SACRAMENTO – California’s leaders often point to the burgeoning high-tech industry as evidence of the state’s strong, future-oriented economy. The industry’s ongoing success helps Democrats rebut arguments from conservatives who say that California isn’t particularly business friendly. But despite its status as a key driver of the economy, the tech industry had only mixed success during the recently concluded legislative session.

For instance, of the seven “priority bills” backed by the California Legislative Technology and Innovation Caucus, only two now are on Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk, where they currently await the governor’s decision. One of those bills is fairly significant, while the other is not. Four others were held in the appropriations committees, suggesting that the problems mostly had more to do with cost issues than policy matters. One was vetoed.

The tech industry did win a significant battle, however, regarding a far-reaching internet privacy measure. As I reported this month for CalWatchdog, the Legislature was moving ahead Assembly Bill 375, which was designed to “protect California consumers since Congress and the Trump administration effectively halted a set of federal consumer privacy protection rules on internet service providers that were scheduled to take effect,” according to a Senate analysis.

The bill, which mirrored the now-gutted federal rules, would “have given consumers additional control regarding internet service providers’ use of consumer data they collect” and “would have required that the internet service provider receive explicit consent from consumers before ‘sensitive data’ … would be shared or sold.”

But it was shelved at the end of the session after an alliance of tech companies and internet providers helped quash it. It was a somewhat unusual alliance. There’s typically a divide between proposed limits on broadband providers and proposals – including a California initiative proposal that’s now collecting signatures for the November 2018 ballot – that would give consumers the right to control the use of their information on sites such as Facebook or Google.

The thinking is that internet providers charge a significant price for their service, so they should be more limited on what they do with searching data, whereas tech firms that offer free search engines, for instance, are more dependent on revenue from targeted online ads. But AB375 was “widely opposed by large, established internet providers” and by tech companies, which are concerned “that the expanded privacy regulations could indirectly affect the websites’ own ability to gather and monetize user data,” reported the Los Angeles Times.

Regarding the successful bills on the technology and innovation caucus list, Senate Bill 145 is widely viewed as the most important. “This bill repeals a provision that requires the Department of Motor Vehicles to notify the Legislature upon receipt of an application to operate an autonomous vehicle capable of operating without the presence of a driver and it repeals a 180-day delay of an approved application,” according to the Senate bill analysis.

The measure was backed by various technology trade groups as well as by the California Chamber of Commerce. Supporters argued that the current situation delays the deployment of driverless vehicles, and therefore puts California at a competitive disadvantage with other states that are aggressively luring this up-and-coming industry. There was no recorded opposition to the proposal, which overturns one portion of the rules set in place by a 2012 law.

The 180-day delay is particularly significant because regulations pending with the California Department of Motor Vehicles would require a new filing every time an undefined “material change” is made to a vehicle. Any software update could be deemed “material” and would therefore sideline vehicles for months, which is why advocates for driverless vehicles were so supportive of this change.

SB225, the other bill that’s on the governor’s desk, simply requires the California Department of Justice to include a “texting” option on its human-trafficking hotline. The four bills that were held in the Legislature include a mandate for “media literacy” programs in the K-12 curriculum; authorization of a digital driver’s license pilot program; call for a “cybersecurity” industry study to evaluate workforce development needs; and creation of new crowdfunding conditions under state securities law.

In July, Brown vetoed the final measure on the caucus’ list, AB639, which would have allowed the state Department of General Services to use electronic contract signatures. In his veto message, Brown said the bill was unnecessary because the department is developing an electronic-signature system that will be in force before the bill would take effect.

Some other tech-related bills are worth noting. SB182 is designed to help transportation network companies such as Uber and Lyft overcome a barrier that has been impeding drivers at the local level. In some areas, drivers are required to get licensed and pay fees in every city where they do business – a burden in metropolitan areas with myriad cities. This measure would forbid localities “from requiring the driver to obtain more than a single business license … regardless of the number of local jurisdictions in which the driver operates.”

SB21, held in appropriations committee, would have required “each law enforcement agency … to submit to its governing body at a regularly scheduled hearing, open to the public, a proposed Surveillance Use Policy for the use of each type of surveillance technology and the information collected … .” The bill was supported by several civil-liberties groups and opposed by many police unions and law-enforcement organizations, which have enormous clout in the Legislature.

