With a seeming vote of confidence from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California – the giant agency that supplies water to about half the state’s 38 million residents – Gov. Jerry Brown appears set to soldier ahead with his $17 billion plan to build two 35-mile-long tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Brown’s view that the tunnels are crucial both to stabilize the Delta ecosystem and to shore up the state’s water distribution system was rejected last week by the board of the Westlands Water District, which voted 7-1 against joining in the “California WaterFix” project. Westlands – the nation’s largest agricultural water district with 600,000 acres of farmland in Fresno and Kings counties – had been counted on to cover about $3 billion of the project’s total cost.

But Westlands officials voted “no” after expressing concern both about the high price-tag they’d have to pay and about whether WaterFix truly would make water supplies more consistent and reliable. The water district was the first in the state to decide on whether to sign up for the project, and its decisive early opposition appeared to stun some supporters.

This led to reports that Brown’s legacy project could be all but dead by Oct. 10, when the MWD is scheduled to vote on whether to participate. The agency is expected to cover $4 billion of the project’s cost.

But on Tuesday, MWD leaders indicated that at least for now, they were still supportive. Board member Larry McKenney said it was in MWD’s interest to try to promote confidence in the project going forward, according to a Sacramento Bee report. MWD shares Brown’s view that the project is crucial for long-term water distribution reliability.

Brown’s would-be successors cool to his plan

Yet the MWD reprieve might not save the day for WaterFix. For months, Sacramento insiders have noted that Brown appears far more enthusiastic about the project than other significant players in state politics – including those running to succeed him as governor next year.

Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton reported Tuesday that Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Treasurer John Chiang and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had each expressed doubts about the project. Newsom and Chiang worried about its environmental impact on the Delta and beyond, while Villaraigosa suggested bold new conservation programs should be tried to see if they could save enough water to make the tunnels unnecessary.

But even if the Westlands district, Newsom, Chiang and Villaraigosa were all on the WaterFix bandwagon, its future would hardly be assured. Environmentalists have a long history of suing and winning over California water policies. In June, they filed the first two of what could be several federal lawsuits targeting Brown’s project in response to a preliminary go-ahead given by the Trump administration.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Defenders of Wildlife, the Bay Institute and the Golden Gate Salmon Association alleged that the project would wipe out salmon, smelt and other fish and would worsen water quality not just in the Delta but the San Francisco Bay.

While the Trump administration gave initial approval to WaterFix, it too could prove a wildcard. House Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and other GOP lawmakers from California have urged the White House to challenge water allocation policies they have long argued favor Delta fish over human beings.

While it didn’t register as significant news in California, Trump’s nomination of David Bernhardt to the No. 2 job in the Interior Department this spring suggested changes in how the federal government deals with water in the Golden State could be in the offing.

As CalWatchdog reported in June, Bernhardt is a Colorado-based partner in Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a law firm which has represented the Westlands Water District in federal lawsuits targeting Interior Department policies. This background and other concerns led 43 Senate Democrats to vote against his confirmation in July.

President Trump on Wednesday launched the

At a ceremony at a Detroit-area auto facility after meeting with auto executives, Trump declared his intention to pursue “fair” regulations that “protect and defend” jobs.

Before his remarks, Trump staffers gave background briefings to reporters on his plans to scrap mileage rules approved by President Obama’s EPA in his final weeks on the job. The new rules would require cars and small trucks to average 54.5 miles per gallon in 2025, up from the present 36 miles per gallon.

Automakers were unhappy with the Obama administration’s speedy decision-making – new rules weren’t required until 2018. They believe the rules will require them to sell vehicles Americans don’t want to buy in an era in which gasoline prices are low and relatively stable because of a heavy increase in domestic oil production. Warning that the new rules would put more than 1 million jobs at risk, automakers have been lobbying Trump since they were enacted.

Brown administration officials have already filed a challenge to Trump’s directive, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Any weakening or delay of the national standards will result in increased harms to our natural resources, our economy, and our people,” the brief asserted.

13 states use California’s tougher standards

But while the president rattled state officials with his actions, he didn’t go as far as some environmentalists feared.

