Analysts have separated into two camps around Golden State real estate, one more bullish than the other. “Two recent reports — from Fitch Rating, a Wall Street credit reviewer, and Arch MI, a seller of mortgage insurance — attempt to gauge the stability of regional housing markets by tracking changes in real estate metrics vs. other economic measurements,” the Orange County Register reported. “Using a California prism, the studies draw wildly different conclusions. Fitch concludes California housing is among the most overvalued housing markets in the nation. Yet California is not on Arch MI’s list of riskiest places to own.”

“California was one of 10 states with overvalued housing by Fitch’s standards. Four states had the same pricing mismatch as California: Florida, Hawaii, Oregon and Utah. Next states on the dicier scale — 10 percent to 14 percent overvalued — were Arizona, North Dakota, Nevada and Texas […]. Idaho was in the worst shape at 15 percent to 19 percent overvalued. But Arch MI saw California with riskiness below the norm. California’s risk of falling home prices is ‘minimal’ or a 2 percent change of depreciation in the next two years. National risk by this math is 4 percent.”

Searching for answers

Along with an analytical split surrounding a possible housing bubble, residential options in California have been opening a gulf of their own. “California is one of the most unequal states in the country, and its housing market is similarly bifurcated, offering both multimillion dollar houses and rent-controlled apartments, but less and less of a foothold for people in the middle,” the American Interest observed. “This is a key reason so many working class families have left the Golden State in the past 25 years.” In a recent report issued by Bankrate.com analyst Claes Bell, “California ranked as the toughest state in the nation for first-time home buyers, who typically would be in the millennial age bracket of 18 to 34,” according to the Los Angeles Times. 

Policymakers grappling with the state’s compounded housing challenges have no shortage of plans to pore over — over 130 bills touching upon the issue, the Times noted. “Reams of statistics support the depth of the problem: California’s homeownership rate is at its lowest since World War II, a third of renters spend more than half of their income on housing costs and the state has nearly a quarter of the nation’s homeless residents — despite having 12% of the overall U.S. population,” the paper noted in a breakdown of some leading legislative contenders — which range from proposals to expand low-income rent-controlled units to increasing tax credits to pushing easier and less traditional permitting. 

Back to rent control?

The push toward increased rent control has been spearheaded by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica. “Bloom wants to repeal the state law known as the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, named after a moderate-leaning Democratic former state senator from the Central Valley and a short-time Republican assemblyman from Orange County,” the Sacramento Bee recalled. “During 1995, Jim Costa, now in Congress, and Phil Hawkins, who served just two years in the state Assembly, became the face of a disputed political campaign lodged largely by landlords and real estate interests to weaken – statewide – the ability of cities to pass strong rent-control laws. It came nearly two decades after the rent-control movement, born in cities like Santa Monica, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Berkeley, was spreading across the state.”

In core metro areas across California, rents have risen dramatically — in part reflecting an influx of wealthier residents to downtown urban neighborhoods, but also fueling a domino effect of hikes further down the affordability chain. “Statewide, average rents have increased 60 percent over the past 20 years. In 2016, median rents in the Bay Area and Los Angeles area ranged from $2,427 to $4,508, according to a housing report from the California Department of Housing and Community Development,” the paper added. “Nearly half of California’s households rent, and 84 percent of them are considered ‘burdened,’ spending 30 percent to 50 percent or more of annual income on rent.”

When Gov. Jerry Brown’s aggressive proposal to jump-start housing construction by sharply streamlining the approvals process for urban housing projects that met certain conditions

Coverage of the “by-right” proposal had emphasized that both unions and environmentalists didn’t want the California Environmental Quality Act to be weakened – even if the Golden State had the nation’s highest effective poverty rate because of sky-high home prices and among the nation’s highest rents. That’s because CEQA lawsuits enable the groups to win concessions from developers and government agencies or to block projects they don’t like. In an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee, Shamus Roller, executive director of Housing California, lamented the proposal’s failure and complained about “the political gamesmanship of powerful interests.”