SB649, which passed on close bipartisan votes, evolved into a local-control issue. The bill allows telecommunications companies to put new wireless technologies on public street poles “subject only to a specified permitting process adopted by a city or county, if the small cell meets specified requirements.” It eases the approval process at the local level, but limits the locals’ input.

The measure, now on the governor’s desk, was opposed by many local officials, who are concerned about losing their influence. The bill’s “intent is not about 5G wireless deployment, but rather local deregulation of the entire telecommunications industry,” according to the League of California Cities. But author Sen. Ben Hueso, D-San Diego, argued that, “For California to remain technologically competitive and to ensure the benefits of innovation are reaching every community, we must do all we can – as fast as we can – to make next-generation 5G wireless networks a reality.”

It wasn’t a terrible showing, overall, for the industry, but it wasn’t impressive, either. It’s a reminder that the economically powerful California tech sector has a long way to go to match the political muscle of the state’s unions or more established corporate players.

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

SACRAMENTO – The city of San Francisco filed suit last week against the ride-sharing service Uber after the company filed a motion in court to block the release of a drivers’ personal information. This sets up the latest battle between the city and one of the leading transportation network companies over an issue that has privacy implications beyond the ride-sharing industry.

San Francisco’s tax collector wants the home addresses and other information of drivers to post on a web site that includes a map that pinpoints the exact location of registered business owners in the city. Because these drivers are independent contractors, most of them use their home addresses as their official business address.

The web site is publicly searchable, which means that anyone can easily find where these drivers live. “We’ve asked the city to allow us to get the consent of drivers and to remove their personal information from the public web site, but they have refused,” said Uber Northern California’s general manager, in a statement last week.

The city’s treasurer, Jose Cisneros, portrayed Uber’s actions as an effort to “circumvent the tax laws that apply to all businesses in San Francisco.” He notes that 130,000 other businesses – ranging from big ones such as Pacific Gas & Electric to small hairdressers – must also provide the information.

“San Francisco needs this information to determine whether Uber’s drivers are complying with San Francisco’s Business Registration Certificate requirement and paying annual registration fees,” the city wrote in its legal brief filed in San Francisco Superior Court. In a statement, City Attorney Dennis Herrera referred to privacy concerns as a “red herring.”

But critics of the city’s legal approach see it as its latest effort to hobble these increasingly popular ride-sharing platforms. For instance, Cisneros seemed to suggest in a statement that the dispute goes beyond a simple business-registration request, as he ticked off a variety of unrelated complaints that he has with the company.

“Once again Uber believes they are above the law,” said Cisneros. “If Uber is so concerned about the financial well-being and privacy of their drivers, I recommend they raise wages, convert the contractors to employees, or push for their driver’s inclusion in statewide licensing like limousine drivers.”

If this is a question of registration, then why bring up pay rates or drivers’ independent-contractor status or unrelated licensing issues?

The city attorney’s office likewise brought up other issues. It alleges that Uber has engaged in a “pattern of obstruction” because it “has refused to share information with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency about its operations, tested self-driving cars on the streets of San Francisco without a state permit, and has fought calls by the SFMTA and the San Francisco International Airport for stricter criminal background checks on its drivers.”

The city attorney’s office also complained that, because ride-sharing companies such as Uber are regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission, it has “limited the ability of cities to provide oversight.” The statement criticizes Uber for its backing of Senate Bill 182, which “would prohibit local jurisdictions from requiring a transportation network company driver to obtain more than one business license, regardless of the number of jurisdictions in which they operate,” according to the Senate bill analysis.

That measure has passed two committees with little opposition. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, drivers are concerned that myriad cities will require business licenses, which means they would have to register and pay fees in every city where they operate. There are dozens of cities in the Bay Area alone, and drivers frequently pick up passengers in, say, San Francisco and leave them off in Oakland or San Mateo. Only a handful of cities now require business licenses, but the requirement could easily spread across the region.

As the ride-sharing companies’ defenders point out, these statements suggest the city isn’t just looking for a little registration information, but instead are pursuing broader regulatory efforts against the companies, which have shaken up the established taxicab industry.