Under the federal Clean Air Act of 1970, California was given the right to waive federal vehicle mileage rules in favor of stricter standards because of the state’s severe problems with smog and ozone pollution in Southern California. The waiver allows other states to follow California’s tougher standards. Thirteen do, and as a result about 40 percent of the nation’s residents who buy about 40 percent of vehicles do so under California’s stricter rules, irking automakers who don’t like to have to deal with what are essentially two national standards.

The Trump administration could have tried to end California’s waiver entirely or prevent other states from using the Golden State’s rules. Instead, Reuters reported the administration hopes to work with the state on a compromise.

But that is close to certain to be a nonstarter, given Brown’s and the California Legislature’s approval of a law requiring the state to have greenhouse-gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Achieving that goal appears close to impossible without sharply cutting emissions from the state’s transportation sector, which generates 36 percent of California’s carbon emissions, according to the most recent statistics.

Vehicle emissions rule a potent weapon for state regulators

Stanford environmental law professor Michael Wara said tough vehicle mileage standards have been the state’s strongest tool in combating greenhouse gas emissions.

“California is going to fight, to deploy every resource it has, to keep this stuff, because this is big,” Wara told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Wednesday’s developments were foreshadowed by the January confirmation hearing of Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, like Trump a climate change skeptic and longtime EPA critic. Under questioning by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-San Francisco, Pruitt refused to say whether the Trump administration supported allowing California to continue to waive federal air pollution rules in favor of tougher standards.

Given that California’s waiver is written into federal law, it is unclear whether the Trump administration could force the state to follow federal rules. In 2008, George W. Bush’s administration challenged new state rules, prompting a lawsuit from then-Attorney General Jerry Brown that was joined by 15 other states. But no court decision was forthcoming before Barack Obama succeeded Bush the following year. The Obama administration quickly dropped the challenge.

In an uncertain political landscape, cap and trade in California faced a fresh hurdle as hearings began before an appeals court over the constitutional legitimacy of the regime. 

“A long-running lawsuit filed by the California Chamber of Commerce seeks to have the system declared an illegal business tax that should have required a two-thirds vote of the legislature to take effect,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “Oral arguments in the case, first filed in 2012, are scheduled to begin in January.”

“Gov. Jerry Brown, who has made addressing climate change a central part of his legacy, spent much of the summer trying to convince legislators to explicitly extend the system past 2020. But he set a high bar, trying to line up the support of two thirds of legislators, in case the Chamber of Commerce won its suit. Republicans and business-friendly Democrats balked.”

That set the stage for the state Chamber of Commerce to bring a challenge. Rather than making a direct frontal attack on the provisions of California’s landmark emissions legislation, its lawsuit claims that California lacks an adequate legal ground to perform one of its central tasks, arguing “the state has no right to sell permits and generate revenue,” Reuters noted. 

A long road

The Chamber’s suit was accepted for hearings along with a separate filing, which could result in joint appeals if the court ends up siding with the California Air Resources Board. The plaintiff in the second lawsuit is Morning Star Packing Company, “the world’s largest tomato processor and a company that is required to buy carbon-emissions permits through the program,” as the Christian Science Monitor observed. “The case is expected to reach the state Supreme Court, as both sides have said they will appeal if they lose.”

Although, four years ago, the Sacramento Superior Court ruled that CARB “was given broad authority to design a program to meet emissions targets, including the sale of permits,” Reuters added, “CalChamber’s appeal of that ruling has kept the issue alive, casting a shadow over the emissions trading market, which has at times suffered a lack of participation due to uncertainty over its future. Despite the state’s earlier victory, the Third Appellate District Court’s request last year for supplemental information indicates they are taking a close look[.]”

The money factor

Still, this year, the market for carbon bounced back to a degree from previous lows. “For much of 2016, many companies appeared to be boycotting the state’s emissions-trading system,” the Chronicle noted, with buyers hesitant to commit if the system’s end might be in sight. “In May, when the state held its quarterly auction of greenhouse gas permits, only 11 percent sold.” This week, however, “state officials reported the results of the year’s last quarterly auction, held Nov. 15 — and they showed a dramatic rebound,” the paper reported. “This time, companies snapped up more than 88 percent of the current-year permits offered, the best performance of any quarterly auction since February.”