But now there’s push-back against this tidy assumption about what’s driving the housing crisis, and from an unlikely source: Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor. In “Do Communities Adequately Plan for Local Housing?” – a report prepared by LAO staff but carrying Taylor’s byline – the first central conclusion is that the process under which the state Department of Housing and Community Development works with cities and counties on their general plans to ensure adequate housing isn’t working. It cites little follow-through from many local governments on past promises and notes that many development plans are badly outdated and unusable. It offers suggestions on how the process might be improved to speed construction of housing stock.

Local officials do bidding of local housing opponents

But then Taylor offered his theory about why state housing policies have failed to address the housing crisis: because foot-dragging local officials are doing the bidding of their constituents.

When it comes to rule changes to speed up construction, “many local communities have fervently opposed, obstructed, or even disregarded such changes in the past. … Any major changes in how communities plan for housing will require their active participation and a shift in how local residents view new housing,” Taylor wrote. “There is little indication, however, that such a shift is forthcoming. Convincing Californians that a large increase in home building – one that often would change the character of communities – could substantially better the lives of future residents and future generations necessitates difficult conversations led by elected officials and other community leaders interested in those goals. Unless Californians are convinced of the benefits of more home building – targeted at meeting housing demand at every income level – the ability of the state to alter local planning decisions is limited.”

The governor is trying again, however, to change the status quo. In January, his office unveiled a legislative package meant to streamline the approvals of building permits and to give incentives to local governments to reduce permit costs.

Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, continue to focus on affordable housing projects to ease the crisis. State Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, has proposed Senate Bill 2 which would add fees of $75 to $225 to property transfers, with the exception of home sales, with some of the proceeds going to pay for housing for poor families and migrant workers.

The rush is on to find a way to amp up available housing in California. Amid new reports claiming that housing has become unaffordable across the state, legislators, officials and activists have begun a rush for solutions. 

“In its first comprehensive analysis since the year 2000, California’s Department of Housing and Community Development paints a bleak picture of the state’s housing landscape,” KQED reported. “While it points to some hopeful developments, the report suggests lawmakers will need to consider serious policy changes if California is going to build the projected 1.8 million new homes needed by 2025.”

Widespread burdens

Findings suggested that, until then, Californians could continue to face extraordinary pressure in matching their budgets to homes in the places they earn their living. “The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines people as ‘cost burdened’ when they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing,” ABC Sacramento noted. “Statewide, more than 3 million households exceed the 30 percent guideline when it comes to paying rent. And more than 1.5 million households see more than half of their income going towards rent. Every county mentioned in the report — from San Francisco to San Diego — is housing burdened.”

His own initial housing plans rebuffed by the state Legislature, Gov. Jerry Brown has focused his attention around plans that don’t rely on bigger allocations of funds from Sacramento. “The governor’s office will seek approval of policies to streamline housing construction, lower the cost of homebuilding through reduced local government fees, and to create incentives for local governments to approve more housing,” according to the Orange County Register.

“The governor’s office is pursuing court certification of the ‘No Place Like Home’ program, which will use $2 billion in bond money to create affordable-housing programs for mentally ill homeless people. The budget plan, however, eliminates $400 million for affordable housing since the Legislature failed last year to approve the governor’s plan to streamline the homebuilding approval process.”

Brown laid out the logic behind his initial approach at the news conference where he unveiled his budget plan. “We’ve got to bring down the cost structure of housing and not just find ways to subsidize it,” he said, the Los Angeles Times reported. “What we can do is cut the red tape, cut the delays, cut whatever expenses we can afford to do without to make housing more affordable and therefore increase the stock and therefore hopefully bring down the costs.” The governor’s office has claimed that California suffers a deficit of 100,000 housing units a year based on current population growth projections, the Times added, with residents at the bottom of the income scale facing the most daunting challenges. 

Reshuffling the deck

In Sacramento, lawmakers have advanced a series of bills aimed at reducing the problem by other means. State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, has proposed to “free affordable housing projects from compliance with certain local development-related regulations,” Construction Dive noted. “Meanwhile, another state senate bill proposes garnering funding for affordable housing through a $75 tax on real-estate transactions,” while another “would end a tax break on second homes in the state to fund an existing affordable housing program there.”