City officials also have complained about the number of ride-sharing drivers on the streets, yet if these services weren’t available people would be using other types of vehicles. San Francisco officials often boast about the city’s role in the New Economy, yet are taking an antagonistic approach to this emerging industry.

City officials rebut the privacy concerns by noting that drivers can provide post-office boxes or separate business addresses on the registration forms, but drivers complain that it adds costs and hassles – above and beyond the $91 annual fee the city collects from drivers. Uber officials say they’ve heard from thousands of drivers who have expressed concern about privacy issues.

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

Amid ongoing controversy over the economic impact of California’s thick regulatory environment, its leading space pioneers continued to notch new successes, underscoring the potential value of orbital and interplanetary technology to more earthbound challenges and opportunities.

Off the Pacific coast, a SpaceX capsule successfully returned to Elon Musk’s company cutting-edge research samples developed above the skies. “The pressurized capsule carrying about two tons of science projects splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off Baja California on Sunday after a five-hour free-fall from the International Space Station,” the San Jose Mercury News reported.

“Human stem cells were included in the Dragon cargo. It’s very difficult to expand stem cells on Earth but, in space, microgravity is believed to allow for accelerated expansion – which could improve treatment of stroke victims and others. Among other research, scientists looked at why microgravity causes wounds to heal more slowly, how it impacts muscle contraction, and how future antibiotic-resistant bacteria may mutate.”

Meanwhile, in Palm Springs, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos joined other industry leaders in giving the latest tech with potential space applications a spin. He climbed into a “14-foot-tall Method-2 robot, developed at Hankook Mirae Technology’s lab near Seoul in South Korea” and unveiled at an exclusive conference presented by Amazon, MARS 2017, according to GeekWire. “To create the 1.5-ton monstrosity, Hankook Mirae’s engineers worked with Hollywood robot designer Vitaly Bulgarov, who has been involved in mech-monster movie franchises such as Transformers, RoboCop and Terminator.”

From Earth to Mars?

In a bit of quintessentially Silicon Valley humor, Bezos tweeted an image of himself inside the mech with the #MARS2017 hashtag, raising speculation that he might sense an opportunity to link up massive exoskeletal technology with his own spacefaring program, Blue Origin. “Method-2 is controlled by a pilot who sits inside a cockpit in the robot’s torso, as Bezos demonstrates in the picture he tweeted.”

At the event, the Bezos-led firm let Americans gain a peek at one of its other leading-edge initiatives – a delivery drone – tested in England rather than California due to a smoother regulatory path. “The drone demonstration suggests that Amazon is making progress in its Prime Air development effort. When the service goes commercial, it’s expected to deliver packages in 30 minutes or less, using flying robots that can travel up to 50 mph,” GeekWire added separately. “It shouldn’t be a surprise that Amazon is providing a sneak peek at its delivery drones at MARS 2017. Amazon is presenting the semi-secret conference this week to show off technologies in Machine learning, home Automation, Robotics and Space exploration for a select audience.”

Rocketeering

Bezos has joined Musk in pushing for greater and faster human space travel, methodically building and testing increasingly powerful engines capable of propelling rockets beyond Earth’s gravitational pull – and back. Blue Origin “has the suborbital New Shepherd, and engineers are working on the heavy-lifter New Glenn, an orbital vehicle that’s scheduled to fly for the first time by 2020,” as Space.com noted. “This same incrementalist philosophy will also apply to crewed flights, which will begin aboard New Shepard. (Blue Origin also intends to launch people to orbital space eventually, Bezos has said.)”

Musk has already announced that, pending preemption by a NASA crew, several private citizens have ponied up for a personal flight extending past the moon’s orbit. “Musk says the trip is scheduled to happen in late 2018 and if he and his company manage to pull it off, it will be the first time in 45 years that humans will venture that deep into space,” ABC San Francisco recalled. “They’ve not yet been identified, but two people have put down significant deposits for a trip around the moon. Musk says they will fly faster and farther into the solar system than anyone before them.”