Critics of the lawsuit, including CARB, have warned that a defeat in court could wipe out a myriad of projects reliant on cap-and-trade revenues for funding. “Auction revenue is a key funding source for a high-speed rail project seeking to link Los Angeles and San Francisco by train,” the Associated Press recalled. “It also generates billions for transit construction, housing and energy conservation efforts.” But the state Chamber has countered that even a clear victory would leave a broad array of options open for the air authority. “If the auction is allowed to stand, there’s nothing to prevent the California Air Resources Board from inventing new ways to raise revenue, James Parrinello, a lawyer representing the Chamber of Commerce, told the judges.”

The water contamination scandal in Flint, Michigan, triggered national outrage and prompted Congress last month to pass a bill rushing

The local regulators who knew about the severity of lead contamination and protected themselves but not the community are facing criminal charges. That’s because a high presence of lead in the blood is associated with low IQs and cognitive problems and can be devastating for infants and children.

Now a massive study by Reuters — based on federal health data from 21 states and broken down by ZIP code — points to at least 13 areas in California with problems as bad or worse than what is now seen in Flint, where 5 percent of tested children have elevated levels of lead in their blood. The national norm is 2.5 percent.

Oakland neighborhood has worst problem

The problem appears worst in the Oakland community of Fruitvale (ZIP code 94601), where 7.57 percent of children had high levels of lead.

Next is the Seaside-Sand City area (ZIP 93955) east of Monterey, where the rate was 7.44 percent.

Nine ZIP codes were in the Fresno area, which has already had a lead scare this year, as CalWatchdog reported in August. The results were worst in Selma, 15 miles southeast of Fresno (ZIP 93662), where 6.62 percent of children had high levels of lead in the their blood.

The last two California communities with lead contamination problems worse than Flint were in Los Angeles County.

In south-central Los Angeles (ZIP 90011) in an area east of the 110 Freeway and south of the 10 Freeway, the rate of children with elevated lead in their blood was 5.28 percent.

In the Rosemead-South San Gabriel area (ZIP 91770), the rate was 5.17 percent.

The federal health statistics are mostly based on blood samples from at least 500 children in each ZIP code for five- or 10-year increments ending in 2015. California did much better that most of the 20 other states whose data was studied. In total, 278 ZIP codes had much worse lead problems than Flint, with the biggest concentration in industrial centers in the Midwest and in areas with a history of heavy mining.

Flint fits that profile. But its problems were at the least exacerbated by city officials’ 2014 decision to stop bringing in water from the Detroit system in favor of a switch to cheaper local sources, including the heavily polluted Flint River.

When lead contamination problems are found in the United States, the problem is usually exposure to lead-based paint, especially in older housing, and from old water pipes.

Official misconduct in Fresno endangered residents

Such pipes caused the lead scare in Fresno earlier this year, but official misconduct was part of the problem. In January, after many reports of discolored water, Fresno officials began reviewing how the city water agency dealt with complaints. They discovered that a water official named Robert Moorhead had failed to pass along as many as 1,400 complaints from 2005 to 2011 about problems with water from the treatment plant in northeast Fresno that he managed. Moorhead, who was fired for undisclosed reasons in 2011, has denied wrongdoing.

But a subsequent city probe found evidence of excessive lead in pipes in 51 of the first 280 homes it inspected, or 18 percent. Eventually, city officials warned residents of the 93710, 93720 and 93730 ZIP codes that they could have pipe problems and thus potential exposure to excessive lead.

But the Reuters study should offer some relief to residents of those ZIP codes. None were found to have Flint-level contamination rates.

With just a few years left in his marathon return tour as California governor, Jerry Brown has promised not to back down on his climate policy in the face of what could be a powerful change in priorities from above in a Donald Trump administration.

Moving to reassure his party earlier in the election season, Gov. Brown had signaled critics of his approach to environmental policy that he’d organize opposition to their agenda if they increased their political power. “In August, Brown vowed to ‘vanquish’ climate change skeptics,” the Los Angeles Times recalled. “‘Bring it on,’ Brown said at the time. ‘We’ll have more battles, and more victories.'”