In the private sector, familiar patterns of construction and opposition have been disrupted by the extent of California’s housing crunch. The crisis has prompted a surprising shift among advocates typically arrayed against the Golden State’s big players in housing, whose heft and risk tolerance are needed assets in any swift and substantial expansion of residential options. “Environmental lawyer Marco Gonzalez spent more than a decade suing real-estate developers in California,” the Wall Street Journal recently noted in a report on the phenomenon. “Now he is on the opposite side, among a growing group of advocates who are taking a once unthinkable approach to development in their backyards: They are trying to force cities to allow more of it.”

More Californians — but slightly fewer Americans — would support the Golden State’s withdrawal from the Union, according to a new poll feeding attention around a nascent movement to achieve a lawful, peaceful secession.

“About 32 percent of Californians want to create their own country, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found, including many Democrats who are frustrated with the election of President Trump,” the Hill reported. “Pollsters surveyed 500 Californians between Dec. 6 and Jan. 19. Nationally, 22 percent of respondents favor secession, they found” — a figure, like the California number, sure to have included some people with federalist or libertarian interests in seeing a discussion over the state’s status change.

“Still, half of Californians opposed the idea,” the Los Angeles Times reported, “though Democrats were more inclined to support it than Republicans. The survey found that 60 percent of Republicans gave the idea of peacefully seceding a thumbs down compared with 48 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of independents.”

In 2014, 24 percent of respondents nationwide were found to be amenable to California secession. But in-state, the new percentage represented a big jump. “The 32 percent support rate is sharply higher than the last time the poll asked Californians about secession, in 2014, when one-in-five or 20 percent favored it around the time Scotland held its independence referendum and voted to remain in the United Kingdom,” Newsmax noted. 

Parting ways

Although peaceful secession has long been confined to the realm of political fantasy, California’s perceived increased deviation from broader political trends nationwide has helped ensure the scheme a prominent place in the popular imagination and the press. “Even though California is the most populous state in the union and has the sixth-largest economy in the world, secession would be, realistically speaking, very difficult,” as the San Francisco Chronicle noted. “Two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of U.S. states (at least 38) would need to approve of the creation of an amendment that would allow for the legality of the state’s withdrawal.” But California Democrats, leery of losing ground on several fronts, have taken advantage of the state’s big popular vote margin in favor of Hillary Clinton to promise a continuation of their hallmark policies. 

“It may not be ‘Calexit’ — the name of a decidedly quixotic campaign for California to withdraw from the union — but it is turning into what is, for all intents and purposes, a slow-motion secession,” the New York Times suggested. “California is becoming to Mr. Trump what Texas — which is as Republican as California is Democratic — was to President Obama: a sea of defiance and a potential source of unending legal and legislative challenges.” On the other hand, “it will be difficult for California to promote the kind of spending program[s] lawmakers want to make up for cuts in Washington, particularly on health care,” the Times observed, complicating the rosy picture summoned by secessionist leaders of a prosperous march to the beat of the state’s own drum. 

Style or substance

For members of Yes California, the quixotic group working hardest toward secession, the increased popularity of a break with the union came as welcome news that seemed to square with their expectations. “We always thought that if we just connected with the people who thought about this, but didn’t tell their friends and family because they would be seen as kooky and weird, that the quiet population would become vocal,” as Marcus Evans, vice president of Yes California, told the Sacramento Bee. 

Nevertheless, growing support could be largely symbolic — a familiar way of expressing dissatisfaction with national politics. “California isn’t the only state which has flirted with abandoning the U.S.,” as HotAir pointed out. “Prior to the election, Public Policy Polling, which often asks gag questions intended to embarrass Republicans, found that 40 percent of Texans would consider secession if Clinton won the election.”