In it’s announcement, the DMV emphasized that changing technological standards had shifted expectations. “The draft regulations would expand the state’s existing autonomous vehicle testing program to keep pace with the rapid development of the technology,” Bloomberg BNA reported, citing the Department of Motor Vehicles. “The newly proposed rules would not require a human in the car, a change from the current rules.” The news was a boon for competitors in the crowded driverless space, which includes key legacy manufacturers as well as new tech entrants. “Tesla Motors Inc., Ford Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co., Honda Motor Co., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Volkswagen AG and Baidu Inc., are among the 23 manufacturers on the list of approved participants for the California testing program,” Bloomberg BNA noted. 

The list also included “self-driving startups such as Zoox, Drive.ai, AutoX and PlusAI,” Fortune reported, along with “China-funded electric vehicle startups NextEV and Faraday Future. Earlier this week, California granted a testing permit to ride services firm Uber Technologies after a legal standoff last December.”

Hailing robots

The Uber grant signaled a real sea change in life on California roads. Although autonomous cars could fan out across roads as soon as this year, the bulk of consumer experiences was expected to shift away from owned cars to pay-per-use. “Among other things, the revisions would permit ride-hailing services to pick up passengers in cars without human drivers on board,” Car and Driver observed. “For now, these rides would remain solely in the realm of testing, and companies providing them would be prohibited from charging fees for those services. Nonetheless, the prospect of ride-hailing services like Uber or Lyft picking up riders in autonomous vehicles within a matter of months is the latest sign of just how quickly the autonomous age may be approaching.”

Both tech and safety advocates have found reason to cheer the promised transformation. “Some 3,000 people die on its roads every year, and self-driving cars could eliminate the human error that causes 90 percent of crashes,” according to Wired. “They could make more people more mobile, reduce emissions (maybe), and boost the economy.” 

New frameworks

Driverless car companies were not released from key regulatory obligations at the sometimes blurry nexus of state and federal rules. “If companies test vehicles without conventional controls, they have to show the California DMV that they have approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,” Bloomberg reported, citing California DMV Chief Counsel Brian Soublet. “NHTSA said in early 2016 that self-driving software systems, not just humans, can be considered drivers.”

But federal regulators, in turn, will be looking to California’s unfolding experience for cues going forward. “The DMV’s rules are going to shift a big part of the conversation to the federal level,” University of South Carolina driverless expert Bryant Walker Smith told Wired. “Federal regulators seem eager to advance autonomy (chiefly for the safety benefits), so what happens on California’s roads may well be replicated across the U.S., and even internationally,” the magazine added. 

That has meant a special burden for Sacramento, where the ins and outs of insurance and other questions must be hammered out a step at a time. “California state lawmakers are starting the long process of deciding who should be held responsible when these new vehicles crash on state roadways or are potentially hacked by criminals,” as Capital Public Radio reported. “The California State Senate Committee on Insurance heard testimony on those questions and others at the state Capitol [March 8]. The informational hearing raised more questions than it answered.”

Following a nationwide trend, traffic deaths in California have spiked, alarming analysts and prompting fresh questions about technological distractions like smartphones, and fueling debate over how policymakers can or should respond. 

The news was relayed in a report by the National Safety Council. “The study shows that in California, traffic deaths rose 14 percent in 2016 over the previous year, and 19 percent over the past two years. The national death toll rose 6 percent during the past year and 14 percent over the past two, marking the largest two-year jump in the U.S. since 1964,” the San Francisco Chronicle noted. 

“The report, based on preliminary estimates of traffic fatalities involving motor vehicles on public roads, highways and private property, surprised state traffic safety officials. […] While they have not yet analyzed the numbers, traffic experts pointed to distracted driving and driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol and speeding as leading causes in the spike in deaths.”

Not in a decade have nationwide numbers turned so sour. “Fatalities rose 6 percent in 2016, reaching an estimated 40,200 deaths compared to 37,757 deaths the previous year,” the Associated Press observed. “The last time there were more than 40,000 fatalities in a single year was in 2007, just before the economy tanked. There were 41,000 deaths that year. The increase came as Americans drove more last year – a 3 percent increase in total miles.”

Carelessness and crackdowns

Many drivers, especially younger ones, have appeared to give up on the idea of driving without any tech-fueled distractions. “A recent report from the American Automobile Association says that group of young adults exhibits far more risky behavior behind the wheel than any other age category,” the Rapid City Journal noted. “In a report released this month by AAA, young millennial drivers were found to engage in the riskiest driving behavior of any age group, with 88 percent of 19- to 24-year-olds admitting they had exhibited at least one risky driving behavior in the past 30 days, such as speeding, running red lights or using a cellphone while driving. The report was based on a survey of 2,511 licensed drivers ages 16 and older.”