Now, in his first remarks after Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, Brown promised “to do his part to find common ground with the president-elect,” but “put Trump on notice that ‘as Californians, we will also stay true to our basic principles,” as the Bee also reported. “We will protect the precious rights of our people and continue to confront the existential threat of our time — devastating climate change.”

Competing interests

Although analysts have often hesitated to predict that a Trump administration will follow through on all the promises the candidate had made or qualified on the campaign trail, liberals and progressives have expressed special concern over what Trump might do on climate change, such as backing out of promises made at the recent landmark Paris talks — where a delegation of California Democrats played a high-profile role.

“Brown has repeatedly contrasted the intransigence gripping Washington with California’s progressive policy approaches, from joining other countries to address the threat of climate change to shielding the rights of unauthorized immigrants,” the Bee added. “In the statement, the fourth-term governor moved past his earlier criticism of Trump, and didn’t directly address the incoming president’s dismissal of climate change as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.”

California Democrats have braced for harder sledding ahead on the environment. Democratic strategist Steve Maviglio told the San Jose Mercury News, “Republicans now have a free hand to intervene in California’s battles over water, which often pit agribusiness against environmentalists and fisherman. Water allocations for imperiled species like Chinook salmon could be tightened. It’s one of many conflicts he foresees,” the paper noted. 

Increased anxiety

Party fears have arisen that without a supportive president, California could begin to change shape in Americans’ minds from a bellwether and vanguard state into a marginal outlier. “Trump’s stunning election threatens years of Democratic progress here and deprives the state’s ambitious social change agenda of a sure collaborator in Clinton,” as the Bee suggested. “From local concerns like affordable housing and homelessness, to statewide priorities such as climate change, health care, immigration reform, gun control and the protection of organized labor, nowhere is the nation’s embrace of Trump felt more acutely than in deep-blue California.”

But not all leadership figures popular on the west coast have fueled anxiety. Brown has worked to steer clear of what has become sometimes frantic criticism of Trump from within his party, projecting a steely-yet-relaxed demeanor reminiscent of Bernie Sanders’ recent pledge to work with the incoming administration where possible and to oppose it elsewhere. At a dinner in Sacramento for labor organizers last week, Brown joked “that if Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump wins the presidency, California would build its own wall at the state’s border — an obvious reference to Trump’s ambition to build a wall between the United States and Mexico,” as the San Francisco Chronicle noted. “If Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country,” said Brown, caught on video reported by the Sacramento Bee.

California’s environmental regulators have revisited their credit program for zero emissions vehicles, which hasn’t done enough to position the state for the kind of carbon savings needed to meet future targets. 

The zero-emissions subsidy hasn’t suffered from a lack of funding in the recent past. “Earlier this year, not long after declaring victory on a hard-fought measure expanding the state’s emission reduction mandate, Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers announced a late-session deal on where to send some of the revenue from the state’s cap-and-trade program,” the Fresno Bee recalled. “A big chunk of money in the compromise went to the Air Resource Board’s Low-Carbon Transportation initiative, including over $200 million to bolster programs offering financial incentives for purchasing cleaner vehicles.”

But Brown and the board have struggled to figure out just how to pump zero-emission vehicle acquisitions up to where they must be for California to hit its ambitious emissions targets in coming years. “Brown has argued business interests and resistant legislators will prefer the reliability of cap-and-trade to more stringent dictates,” the paper added earlier this month. “Whether or not the Legislature musters a vote to extend the program beyond a 2020 limit set in statute, the ARB has already begun sculpting regulations that could sustain the system without a vote.”

A transcript of a voicemail for John Podesta — at the time a top adviser to Obama — shows the Los Angeles Democrat asking if the president could mention Senate Bill 350 during a then-upcoming speech on clean energy in Nevada.

“Appreciate you taking my call,” de Leon said, according to the transcript. “Appreciate you telling me that the President will be in LV on Monday. It’s his hope [sic] that the President can make some sort of announcement in support of 350 or in support of what we’re trying to do in the legislature.”