San Diego Chargers’ fans woke up Wednesday morning to hear the most encouraging news yet that the team wouldn’t be returning to Los Angeles after 55 years in San Diego: a report that the Chargers had asked, and the NFL had granted, a request for a

Six weeks earlier, an ESPN report had depicted the Chargers’ departure as a sure thing. But the ugly end to the Rams’ first season back in Los Angeles had shaken up conventional wisdom. As the team’s losses mounted in what ended up a 4-12 season, the fan enthusiasm that helped the team sell out all its season tickets after moving from St. Louis evaporated. If the Los Angeles market wasn’t thrilled about one team unless it was successful, why would it like a second team with a recent history of exasperating fans?

But Wednesday evening brought the news that fans and San Diego leaders had dreaded: ESPN’s NFL insider Adam Schefter reported, seemingly definitively, that the Chargers would be leaving:

Almost one year to the day that the Rams moved to Los Angeles, the Chargers now likely intend to do the same.

The Chargers plan to announce as early as Thursday that they are moving to Los Angeles, league sources said, ending a 55-year stint with San Diego and returning to their birthplace.

The Chargers played their inaugural season in Los Angeles in 1960 before moving to San Diego in 1961.

The Chargers have notified NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and other league owners of their intent to move to Los Angeles for the 2017 season, sources said.

As CalWatchdog reported earlier this week, all signs suggest the Oakland Raiders will relocate to Las Vegas, so this appears likely to be the most turbulent year for California and professional sports since 1994, when the Los Angeles Rams headed to St. Louis and the Los Angeles Raiders moved back to Oakland.

San Diego has better chance than Oakland for new team

So is this the end for professional football in two of California’s iconic cities? Maybe in Oakland, maybe not in San Diego.

The San Francisco 49ers’ recent attendance woes at new Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara seem likely to depress enthusiasm for the idea that Oakland should partially subsidize a stadium for the Raiders, as the team and the NFL want.

But San Diego, the 17th largest metropolitan area in the U.S. and a global leader in biotechnology and life sciences industries, is in better shape. Its leaders appear ready to support a public stadium subsidy of up to $400 million.

A Yahoo News analysis from 2016 predicated on the idea that the Chargers would move to Los Angeles concluded that San Diego was the clear favorite to be home to the NFL’s next relocated team.

After months of relative certainty that the National Football League wanted the Rams in Los Angeles and the Chargers in San Diego, expectations have been gradually upset, turning the other former L.A. team’s relocation back to the City of Angels all but a done deal.

The proximate cause of the shift, always a factor in the team’s fate, was the failure of a new stadium deal to pass muster with San Diego voters in November. In the ensuing weeks, the team has acted swiftly to put an executable plan in place for a timely move to L.A. The first step in making the scheme a reality was locking down a place to play, and “[t]he agreement with the Chargers to lease the as-yet-to-be-built Inglewood stadium has been executed and sources say, soon to be signed,” according to NBC Los Angeles. That deal itself was only possible because the groundwork had been laid back when the first pro team’s return to L.A. was finalized. “The Rams signed an agreement with the NFL before moving to Los Angeles agreeing to lease space to another team,” the network added. 

A need for fans

Still, potential obstacles to an expeditious relocation have captivated the sports press, especially online, where frustration with the Chargers’ recent poor play has been aired as a factor that could complicate the League’s calculus around an L.A. move. “Once again this past week, speculative media reports surfaced outside of San Diego expressing near-certainty that Dean Spanos will move the team to greater Los Angeles in 2017,” U-T San Diego observed.

“Once again, no one was identified as the source of the speculation. (Chargers spokesman Mark Fabiani again said Spanos hasn’t made up his mind.) The League may be overplaying its hand here. L.A. doesn’t want the Bolts.”

Anecdotal evidence of a sour mood among Angelenos has not been overwhelming, but it has been put under a spotlight. Steve Reed, sports writer for the Associated Press, recently quoted one L.A. fan on Twitter who implored the Chargers to “please stay in San Diego. One bad football team in L.A. is enough.”

A cloudy future

Even the risk of over-saturating L.A.’s market could provoke the League to grow more cautious, impose delays or otherwise allow the potential deal to drift. NFL ratings have tanked over the course of 2016, with potential culprits including the politicization of the game by players, the league’s punishment of on-field celebrations, the presidential campaign season and the health risks now more closely associated with players’ concussions. 

