Future historians might mark July 20 as the date when a full scale war broke out over California’s groundwater.

On July 20 in the Los Angeles Times, George Skelton, the dean of California journalists, said it was unfair to tell him he can’t hose off his driveway or water his lawn while farmers can use all the groundwater they want. And he called for a coalition to legally absolve state property and water rights law going back a century.

He quoted state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, who said:

“California property owners have the right to all the water under them.  That began in the Wild West.  And we haven’t adapted to modern times…. It’s competition between property owners who get the most water.  I call it a race to the to bottom.”

Pavley and Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, are sponsoring separate bills in the Legislature to increase state government control over groundwater.

Santa Barbara water rights advocate Andy Caldwell reacted on July 24 on a radio program on AM 1290. Caldwell said such an action scared him because agriculture is the mainstay of the economy of most central and coastal counties.

So this could turn out to be another state battle pitting farmers against city folk.

Wild West water shootout?

So what’s going on?

California does not have a groundwater permits process for groundwater use, instead preferring regulation by court adjudication and monitoring of groundwater basins at the local level.  

California Groundwater law goes back not to Wild West shootouts, but to a 1903 legal case, Katz vs. Walkinshaw. In that case, the California Supreme Court established the groundwater rights of the overlying landowner are paramount over rights of others for use outside a basin.

Any new regulation of groundwater in California likely would require ratification by the state Supreme Court, or possibly the passage a state constitutional amendment by the Legislature or voters. 

So agricultural groundwater is not regulated in California, but it is managed. After the passage of Assembly Bill 3030 in 1992 (Water Code Section 10750 et seq.), 200 water agencies and districts adopted groundwater management plans. The Department of Water Resources reports that groundwater is already monitored in 10,000 active water wells where most of the water is used.

The major difference between voluntary local government groundwater management and state regulation is that the state has the power to issue shutdown notices and compel compliance with law enforcement to conserve water. But is the latter necessary? In fact, water levels in aquifers have always rebounded, as shown in the above table.

There still are some areas of the state that have not adopted such management plans.  Liability issues, the high cost of adjudicating water basins, the ability of farmers to self-manage groundwater levels, the complexities of existing water rights, and the lack of legal conflicts over local groundwater usage have made groundwater regulation unnecessary in many areas.

Groundwater is not generally monitored in some 200 water basins where the population is sparse and groundwater withdrawals are typically low. Moreover, it is not possible to convey groundwater from isolated aquifers to George Skelton to hose off his driveway.

Never Let A Groundwater Crisis Go to Waste

President Obama’s first chief of staff, current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, famously said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

Echoing that, Dickinson said about the drought (as quoted by Skelton), “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” As with the Emanuel, Dickinson meant using the crisis to increase government control.

According to Skelton’s analysis:

“Over the last century, the Central Valley has lost enough groundwater to fill Lake Tahoe — or enough to inundate the entire state by 14 inches. Between 2003 and 2009 alone, it lost enough to fill Lake Mead. The aquifer has fallen hundreds of feet in some areas, and not just in the San Joaquin Valley…. In the San Joaquin, land has been sinking with the aquifers.”

But again, as seen in the table above, water basins in the Sacramento, Delta, and San Joaquin basins never became depleted — even in the severe drought of 1977. The depletion of groundwater in the Central Valley is isolated to the Tulare Basin.

Even there, as of 2000 the Tulare aquifer had 390 years of remaining water storage left and was depleting at a rate of only 0.25 percent per year, according to a 2012 study conducted under the sponsorship of the National Academy of Sciences.

If California’s Water Wars really are beginning, it’s worth noting that groundwater in California is not part of a Wild West shootout, but a modern, mature system of management and adjudication.

By Katy Grimes

Sacramento could become known as the little government town that could. As Sacramento officials fight to prevent the Sacramento Kings basketball team from being lost to Seattle, the public subsidy the officials are offering is looking ridiculous — and unsustainable.

With its historical, abiding inferiority complex, Sacramento has long suffered under the absurdity and indiscretion of city officials who claim an economic rebirth will only occur if hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are spent on a new sports arena. And they do this with blatant disregard of the voters’ unwillingness to spend public money on an arena or professional sports team.

If the competition to keep or get the Kings is about which city has the best public subsidies to curry favor with the NBA, Sacramento wins hands down over Seattle.

But as more details are bounced around in the Sacramento arena deal, it is becoming apparent Sacramento should lose in overtime.

Needling Sacramento

A story in the Seattle Times Tuesday confirmed just how far Sacramento will go to make the deal. “Take Sacramento’s $447 million arena plan. It was unveiled to the public and then passed by their City Council only three days later,” Times columnist Danny Westneat wrote.