SB350 — which requires an 50 percent increase of usage of renewable electricity in the state by the end of 2030 — was signed into law, but it faced tremendous opposition from the oil industry, which successfully lobbied against a petroleum-restriction provision that was ultimately dropped.

“Oil companies have been trying to defeat the bill,” de Leon said. “Targets are the African Americans in the lower house.” 

The oil lobby targeted business-friendly Democrats of all races in the Assembly, according to disclosures and media reports. A de Leon spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for clarification.

However, de Leon did get his wish. At the National Clean Energy Summit on August 25, 2015, Obama praised California’s efforts on SB350. 

“Leaders in California are aiming to generate 50 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2030 — 50 percent,” Obama said. 

In July, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District was considering whether to hire additional staffers to assist with administering a new regulation when board member Shirlee Zane boasted “this air board, quite frankly, is flush.”

“We can more than afford to hire … extra help to do the assessment,” said Zane, a Sonoma County supervisor.

“We have plenty of money,” Zane added — a sentiment echoed by Katie Rice, a board member and Marin County supervisor.

While the rosy perception of the district’s finances may have been isolated to just a few board members, the willingness to spend on additional staff and a lavish New Orleans trip coincided with what’s become a routine increase in fees charged to those local businesses considered stationary sources of air pollution — costs which experts say are then passed onto consumers. 

New Orleans

Two months prior to Zane’s comments, Jack Broadbent, the district’s executive director, sent a letter encouraging all board members and staff to attend the Air and Waste Management Association’s 109th annual conference in “vibrant” New Orleans, to “witness the rebirth of this spectacular region of the Gulf Coast.”

The conference was an opportunity to “address environmental issues that can best be approached in a collaborative setting,” wrote Broadbent, who sits on the association’s Board of Directors.

Twenty-five people took advantage of Broadbent’s offer, costing the district $54,000, which included a $2,300 dinner for everyone. All of this was absorbed by an out-of-state travel budget that more than doubled this fiscal year. 

The conference’s website included a packed schedule, but also highlighted the many tourist attractions available, like carriage tours, shopping opportunities, cooking classes, art museums and steamboat cruises. 

District spokesperson Kristine Roselius said the trip’s average of $2,160 per person was an “appropriate” cost for the level of training received, which included “the opportunity to learn from air quality experts and learn the latest academic research, innovative approaches to measurement and quality science from engineers and scientists from all over the world.”

Fee increases

The district aims to have 85 percent of expenses covered by fees associated with things like equipment permitting and inspection, while the rest comes mostly from Bay Area property taxes. However, the district is only recovering about 81 percent of its costs through fees, with the gap costing around $8 million. 

Fees have increased each year for some time, as have general expenses. Roselius said the travel budget is still rebounding from the cost-cutting days of the last budget crisis, and that the district considers the effect on consumers when increasing fees, adding that there’s a state-imposed, 15 percent cap on annual increases.

“We look at the impact on the business/facility through our detailed socio-economic analysis,” Roselius said. “This helps us weigh this against the cost recovery percentage and what percentage the fees will increase.”

Someone’s gotta pay

While power plants, chemical plants and petroleum refineries fall under the district’s jurisdiction, so do smaller businesses like gas stations, dry cleaners, auto body shops and manufacturers of all sizes. Even boilers at schools, hospitals and apartment buildings are subject to the districts fees and regulations.

Some businesses may be situated to absorb higher fees. But most of the time, an increase in expenses will get passed through to consumers with higher prices for goods and services.

“Anytime you move on fees, somebody’s going to pay the price,” said Tom Scott, the National Federation of Independent Business’ executive director for California. 

Most industries in the state are subjected to some kind of regulatory costs, though those considered to have a higher environmental impact are often hit the hardest — this can have a lopsided effect on the overall economy.

The Bay Area has enjoyed a consistent hiring surge in the past few years, with gains primarily in technology, health care and leisure and hospitality. Meanwhile, statewide manufacturing job creation — long considered the backbone of the American middle class — lags far behind the national average. 

Moving on up

Based on an internal study, the district aims to keep a reserve fund of at least 20 percent of the annual budget, which comes to around $15 million. 

At least $9 million of the reserve fund will be used as a down payment on a new office space. This year the district moved out of a building it owned in San Francisco to a new location nearby, which it will share with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments.