Evidence does suggest that the Clinton-Trump matchup put a real damper on fans’ enthusiasm. “Since the election, national NFL games across broadcast and cable are averaging an audience of 18 million viewers,” Fox Business reported, citing Nielsen data. “That’s a nearly 17 percent increase from the period from the start of the season up until the election, when national NFL games drew an average of 15.4 million viewers.”

In an internal memo this October, the network noted, executives Brian Rolapp and Howard Katz downplayed concern that the League faced a fundamentally changed business landscape. “Prime-time windows have clearly been affected the most, while declines during the Sunday afternoon window are more modest. While our partners, like us, would have liked to see higher ratings, they remain confident in the NFL and unconcerned about a long-term issue.”

Nevertheless, the League would suffer a potentially costly and high-profile embarrassment were the Chargers not to connect with L.A. and Orange County fans, who have a broad range of non-football pro teams to support and lack the recent traditions of stalwart support that many other cities with struggling NFL franchises and fewer sports options have nurtured for generations. 

Proving out the maxim that some things never go out of style however unpopular they are, a group of California secessionists announced plans to follow up this year’s momentous presidential election with a rally for Golden State independence in Sacramento. 

“The Yes California Independence Campaign, which is based in San Diego, is aiming to qualify a citizen’s initiative in 2018 to get a referendum for secession on the ballot in 2019,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

“While the notion of an independent California does seem well-intended — points about immigration, environmental concerns, and education are thoughtful — the practicality of such a proposal is tenuous at best,” the paper concluded.

Revisionist history

The invitation to the Nov. 9 rally casts the Golden State in the role of a republic that was all but annexed by the United States. “In the 166th year of Congress admitting California as a U.S. state without the consent of the people of California itself, we will be organizing an all-day informational booth on the front steps of the California Capitol culminating in an evening independence rally beginning at 5:00 PM the day after Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is elected president of United States because no matter who is elected, California deserves its independence,” the invitation read. 

“California was admitted as a state on September 9, 1850 as the result of a deal struck in Washington where the south agreed to admit California as a free state in exchange for the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act (which required northerners to return escaped slaves to their masters in the south), and for the expansion of slavery into the Utah and New Mexico territories.”

The group has already amassed 14,600 likes on Facebook despite admittedly quixotic aims: a much more popular recent push for an independent Texas swiftly ran aground on constitutional legal issues. “After President Obama was re-elected in 2012, more than 125,000 people signed a petition asking for the government to allow the Lone Star State to go its own way,” the Washington Post recalled this summer. “That sentiment was revisited earlier this year, with Republican activists in Texas pushing to include a pro-secession plank in the party platform. (It didn’t happen.)”

Precedent and procedure

Yes California brainchild Louis Marinelli got a summertime publicity boost in the wake of the surprise Brexit result, which many analysts nervously or approvingly cited as a likely trend of populist decentralization throughout the western world. “This is the first Western secessionist movement that worked, and I think that is going to be very profound,” he told Newsweek. “Are you going to say to people in the freest country in the world (you) don’t have the right to self-determination?”

“For Marinelli, who is originally from Buffalo, New York, but calls California home, the commonalities between Brexit and Calexit, are clear: Both the United Kingdom and California feel disenfranchised by professional politicians in distant capitals (Brussels and Washington D.C.), strangled by over-regulation on trade and don’t feel they get enough value for their tax dollars.”

Faced with the prevailing constitutional interpretation that peaceable secession is effectively impossible, Yes California has worked through a response. “California cannot unilaterally declare itself independent of the United States even though the original 13 colonies unilaterally declared their independence from England,” as the group allowed on it website. Instead, it argued, Texas v. White, an 1869 case, indicates “several paths to legal and peaceful secession.” First, however, “it will be necessary for Californians to weigh in on the matter, which is what Yes California’s 2020 independence referendum is about. If there is no mandate from the people to secede, there is no reason for us to embark on this long and difficult legal journey to achieve that goal. So, an independence referendum on the ballot goes first.”

