants and the LGBTQ community.

“When someone commits a crime motivated by hate, it is not just an attack on one innocent person, but an attack on the entire State and our communities,” Becerra said in a statement. “We can see from today’s report that words matter, and discriminatory rhetoric does not make us stronger but divides us and puts the safety of our communities at risk.”

Other findings of the report, which also looked at the 10-year trend:

  • Hate crimes with an anti-African American bias motivation continue to be the most common, accounting for 31.3% (3,262) of all hate crime events since 2007.
  • Hate crimes with a sexual-orientation bias are the second-most-common type of incident over the last 10 years, accounting for 22.2% in 2016.
  • Hate crimes with an anti-gay (male) bias increased 40.7% from 108 in 2015 to 152 in 2016.
  • Hate crimes with an anti-Jewish motivation continue to be the most common within the religion bias category, accounting for 11.1% (1,158) of events reported since 2007.
Share
Advertisement

Sen. Kamala Harris greets supporters at healthcare protest in Torrance

A couple hundred people showed up to rally against the GOP healthcare plan at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center today, and California Sen. Kamala Harris showed up to greet them. The hospital’s chief doctor told supporters that Obamacare “was a gamechanger” for patients.

Share

There’s at least one reason why Sacramento lawmakers aren’t taking a long holiday weekend

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Sacramento streets were quiet Monday, with many of the capital city’s professionals adding an extra day to a long weekend stretching through the July 4th holiday.

But not lawmakers, who dutifully returned to the state Capitol for a single day of work. And, of course, their stipend for living expenses.

California’s state Constitution makes clear that lawmakers don’t receive their “per diem” allowance if the Legislature is “in recess for more than three calendar days.” The daily payment is now set at $183, and is in addition to a legislator’s annual salary.

The “per diem” rule often results in quick legislative sessions immediately before three-day weekends, thus keeping the salary supplements in place.

Even so, lawmakers do have pending items to work on this week. Most closely watched are the ongoing negotiations to extend California’s cap-and-trade program, the centerpiece of the state’s effort to reduce greenhouse gases.

July will end up being the shortest legislative month of the year. With Friday almost always being an in-the-district workday, lawmakers are expected to be in Sacramento a total of just 11 days this month. The Legislature’s monthlong summer recess begins on July 21.

Share
Advertisement

Caltrans predicts new taxes will allow major increase in highway and bridge repairs

A construction worker digs next to a roadway at Los Angeles International Airport.
A construction worker digs next to a roadway at Los Angeles International Airport.
(Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Anticipating billions of dollars from new tax increases, the California Department of Transportation is predicting it will make significant headway during the next decade on delayed highway and bridge repairs.

The Legislature and governor recently approved new gas taxes and vehicle fees starting in November to fund such repairs.

A 10-year Highway Operations and Protection Plan submitted by Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty predicts an improved system of primary roads and bridges with money from the new taxes, albeit still with billions of dollars in funding shortfalls to complete 100% of the roadwork that needs to be done during the next decade.

The report says the new tax money will result “in an additional 17,000 miles of pavement repaired; an additional 500 bridges repaired or replaced; an additional 55,000 culverts and drains repaired; and an additional 7,700 signals, signs and sensors repaired or replaced.”

About 24% of pavement on state highways is in poor condition, but the report says the new spending will put 98% of pavement in good or fair condition.

About 10% of bridges are in poor condition, but the spending will put 98.5% of bridge decks in good or fair condition, the report says.

Share

Rep. Brad Sherman speaks at Trump impeachment march in Los Angeles

Demonstrators calling for President Trump's impeachment gather in downtown L.A.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Porter Ranch) was among the speakers at an anti-President Trump rally attended by thousands in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday after a march calling for the president’s impeachment.

“We have to act now to protect our country from abuse of power and impulsive, ignorant incompetence,” Sherman told the crowd near City Hall. The crowd cheered and began chanting, “Lock him up.”

The San Fernando Valley lawmaker has put himself at odds with House Democratic leaders by drafting and circulating articles of impeachment, accusing Trump of trying to thwart the FBI’s investigation into Flynn.

Read More

Share
Advertisement

California Politics Podcast: The showdown over single-payer healthcare may not be over

Supporters of legislation to create a single-payer healthcare plan in California haven’t backed down from demanding that the bill be revived at the state Capitol, even as lawmakers seem set to move on.

On this week’s California Politics Podcast, we take a closer look at the political firestorm that erupted when the bill was sidelined by the speaker of the state Assembly -- a move that was viewed much differently by those in Sacramento compared with activists across the state.

We also discuss the exclusive Los Angeles Times report on California’s 50-year-old state law designed to help communities plan for their housing needs, but has been often ignored by local officials.

I’m joined by Times staff writers Melanie Mason and Liam Dillon.

Share

Soaring ambition, sober reality as L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s second term begins

(Cliff Owen / Associated Press)

When Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti flew to Wisconsin for a Democratic Party gathering in the presidential swing state last month, he went well-rehearsed for questions about his career plans.

A Milwaukee news anchor asked him, predictably, whether a big-city mayor might capture the White House.

“No mayor’s been president since Grover Cleveland,” Garcetti responded, casting doubt on his insistence back home that he spends no time thinking about such things.

As Garcetti prepares to be sworn in Saturday for his second term as mayor, speculation about whether he might soon run for governor or the U.S. Senate has given way to a new question: Could he be seriously considering a campaign for president?

The election of President Trump has scrambled the political calculus for many would-be White House contenders in 2020. As far-fetched as a Garcetti candidacy might sound to those who have followed his career at City Hall, it’s the mayor himself who has stoked the chatter about his prospects, not least with his jaunt to Wisconsin.

“I think all the rules are off,” Garcetti, 46, told the Milwaukee television station. “No African American could be president until one was. No reality star could be president until one is.”

Read More

Share
Advertisement