BAAQMD has plans of purchasing the new space for somewhere around $29 million. The prior building, which was owned by the district, sold for around $16 million. 

The new building is supposed to improve communication between the organizations, while the old building was outdated and needed $30 million in renovations, according to BAAQMD documents. 

Currently, the reserve fund is projected to have around $7 million more than the desired minimum, which no doubt aided Zane (and Rice) in her willingness to spend. But she wasn’t looking at the whole picture, said Roselius.

“The statement by one board member about the state of the Air District finances did not take into account what will be paid out soon when the Air District puts its down payment toward the cost of the new building,” Roselius said.

Over staunch opposition on his right, Gov. Jerry Brown signed several new climate bills into law, aiming to keep California on the regulatory trajectory first set during former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration. 

That suite of laws, “in which polluters pay to offset emissions under a declining cap, is on tenuous footing amid litigation and uncertainty in the Legislature,” the Sacramento Bee noted. The idea of a new set of rules, “negotiated by Brown and legislative leaders last month, was significant to many moderate Democrats who viewed spending in their districts as critical to buttress a state climate program that has faced heavy resistance from industry,” the paper added. 

Complex divisions

Some Democrats with that stance have worried that national and statewide populist sentiment could pose an especially sharp threat to their political fortunes this election year. Complicating the ideological picture still further, “many lawmakers representing low-income communities of color made themselves a force in the state’s climate change debate after complaints that existing policies weren’t doing enough to benefit the districts they represent,” as the Los Angeles Times noted. 

But Democrats further to the left did not want to back down, or be seen as backing down, to industry interests. At the same time, however, their own interests have not shifted measurably closer to Gov. Brown’s, which have wound up at loggerheads with party members to his left over allocations to projects such as the state’s bullet train. With talks moving slowly, “Brown negotiated the spending plan with top Democratic legislative leaders Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon of Paramount and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon of Los Angeles,” according to KPBS. “It was approved on the last day of the legislative session, Aug. 31.”

Big ticket

Environmental activists and policymakers embracing their cause had to scramble to craft the fresh scheme in a way that seemed to ensure it could survive a spirited fight during the legislative process. “The new plan, outlined in SB32, involves increasing renewable energy use, putting more electric cars on the road, improving energy efficiency, and curbing emissions from key industries,” NPR reported. “Brown signed another bill, AB197, that gives lawmakers more oversight of regulators and provides aid to low-income or minority communities located near polluting facilities such as oil refineries and factories.” All told, the package amounted to some $900 million in outlays sourced from the state’s cap-and-trade revenues. “The money represents two-thirds of the available funding from California’s carbon-emission fee,” noted KPBS.

On hand for Brown’s signing ceremony in Fresno, Republican Mayor Ashley Swearengin touted the prospect of statewide infrastructure construction associated with Brown’s environmental agenda, which would include the long-simmering high-speed rail effort. With success, “Swearengin added, the Valley will see a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 20 years,” the Business Journal noted.

Lingering resistance

But business, energy and conservative groups, which had struggled to turn the tide against the bills, quickly vented their frustration. “Taken together, SB32 and AB197 impose severe caps on the emission of greenhouse gases in California, without requiring the regulatory agencies to give any consideration to the impacts on our economy, disruptions in everyone’s daily lives or the fact that California’s population will grow almost 50 percent between 1990 and 2030,” said Allan Zaremberg, California Chamber of Commerce president and CEO, in a statement. 

Under Zaremberg’s leadership, the organization has spearheaded litigation targeting the current cap-and-trade regime. “A state appellate court is considering a challenge by the California Chamber of Commerce, which argues the fee is a tax that needed support from two-thirds of the Assembly and Senate in order to be valid,” KPBS recalled. “Republicans have in the past said it’s irresponsible to spend money generated from a fee being challenged in court.”

A bill sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, would have added three members to the South Coast Air Quality Management Board, which regulates air quality in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties.

And while that probably seems as dull as watching paint dry to nearly everyone who just read it, the measure had major implications for Republicans, local governments, business interests, environmentalists and residents of the broad district that has some of the most toxic air in the nation.