Fueled by dismaying statistics, California lawmakers have already attempted to crack down on cellphone use in cars on state streets. Assembly Bill 1785, introduced by Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward, imposed fines for using unmounted phones in any way for any reason. “Eighty percent of vehicle crashes involve some kind of driver inattention, according to the California Office for Traffic Safety. And up to 3,000 people nationwide are killed in crashes where driver distractions are involved,” Capital Public Radio observed. Quirk’s law “covers all smartphone uses, including mapping applications and music playlists. Existing law already bans drivers from texting and calling unless they use a hands-free device.”

City strictures

Activists behind the Vision Zero Network, a fatality-reduction campaign adopted by cities including San Francisco, have pushed for lower speeds in municipalities. San Francisco figures diverged from California’s spike upward. “The number of traffic deaths in 2016 was 30, a slight decline from 2015 and 2014 when 31 people were killed in each of those years in motor vehicle collisions,” the Chronicle noted. “The figures also showed a one-year decrease in pedestrian deaths with 16 in 2016 compared with 20 in 2015.”

On the other hand, while some analysts have suggested Vision Zero hasn’t proven adequate to lower fatalities, others have taken the opposite position, questioning whether it has any justifiable purpose in constraining city rules. “Some say cities are using traffic data to justify raking in millions in traffic fines,” the Washington Post reported. “Others contend that the proposals go too far, arguing that lowering speeds too much has a significant impact on travel times. Why, for example, set a 15 mph limit around schools when the facilities are closed, they say.” 

As Silicon Valley rushes to stake out a lead in what’s hoped to be a robust market for driverless cars, the company spun off of Google has established a clear lead — perhaps giving the competition a reason to consider focusing their efforts outside the Golden State. 

“New data on tests of self-driving car technology in California suggest that Alphabet Inc.’s efforts remain ahead of many rivals in the intensifying race to bring fully autonomous vehicles to the roads,” the Wall Street Journal reported, noting that the company’s driverless unit, Waymo, clocked nearly 640,000 miles on California roads in a 12-month span encompassing the end of 2015 and most of 2016.

Pulling ahead

The newly released figures underscored how significant of an advantage in experience and testing the Google-spawned enterprise has gained over its rivals, which now include not only the likes of Tesla and Apple but old-line auto companies like GM and Ford that have begun to move into the driverless space as well. “The data show that Waymo, the driverless car unit of Alphabet, logged 30 times more miles of testing in autonomous vehicles than all of its competitors combined last year in California,” according to Financial Times. “Its cars were also the most accurate, with human intervention needed for safety reasons only 0.2 times per thousand miles.”

“The data provide the most comprehensive snapshot yet of competing driverless car technologies, at a time when carmakers and technology companies are racing to be the first to perfect autonomous vehicles. It shows Waymo, BMW, Ford and Nissan as the most accurate systems. California is unique in the U.S. for requiring that companies testing autonomous vehicles report their miles driven and ‘disengagements’ (when a human driver has to take over the wheel) each year. In the absence of federal laws on self-driving cars, these disclosures are the only comprehensive information that allow for side-by-side comparisons between carmakers.”

Only by racking up lots of miles on the road can driverless companies accumulate enough instances of disengagement to correct and refine its programming. Human takeover, Waymo explained in its report, “[is] a natural part of the testing process that allow our engineers to expand the software’s capabilities and identify areas of improvement,” Marketwatch reported. “It marked a 50 percent increase in total autonomous miles within California compared with the prior reporting period, which was two months longer than this reporting period, it said. The number of disengagements fell 75 percent to 124 last year from 341 in 2015, Waymo said.”

Greener pastures?