“Can you imagine the reaction from the Seattle process factory if our mayor put forth a half-billion-dollar public-private partnership and wanted it approved in just three days?”

Westneat added, “But beyond the haste here’s what is in Sacramento’s arena plan. It’s 60 to 75 percent public subsidies, depending on who’s counting.”

Bowing to the masters

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, recently returned from a trip to New York City with Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. They weren’t on a political junket, but went to the Big Apple to convince the National Basketball Association to allow Sacramento to keep the Kings.

Seattle, a city of 620,000, has 3.5 million in its metro area. Sacramento, on the other hand, has 470,000 city residents, with 2.5 million in the metro area.

The little government city that could…

Instead of getting down to the business of repairing Sacramento’s economy, along with its deep potholes, failing sewer system and diminished city services, Mayor Johnson, together with a team of city council members, has kept his eye on the basketball — at the expense of city business.

Sacramento City Councilman Kevin McCarty has been a vocal opponent of the arena deals, primarily because of what he says is an unsustainable public contribution. I called and emailed him to discuss his opposition, but he did not call back.

In a Sacramento Bee story, McCarty called the subsidy “overly generous” and warned it could “bring the city enormous misfortune if arena revenue doesn’t pan out as projected…. The risk outweighs the rewards.”

Show me the money

The Sacramento arena would not be getting so much attention if the arena deal was a purely private sector arrangement. In fact, private funding probably would bring it wide support in the region.

City of Sacramento officials claim the deal calls for $258 million of public taxpayer subsidy. A private investment group will contribute $189 million to the arena construction, and would be responsible for all capital improvements.

According to public policy watchdog group Eye on Sacramento, the deal actually calls for an additional $75 million of public subsidies that have not been counted by the city, or included in the city’s numbers.

Add this additional $75 million to the subsidy pot, along with Sacramento County’s public contribution, and the subsidy amounts not to a 53 percent public subsidy as city officials keep repeating, but is closer to a 75 percent public subsidy of a future sports arena.

Additionally, according to Powell, city officials would also receive control of a luxury suite in the new arena, and preferential VIP parking, “a perk that would cost taxpayers a total of $8 million, according to the findings of a noted sports facility economist.”

This is what’s known as padding a public subsidy, and creating a perk for city government staff.

Nuts and bolts, and luxury suites

To accomplish the development of the new arena and subsidy structure, the city plans to form a nonprofit corporation, which would own the parking lots and buildings. The nonprofit would issue bonds to finance the arena.

According to the city, the bonds would be repaid through city hotel taxes and other taxes and fees.

In a recent story, the Sacramento Business Journal explained where the rest of the city’s contribution would come from:

* Sacramento’s parking infrastructure fund: $1.5 million

* A rebate on sales taxes generated by the arena construction: $1 million

* Funds set aside for downtown development from the city’s share of proceeds from sale of the Sheraton Grand Sacramento: $5 million.

* Land transfers to the arena investors: $38 million. This would include 100 acres the city owns near the current arena in the city’s Natomas area.

But when the numbers are crunched, it appears Sacramento could have to dip into the general fund to make the payments on the bonds.

Hiding the numbers

Powell said that, as the deal was bounced by Sacramento officials only days before the city council vote, the city has been disguising the real numbers.  Parking revenues and the 12 percent hotel tax revenues are just not going to be enough to service this debt. That means the recently passed Measure U sales tax money likely will be tapped to service the arena bonds.

Measure U was sold to voters as a “temporary” half-cent sales tax proposed “to restore and protect City services,” according to the City of Sacramento. The sales tax measure was passed by voters, 64-36, in November 2012.

History repeats itself

After Sacramento Voters soundly defeated 2006 ballot Measures Q and R, which would have raised sales taxes to fund a sports arena, then-Sacramento County Supervisor Roger Dickinson continued to push like crazy to build an arena.

A back room deal was put together by Dickinson (now in 2013 a Democratic member of the state Assembly) and Steinberg. They hurried Measures Q and R onto the ballot, leaving voters only a few days to vote on the measures, which were missing crucial information in ballot explanations used by voters. Dickinson continued withholding the information until two courts overruled him. Steinberg and Dickinson also tried to get the measures passed by 50 percent simple majority vote instead of the two-thirds vote required for tax measures.

Voters killed the measures anyway.

Westneat is apparently floored at the audacity of Sacramento city officials. “But what’s most revealing is the public non-reaction in Sacramento,” he wrote. “One group, called Eye on Sacramento, called out the luxury suite as a sort of bribe — ‘one of the dirty little details of the arena deal.’ It got all of five paragraphs in the local paper and no obvious public blowback.”