De Leon introduced the board-packing plan shortly after Republicans engineered a takeover of the board, swinging the focus from environmentalists to business interests. In December, the board disregarded SCAQMD staff recommendations and instead adopted rules on refineries backed by the oil industry, and in March it ousted the the longtime director who had been seen as anti-business.  

Representatives to the board are local city council members and county supervisors, appointed locally. De Leon’s bill would have added three seats to the 13-member board, appointed by the the Senate Rules Committee (which de Leon chairs), the Assembly speaker and the governor.

During floor debate, proponents argued that the measure was about adding diversity to the almost all-white board that had no Latinos, which defies the demographics of the heavily-Latino region. 

“Needless to say, I’m disappointed,” de Leon told CalWatchdog on Thursday. “Any time people of color are excluded from decision-making processes directly tied to their health and wellbeing, fundamental change is needed. This is a textbook example of institutional racism.”

De Leon added that Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, a Republican who also sits on the SCAQMD board, is termed-out and will soon be replaced by “someone far more progressive on the matter,” likely shifting the balance of power back to the environmentalists. 

However, of the current board’s ethnic composition, and the persistent lack of diversity, belies the fact that it’s largely been in Democratic, or environmentalist, control for years. De Leon did not say whether he’d reintroduce similar measures in the future.

Local control

Many opponents of the measure argued that the bill was a power grab by state policy makers at the expense of local control. And the large bloc of Democrats who either voted no or abstained suggest that the matter is not purely partisan.

“State versus local, that’s what this is about,” said Mike Madrid, a GOP strategist who helped devise the SDAQMD takeover. “It happened to be Republicans, but it was a state/local fight.”

But it was still a big win for Republicans, who are steadily slipping in their share of voter registration throughout the state, face the very real possibility of a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature next year and are not considered a consistent threat in any statewide election. For Republicans, local offices are where they can have a policy impact.

And despite several major policy victories for environmentalists, the defeat of the de Leon measure is a big win for the advocates of economic development. 

John Husing, the chief economist of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, has been studying Southern California’s economy since 1964. His research suggests a correlation between the rise of poverty and the rise of environmental regulations in the state. Husing argues that while the policies have had a positive impact on air quality in the region, the policies are imbalanced in relation to business development and subsequently drive poverty, which affects health. 

“The whole air-quality, green initiative is having detrimental effect on moving people out of poverty and into the middle class,” Husing said of the SCAQMD region and the neighboring central valley.

Environment v. economy

Environmentalists have often said that any job loss associated with these air-quality policies would be offset by job creation in green sectors. However, Husing says statistics say that isn’t true, at least not in areas with high unemployment, like many communities in the SCAQMD.

Citing data from the California Employment Development Department and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Husing said from 2010 to 2016 the U.S. added 836,000 manufacturing jobs, compared to California which added 42,500 — a mere 5.1 percent. While the growth rate is on pace with with the national average, it lags by over 50 percent behind the state’s share of gross state product.

Husing said that the sluggish growth of manufacturing jobs in the state is attributed to three factors: Companies leaving, companies growing beyond the state’s borders and out-of-state companies refusing to grow in the state.

“Whose affected by that? It’s not the companies,” Husing said. “They’re doing fine some place else. It’s workers whose jobs are never created. … So you’re basically cutting off routes to the middle class for those workers.”

The vote

The measure failed just before the stroke of midnight on Wednesday, 30-36. And while it is seen as a victory for Republicans, the measure was largely defeated by the 14 assemblymembers, all Democrats, who didn’t vote.

Those who didn’t vote were Luis Alejo of Watsonville, Joaquin Arambula of Fresno, Kansen Chu of San Jose, Jim Frazier of Oakley, Rich Gordon of Menlo Park, Adam Gray of Merced (who was not present), Kevin Mullin of South San Francisco and Shirley Weber of San Diego. The six who didn’t vote and live in the region were Ian Calderon of Whittier, Eduardo Garcia of Coachella, Mike Gipson of Carson, Roger Hernandez of West Covina, Chris Holden of Pasadena and Patrick O’Donnell of Long Beach.