Despite the flurry of activity, some in Sacramento have found cause for concern. The same absence of federal law that helped make California such a hotbed of activity brought with it a potential downside — regulatory reactions against the modest risks that the development of driverless cars can bring to streets. In fact, in a recent tiff that rattled nerves, Uber refused to apply for state permits for its self-driving vehicles, drawing a reprimand that saw the powerful ride-sharing company opt to ship its driverless fleet to welcoming Arizona. Hoping to head off a stampede, a new bill introduced by State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, “would require the DMV to immediately accept or reject an application to put a driverless car on the road,” as the Los Angeles Times reported. If passed, the legislation would clear a considerable hurdle now facing companies like Uber in California. “The regulations the DMV has proposed, by contrast, would give the agency 180 days — nearly half a year — to decide yes or no.”

Competition has geared up nationwide for the favor of driverless car companies, which especially covet urban environments where they can be free to test their vehicles in complex but reasonably controllable environments. GM President Dan Ammann told the Chicago Sun-Times, “GM is awaiting the state Legislature’s approval before it can consider testing self-driving cars here, as it does already in California, Arizona and in the Detroit area,” the paper noted. “Yet even without the legislation, GM has introduced in Chicago its Maven car-sharing service, which is envisioned as eventually operating with driverless cars for hire, and Express Drive, which lets drivers for GM’s partner Lyft rent a car at a subsidized rate. The rental program is GM’s entry into developing a network that will eventually include driverless cars.”

With contending pieces of legislation now up for consideration in Congress, California has returned to the national spotlight on one of the most contentious immigration issues — special visas granted by the federal government to attract foreign talent.

Long critiqued by economic nationalists, including some Democrats, the H-1B visa program has been accused of undercutting qualified candidates in key industries who are U.S. citizens. “The H-1B program offers 65,000 visas each fiscal year, with an additional 20,000 reserved for foreign workers who have advanced degrees from U.S. colleges and universities,” according to Ars Technica. “The visas are awarded by lottery each year. Last year, the government received more than 236,000 applications for those visas.”

With the prestige, economic importance and compensation level attached to those jobs, they have become a focus of reform for allies of President-elect Donald Trump. “Rep. Darrell Issa, one of the highest-profile Republicans in Congress and a supporter of Mr. Trump, said Wednesday in a statement on his website that he is reintroducing a bill designed to ‘stop the outsourcing of American jobs’ and ensure laws are not ‘abused to allow companies to outsource and hire cheap foreign labor from abroad,'” The Wall Street Journal reported. The bill would seek to achieve that outcome by hiking “required salaries for positions granted under the H-1B scheme that replace American workers from $60,000 to $100,000 per year,” according to the Journal.

Bipartisan frustration

In a sign of the cross-cutting partisan interests shaking up some established battle lines on immigration, Issa boasted a Democrat, fellow Californian Rep. Scott Peters, as the co-sponsor of the Protect and Grow American Jobs Act. Silicon Valley, where political allegiances at the end of the Obama era have begun to shift in new ways, has come under attack for its use of H-1Bs. “In 2013, the top nine companies acquiring H-1B visas were technology outsourcing firms, according to an analysis by a critic of the H-1B program,” Ars Technica recalled, noting that Microsoft rounded out the list’s top 10. “The thinking goes that if minimum H-1B salaries are brought closer to what high-skilled tech employment really pays, the economic incentive to use it as a worker-replacement program will drop off.”

But other big California corporations have not been left out of the criticism. “It’s specifically required that there be a shortage” in qualified candidates, Issa said of Southern California Edison, which he attacked for asking “employees being laid off to train their replacements,” as U-T San Diego noted. 

“Edison said at the time of the layoffs that it was ‘not hiring H-1B workers to replace displaced employees. Any H-1B visa workers SCE does hire for its own workforce are paid a wage comparable to SCE’s domestic workforce. Disney and a handful of other California companies have been criticized in recent years for similar moves.”

Dueling drafts

Issa and Scott’s path forward has been complicated, however, by legislative competition from one of his fellow California delegates to Congress. “Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Santa Clara County Democrat, warned Thursday that she believes Issa’s bill could undermine Silicon Valley’s job market,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. “That’s because tech companies in a location such as Silicon Valley, where software engineers can command a starting wage of $140,000 a year, might still have incentives to use foreign workers for $100,000, Lofgren said.”