“This is no normal business,” Westneat said. “It’s a cartel. And one thing we know from bitter experience is the NBA cartel likes its host cities a little desperate.”

And now, that county supervisor is in the State Assembly.

An exposé done by the Sacramento Bee over the weekend is only two years late; this information might have been helpful for voters in November 2010, when they were trying to decide whether or not to elect Roger Dickinson, a Democrat, to the 9th Assembly district.

“In his last 30 months as a Sacramento County supervisor, Roger Dickinson spent almost $70,000 in county funds on expenses – nearly as much as the county’s other four supervisors combined” the Bee reported.

“Dickinson, now a state assemblyman, went on 16 taxpayer-funded trips, bought almost $4,000 worth of furniture and paid about $30,000 to a consultant for work on a youth violence committee, records show.”

I knew what he was. I complained loudly about his behavior when I  wrote a weekly column for the Sacramento Union. My stories focused on what he had been doing as county supervisor.

Sports Arena Part l

“Mr. Dickinson most recently made a name for himself with his flaccid handling of the proposed Sacramento Sports Arena” I wrote in September 2007. Despite Sacramento Voters soundly defeating initiatives Measures Q and R which would have raised taxes and spent the money on a sports arena, Dickinson continued to push like crazy to build an arena.

The back room deal was put together by Dickinson, and Senator Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. They hurried Measures Q and R onto the ballot, leaving voters only a few days to vote on the measures which were missing crucial information. Dickinson continued withholding the information until two courts overruled him. But the measures failed anyway.

Steinberg and Dickinson also tried to get the measures passed by 50 percent simple majority vote instead of the two-thirds vote required for tax measures. Already strapped by county taxes, taxpayers smelled a rat and told arena supporters to pay for their own sports complex.

The Sacramento Grand Jury slammed City and County Sacramento officials in a scathing report about public officials’ attempts in Sacramento to build a sports facility with public money, and asked “Have the City and County deceived their citizens regarding their dealings with the Kings?”  They wrote, “Sacramento County breached the good faith of honest and open communications by placing Measures Q and R on the ballot asserting a deal which did not exist.”

Library Board

Dickinson was Chairman of the Sacramento Library Board of Directors when $800,000 was stolen by three employees in an over-billing and kickback scheme. In 2008, the Sacramento Grand Jury investigated and found gross mismanagement and financial conflicts of interest within the Sacramento Public Library Authority. The Grand Jury skewered the library’s board, of which Dickinson was chairman, for not overseeing the management, as well as the library’s finances.

But the real eye-opener was that despite the Grand Jury findings of gross mismanagement, even after the library director and two library officials were charged with felonies in the billing scandal, Dickinson stubbornly stood by the library director, Anne Marie Gold, after the Grand Jury recommended that she step down. After the scandal, Gold opened up her own library consulting firm and was hired by County Supervisors as a consultant to a county-led joint powers agency.

Grand Jury Get-Even

In what many have said is a vindictive move, Dickinson  proposed and passed  a bill last year that will neuter the very effective California’s Grand Jury system, which expose and prosecute government corruption, and root out waste and abuses of power by elected officials, boards and commissions. It is highly questionable how government officials can alter the Grand Jury process, when they are often the subjects of the investigations.

“Underhanded, sneaky behavior should not be rewarded with higher office,” I wrote in 2007. And I received a great deal of feedback from angry Sacramento residents about Dickinson’s arrogant behavior. Had they only know the extent of it, we might not be calling him “Assemblyman.”

FEB. 13, 2012

By KATY GRIMES

Grand Juries play a vital role in the California judicial system. They expose and prosecute government corruption, waste and abuses of power by elected officials, boards and commissions.

But that could change if freshman Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, gets his way. Dickinson is challenging California’s Grand Jury system, and has proposed a bill that would neuter the very effective Grand Juries.

Assembly Bill 622 would require that sworn Grand Jury testimony be taken in public; that 45 days prior to the proceeding the juries meet with the agency head they are investigating; and that attorneys be allowed in the Grand Jury proceedings with clients.

A Grand Jury acts as an independent investigative unit, with all of the scope and authority to bring public officials to justice. The concept of the Grand Jury was originally created in England to serve as watchdog against abuses by the crown. Adopted in America as a check on general governmental oppression and corruption, the Grand Jury system is historically and firmly planted in the American legal system.

“Secrecy has long been a hallmark of grand juries,” Dr. Marrianne Jameson with the California Association of Grand Jurors. “In modem times, the California Supreme Court summarized the reasons for grand jury secrecy as to encourage free and untrammeled disclosures by persons who have information with respect to the commission of crime, and to protect the innocent accused who is exonerated from disclosure of the fact that he has been under investigation and from the expense of standing trial where there was probably no guilt.”