According to Yes California, the next step would either require a constitutional amendment to permit California’s departure from the Union or a convention of the states which would lead amicably to the same result. 

A new government-run retirement program: On Thursday, Gov. Brown signed Senate Bill 1234, which gives legislative approval to the state’s continuing efforts to create a new government-run retirement program for private-sector employees. Once it is up and running, private employers (with five or more employees) will be required to offer this program, whereby 3 percent of each employees’ earnings will be deducted and invested by a state-selected investment group – possibly, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS).

Employees can opt out. The details are not yet certain, but the goal is to invest the money in a low-risk investment tied to the Treasury bond. Supporters say the law protects taxpayers from incurring more than minimal costs, but critics insist the program could grow and change in ensuing years – and that there’s no way of creating a massive new government program without imposing risks on the state budget.

The idea, which is being pitched in other states too, grew out of union activism. Several years ago, when publicity over unfunded public-pension liabilities began creating pressure for pension reform, union allies wanted to come up with a “positive” rebuttal to all those news stories about six-figure pensions and pension-spiking gimmicks. This idea is designed help private workers.

Putting limits on ‘policing for profit’: One of the most controversial policing strategies in recent years has been “civil asset forfeiture.” Born out of the nation’s drug war in the 1980s, forfeiture was designed to help police agencies crack down on drug kingpins by allowing departments to grab the cash, cars and properties gained through their illegal activities. But like many government programs, asset forfeiture morphed into something its creators never envisioned.

Two of the men who helped create the program in the U.S. Department of Justice, John Yoder and Brad Cates, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in 2014 pointing to the corruption engendered by this process: “Law enforcement agents and prosecutors began using seized cash and property to fund their operations, supplanting general tax revenue, and this led to the most extreme abuses: law enforcement efforts based upon what cash and property they could seize to fund themselves, rather than on an even-handed effort to enforce the law.”

Basically, police agencies came to depend on the revenue and they distorted their law-enforcement priorities based on the chance to grab more cash. There’s no due process here, given that police agencies file suit against the property itself, alleging it was involved in a drug crime. No conviction is necessary. California had previously passed reforms that mostly required a conviction, but police agencies got around that by partnering with the feds (and operating under looser federal standards) and then splitting the seized property.

Senate Bill 443 was killed last year after lobbying efforts by police chiefs and other law-enforcement agencies. But a fairly recent amendment – allowing cops to still take large amounts of cash without a conviction, but limiting smaller amounts of cash and property takings – eliminated most opposition from law enforcement. The new law is meaningful, and one of the more substantive compromises to take place in Sacramento this year.

Giving the terminally ill the right to try: One of the more significant “freedom” battles this year was over the so-called “right to try” – i.e., the ability of terminally ill patients to try experimental drug treatments that have yet to gain final approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Similar measures have been approved by 31 other states.

The Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based free-market think tank, has been championing these measures across the country. As Goldwater explains: “The FDA … often stands between the patients and the treatments that may alleviate their symptoms or provide a cure. To access these treatments, patients must either go through a lengthy FDA exemption process or wait for the treatments to receive FDA approval, which can take a decade or more and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The California law, Assembly Bill 1668, passed overwhelmingly. According to the official bill analysis, it authorizes drug manufacturers to make investigational treatment available “to a patient with a serious or immediately life-threatening disease, when that patient has considered all other treatment options currently approved by the FDA, has been unable to participate in a relevant clinical trial, and for whom the investigational drug has been recommended by the patient’s primary physician and a consulting physician.”

Allowing felons to vote: One of the more controversial new laws, Assembly Bill 2466 by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, allows felons who are serving their sentence in county jails to vote. The measure was opposed by law-enforcement groups, but Weber argued it would stop discrimination in voting and make it less likely that prisoners would commit new offenses.

“Civic participation can be a critical component of re-entry and has been linked to reduced recidivism,” Weber said, according to a Los Angeles Times report. “For me, this bill is not about second chances, but about maintaining the integrity of elections,” said Sen. Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, in a statement. “Close elections, especially at the local level, could now turn on a handful of ballots cast by people in jail. This new law is bad for democracy and will further erode trust in government.”