Casting her alternative as a return to the original intent of U.S. visa laws to attract the so-called best and brightest, Lofgen recently announced the details of a draft bill that will circulate formally in several weeks’ time. “Under her plan, employers who pay as much as 2.5 times to three times the prevailing wage in their metro area would get first preference to hire people through the H-1B visa program,” according to the Mercury News. Lofgren has suggested that Issa’s intended fix could leave some problems intact. “Raising the wage from $60,000 to $100,000 would do nothing to prevent the sort of outsourcing abuse we’ve seen under the H-1B visa program,” she warned, according to the paper.

Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, introduced legislation requiring the DMV to revoke registrations for self-driving vehicles in violation of the state’s Autonomous Vehicle Tester Program. The bill is a response to Uber, which last year began testing its vehicles without a permit, even picking up passengers, violating state regulations. And one of the vehicles ran a red light. 

Under Ting’s bill, law enforcement would have the authority to impound violating vehicles and the DMV could fine as much as $25,000 per vehicle per day. 

“I applaud our innovation economy and all the companies developing autonomous vehicle technology, but no community should face what we did in San Francisco,” Ting said in a statement. “The pursuit of innovation does not include a license to put innocent lives at risk.”

Permits

Twenty companies have 130 test vehicles on the road under permits, which cost $150 each. To get permitted, vehicles must be registered and insured. Documentation both certifying the vehicle is for testing only and describing the technology must be provided as well.  

Last year, Uber refused to get permits before debuting its pilot program. The DMV revoked the cars’ registrations and offered to expedite permits, but Uber packed up its driver-less car program and moved to Arizona instead. 

“We have stopped our self-driving pilot in California, but remain 100 percent committed to our home state and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules,” an Uber spokesperson told CalWatchdog. “Our cars recently departed for Arizona by truck. We’re excited to have the support of Governor (Doug) Ducey.”

High-flying clean-energy industrialist Elon Musk has doubled down on his production plans in California. Tesla, his auto company, “took a major step toward its ambitious goal of one day building 1 million cars a year by seeking to double the size of its Fremont, Calif., assembly plant,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Under a long-term zoning proposal submitted to Fremont’s Planning Commission, the electric car maker wants to eventually add 4.6 million square feet of space to its factory’s existing 4.5 million square feet.”

Musk “told analysts this spring that the Palo Alto-based automaker hopes to ramp up annual production to 500,000 vehicles in 2018 and build 1 million vehicles by the end of 2020,” the paper added. “The 2018 goal alone is nearly a tenfold increase from the 50,580 vehicles that Tesla produced last year in Fremont. The automaker has forecast this year’s deliveries at 80,000 to 90,000. Quality problems and production delays plagued the plant early this year and threatened sales plans. But the company said last week that those problems are behind it and that it expects to come close to its forecast for 2016.”

Broad deals

Musk has not hesitated to link up with government resources and opportunities in order to advance his business interests. This month, he aligned SpaceX closely to take advantage of President Obama’s call to use private industry to help bring Americans to Mars. “Within the next two years, private companies will for the first time send astronauts to the International Space Station,” Obama announced. “One of those private companies tasked with ferrying astronauts to the ISS and who will essentially return human spaceflight to American soil in late 2018 is SpaceX,” the Observer noted.

And last month, Musk inked a deal to change the way California backstops its energy needs. “Tesla Motors Inc. will supply 20 megawatts (80 megawatt-hours) of energy storage to Southern California Edison as part of a wider effort to prevent blackouts by replacing fossil-fuel electricity generation with lithium-ion batteries,” Bloomberg reported. “Tesla’s contribution is enough to power about 2,500 homes for a full day, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. But the real significance of the deal is the speed with which lithium-ion battery packs are being deployed,” the site added — “months not years.”

Outracing critics

As Musk has accelerated his increasingly ambitious plans, however, he has attracted a greater share of criticism toward the mechanics of his business operations. “The pressure is now on Tesla for a smooth launch of the relatively affordable Model 3. A quality product pumped out at low cost and high volume is essential to meeting the ambitious goals of the company and its investors, auto analysts say, whereas long delays could threaten the company’s reputation — and survival,” according to the Times.

Meanwhile, wariness has centered separately around SolarCity, a startup run by family members. “The Tesla-SolarCity deal looks so bad on paper that many investors worry it’s simply a bailout of SolarCity, which Musk co-founded and continues to chair,” the MIT Technology Review noted. “While SolarCity dominates the market for leasing, installing, and maintaining solar panels for residences and businesses, it’s racked up more than $2 billion in losses over the past five years. “

“Its business model requires it to raise huge amounts of capital to cover the up-front costs of providing panels for no money down to consumers on multiyear contracts. Since its inception, the company has accumulated more than $3 billion in debt against just $1.5 billion in revenue. Now it is having a harder time convincing people to lend it money.”

What’s more, Musk has had to contend with a rebellion among his own shareholders. “As of earlier this week, seven Tesla stockholders have filed lawsuits against Elon Musk over the proposed acquisition of SolarCity and alleged Musk was in breach of his fiduciary duties for not disclosing the proposed merger properly. Some of these stockholders are asking the judge for an injunction to prevent the merger from going through,” Recode reported. But the two companies have announced the merger is going ahead anyway. “The companies have set the date for their respective shareholders to vote on the $2.6 billion all-stock transaction for Nov. 17.”

The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, heralded by political leaders as a measure to police poor working conditions in companies doing business in California “has little influence on the labor conditions of these suppliers” in China, Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch, said in a statement to CalWatchdog. “As such, labor rights violations are still prevalent in these factories.” A study released in late August from China Labor Watch reported that at the Shanghai, China, facility of Apple supplier Pegatron, “working conditions are terrible, and workers are subject to terrible treatment. Currently, Apple’s profits are declining … to mitigate the impact, Pegatron has taken some covert measures to exploit workers.”

It’s the seventh report to allege worker abuses by Apple’s Chinese suppliers from New York-based China Labor Watch since 2012.

The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act directs companies of a certain size to declare through a public posting that they are attentive to potential abuses along their supplier base. The goal is to stem human trafficking and slavery, advocates say. Companies last year received a letter from the state Attorney General’s Office, informing them that “your company must post on its Internet website the required disclosures if it meets the eligibility criteria – namely, if your company is a retail seller or manufacturer doing business in California and has annual worldwide gross receipts that exceed $100,000,000.”

But the act doesn’t mandate action to address shortfalls in the supply chain. The disclosures are the only requirement, although they have led to lawsuits filed by citizens who allege companies have filed misleading or false disclosures, using California’s liberal laws regarding consumer rights.

“This bill, it’s a very simple bill, it requires businesses to disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery from their supply chain,” former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said during the ceremonial signing of Senate Bill 657, which created the supply chains act. “This would increase transparency, allow consumers to get more information and make more choices and motivate businesses to ensure humane practices.”

The measure is responsible for several current investigations of companies based on the disclosure required by the supply chains act, state Department of Justice spokeswoman Kristin Ford said.

She declined to comment on Apple’s performance with regard to the act.

Apple, founded and based in Cupertino, Calif., since 1976, has complied with the reporting requirement. In its latest filing in March, Apple said it has a “robust auditing process which has expanded deep into the supply chain over the past ten years. This statement reflects our progress … to combat and prevent human trafficking, slavery, servitude, and forced, compulsory, or involuntary labor in our supply chain.” Apple, though, changed its primary supplier for the iPhone in 2013, handing the deal to Pegatron. Since then, Pegatron has handled other technology for Apple. Last year, according to its annual corporate report, Pegatron worked on Apple CarPlay, which delivers information from an iPhone to a vehicle’s display panel.

Taiwan-based Pegatron is a public corporation with an octopus of subsidiaries throughout Asia. It supplies electronics to a number of companies including Microsoft. But the 19-page labor study from China Labor Watch insists that “Apple is the real reason working conditions are deteriorating.”

Despite Schwarzenegger’s declaration that consumers will “make more choices” with information gleaned from the supply chain act, Apple this year ranked as the world’s most valuable brand for the sixth consecutive year in Forbes magazine’s annual study. Apple’s $154 billion worth is 87 percent higher than that of second place Google, according to the magazine.

Apple’s press office did not return a call.

China Labor Watch said that Apple’s favor among consumers has allowed it to skate on its alleged violations in China.

“Apple’s use of public relations and their popularity here in the U.S. may be why they are able to escape regulation/examination,” Qiang, the executive director of China Labor Watch, said in his statement to CalWatchdog. “In addition, Apple is very much concerned about their shareholders, as opposed to that of workers overseas. “