Putting self-driving cars on the road: Autonomous vehicle technology has been advancing rapidly, and California is, not surprisingly, ground zero for the development of this important new technology. Gov. Brown signed a bill Thursday “that for the first time allows testing on public roads of self-driving vehicles with no steering wheels, brake pedals or accelerators,” according to a San Jose Mercury News article. “A human driver as backup is not required, but the vehicles will be limited to speeds of less than 35 mph.”

Assembly Bill 1592 itself is rather modest. It provides two spots for such testing – in a San Ramon business park and at the former Concord Naval Weapons Station. And Friday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles released new regulations that are far friendlier toward self-driving cars than the DMV’s previous regulations. So while the new law itself isn’t particularly significant, the state’s new legislative and regulatory approach certainly is. If that approach continues, we’ll be seeing rapid expansion of autonomous vehicles here.

Greenlighting granny flats: The governor’s signing of Senate Bill 1069 shows increasing bipartisan understanding of the state’s skyrocketing home prices. The bill would relax standards for creating ADUs (accessory dwelling units), better known as granny flats.

“Eliminating barriers to ADU construction is a common-sense, cost-effective approach that will permit homeowners to share empty rooms in their homes and property, add incomes to meet family budgets, and make good use of the property in the Bay Area and across California while easing the housing crisis,” according to the bill analysis’ summary of the author’s arguments. The bill embraces a regulatory approach that could be tried with other types of housing.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. He is based in Sacramento. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

The St. Louis Rams may have once again become the Los Angeles Rams, capping off the biggest suspense story in the National Football League, but the controversy over the city’s final lineup of teams has flared up yet again.

Chargers ’16

In San Diego, where the Chargers have gone down to the wire with city officials on a possible move that once looked like a done deal, the next twist depends on voters. Although analysts and fans have cautioned that one NFL team may be plenty for Los Angeles, especially so soon on the heels of the Rams’ return, the stadium deal holding the Chargers’ future in the balance has failed to rally popular support. According to a YouGov poll conducted late last month, only “a quarter of San Diego adults strongly or somewhat support the proposal for a new, taxpayer-funded $1.8 billion stadium and convention center downtown,” as USA Today recalled. “The poll showed more than half — 52 percent — strongly or somewhat opposed the measure, with the other 23 percent not stating a preference.” 

“To win the vote, the team needs two-thirds of voters to approve the project because it’s a tax hike for a special purpose in California. If the vote fails, the Chargers have until Jan. 15 to decide whether to move to Los Angeles, where they have an optional deal to share a lucrative new stadium with the Los Angeles Rams.”

If the push to use the ballot to keep the Chargers in San Diego has been a slog, however, city officials’ backup plan has emerged as a potentially dramatic Hail Mary pass — to the judiciary. City Attorney Jan Goldsmith told radio host Darren Smith “he would ask the state’s high court to ‘take jurisdiction’ over the city’s November election as it pertains to two stadium-related ballot initiatives: the Chargers plan to raise the city’s hotel tax to build a stadium and convention center, and the Citizens’ Plan, which would increase the tax to help pay for tourism marketing and an off-the-waterfront convention center,” according to U-T San Diego. Although “no public money could go toward stadium construction,” the city’s inquiry “could come as early as next week, if county officials examining signatures declare that either or both initiatives have qualified for the ballot,” the paper added. 

Vegas or bust?

Oakland’s Raiders, the other California team caught up in the L.A. relocation game, have struggled to strike a deal with their own home town. According to NBC Sports, League Commissioner Roger Goodell appeared to discourage another move to L.A., suggesting “you never want to see a community lose their franchise once, much less twice,” making reference to the Raiders’ ping-ponging over the decades between L.A. and Oakland. “I think there’s a solution there, but it takes the community to help identify it,” he said. In the wake of the Rams deal, and unable to count on the Chargers to come through on the stadium-sharing deal that had briefly given the duo a bettor’s edge against the Rams, the Raiders have shifted their attentions from L.A. to Las Vegas.

“Of course, the NFL has allowed communities to lose franchises twice: St. Louis lost both the Cardinals and the Rams,” NBC Sports noted. “So it wouldn’t be unprecedented for the Raiders to vacate Oakland twice. But Goodell said the recent authorization of a new stadium in Las Vegas isn’t enough to bring the Raiders to town.”

Nevertheless, Las Vegas has thrown its considerable weight behind serious plans to lure the team in. The Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee recently cast a unanimous vote “to recommend $750 million in public funding for a $1.9 billion stadium,” ESPN reported, drawn from hotel taxes. That sum would be added to $500 million from owner Mark Davis, “which includes a loan from the NFL for a new stadium, to the project,” the network added. “The family of Sheldon Adelson — chairman of casino and resort outfit Las Vegas Sands Corporation — has pledged another $650 million for the proposed 65,000-seat, domed venue, which would be shared with the UNLV football team.”

Capping off a protracted political battle focused around animal rights and aquatic entertainment at SeaWorld, the San Diego’s longstanding tourist attraction, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that will bring California’s iconic relationship with captive orcas to an end.

Wave of criticism

Authored by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, the law has banned “orca breeding and captivity programs like the one formerly run by SeaWorld theme parks,” as well as “featuring the marine mammals […] in performances for entertainment purposes,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Starting in June next year, orcas in captivity can be used for ‘educational presentations’ only.”

For the activists who spearheaded the legislation, inspired by the 2013 documentary Blackfish, victory in California has been seen as critical to codifying new nationwide norms. “Attendance has plunged, and company shares have fallen in half” at SeaWorld, the San Francisco Chronicle noted last year, after the film “made a compelling case that the confinement and exploitation of killer whales inflicted physical and psychological stress on creatures that thrive on socialization and vast expanses of the ocean.” The Animal Welfare Institute, which co-sponsored the bill, helped ensure that practices banned in California could not spread to other locales after the fact. “Besides outlawing orca breeding and theatrical performances, the so-called Orca Protection Act also bans the transportation of orcas to entertainment facilities in other states and foreign countries,” National Geographic noted. But it “does permit the transport of orcas to other facilities in North America,” as Dr. Lori Marino, president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, told NatGeo. “This will facilitate ongoing efforts to develop seaside sanctuaries for these animals as an alternative to living in tanks.”

Multiple challenges

The route taken through Sacramento by the captivity ban was an unusual one. After the passage of this year’s budget package, “the Assembly approved a natural resources budget ‘trailer bill’ that includes a provision with the new restrictions,” the Sacramento Bee recalled. “The orca provision is part of a budget-related bill that would be wrapped into the $171-billion state budget the governor signed in June,” as U-T San Diego observed as the state Senate cleared the legislation. Bloom’s bill, with similar wording, advanced simultaneously. 

Looking ahead

Given SeaWorld’s timing in shuttering its beleaguered orca programs, the bill’s completed journey into law ruffled few feathers. In a March op-ed at the Times, Joel Manby, SeaWorld president and CEO, revealed that public sentiments the company had ironically helped change in orcas’ favor had doomed its traditional offerings. “We are proud of contributing to the evolving understanding of one of the world’s largest marine mammals,” he wrote. “Now we need to respond to the attitudinal change that we helped to create — which is why SeaWorld is announcing several historic changes. This year we will end all orca breeding programs — and because SeaWorld hasn’t collected an orca from the wild in almost four decades, this will be the last generation of orcas in SeaWorld’s care. We are also phasing out our theatrical orca whale shows.”

Opposition had been closing in around SeaWorld throughout this year and last. The California Coastal Commission had approved a plan to expand SeaWorld’s orca enclosures, but only on the condition that the park stopped its breeding and transfer programs, effectively forcing the changes Manby announced in March. In Washington, D.C., meanwhile, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., had authored a bill imposing a federal ban on the captive breeding of orcas. “SeaWorld is certainly feeling the bite of public opinion,” ecological author Carl Safina told NatGeo. “Though they could carry on elsewhere with breeding and trans-shipping, they’d be wise to emphasize other aspects of their entertainment.”