But Dickinson has history with the Sacramento Grand Jury, which may be at the very heart of the motive for the bill. Some are suggesting that his bill may be a revenge tactic. And many have asked why and how government officials can alter the Grand Jury process, when they are often the subjects of the investigations.

Dickinson’s Library

In 2008, the Sacramento Grand Jury investigated and found gross mismanagement and financial conflicts of interest within the Sacramento Public Library Authority. The Grand Jury skewered the library’s governing board, of which Dickinson was a member as a Sacramento County Supervisor.

The 2007–08 Sacramento County Grand Jury issued a 28-page report accusing the library of fraud and mismanagement on multiple counts. It found that because of a lack of oversight, the library hired a maintenance company that inflated invoices for more than three years and was co-owned by the wife of a library staffer.

Despite the Grand Jury findings of gross mismanagement and even after the library director and two library officials were charged with felonies in the billing scandal, Dickinson stubbornly stood by the library director — even after the Grand Jury recommended that she step down.

The Grand Jury conducted more than 40 interviews, including current and former members of the Library Governing Board, reviewed more than 1,500 library financial documents and committee meeting minutes and issued more than 70  subpoenas.

Most of the Governing Board, members of the Sacramento City Council and the County Board of Supervisors, were old hands at public service, and had served on the Board for at least 11 years.

The Grand Jury found that “the Governing Board failed to appoint an independent Treasurer or Auditor to oversee the actions of the Library Director and the senior management staff,” and “failed in its oversight of the Library, the Library Director, and the Library executive team.”

In 2009, the Grand Jury lambasted the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors and Child Protective Services for “persistent, recurring and systemic problems resulting in child abuse related deaths.” It even titled its report, “Child Protective Services — Nothing Ever Changes — Ever.” Sacramento has a history of a neglectful CPS department, with very little ever done by the elected County Supervisors.

Dickinson’s Bill

Flash forward to 2011 and Dickinson’s bill AB 622.

One Assembly committee analysis attempted to make the argument in favor of the bill using a budget issue:

Most of the courts also responded that they do not have additional space in courthouses to accommodate the public sessions. The Administrative Office of the Courts further contends that the cost to provide meeting space for a civil grand jury is not a court cost, but a county cost. Finally, if courthouse space were to be used, this would occur outside of normal business hours, which could result in additional costs to the county for security.

The argument is weak given the high level of authority and importance of the Grand Juries.

Dickinson recently told the Assembly Judiciary Committee that, with his bill, “a small amount of transparency” will be added to help keep grand juries from abusing their power. But no examples of those abuses are highlighted in the bill or in the committee analyses.

Opponents argue that the Grand Jury is the only body with the ability to protect the public from government abuses and say the bill would strip confidentiality provisions from the system. Doing so would expose potential whistleblowers to retaliation, potentially resulting in discouraging citizens from participating in the Grand Jury Process.

One opponent of the bill is the California Association of Grand Jurors, which exists “To promote government accountability by improving the training and resources available to California’s 58 regular grand juries and educating the public about the substantial local government oversight and reporting powers these grand juries have.”

The CAGJ says that Grand Juries work under the supervision of each county’s presiding judge and have plenty of supervision and accountability.

Numerous judges and attorneys are in opposition to Dickinson’s bill and say that if the bill is passed, Grand Juries will be less effective. They warn that whistle-blowers will be unwilling to follow through with charges, and witnesses could be compromised and intimidated should the bill pass.

Critics of Dickinson’s bill say that it fails to demonstrate that any real improvement will be made in how civil grand juries operate, but the harm it could do would be substantial.

The state’s Grand Jurors Association and the California District Attorneys Association testified in opposition to the bill when the bill was in the Assembly Judiciary Committee on April 5. However, the bill passed the committee by a 6 to 4 vote, but not entirely along party lines — Dickinson’s fellow Democratic Assemblywoman and lawyer, Alyson Huber of El Dorado Hills, voted “no.”

Grand Jury Secrecy

The association quotes the California Supreme Court, which, while extolling openness in government, adds that there are two fundamental reasons for maintaining secrecy with grand juries:

Secrecy serves to protect the reputations of those who may be unjustly accused during the course of a watchdog (civil) investigation.

Secrecy also provided the proper atmosphere in which to generate uninhibited testimony from county employees who might otherwise be intimidated by political and employment considerations.

And the California District Attorneys Association agrees. The association argues that Grand Jury proceedings should remain closed because getting witnesses willing to come forward is already difficult. Passage of the bill could inhibit a witness from giving totally candid testimony if the public and media are present at Grand Jury proceedings.

While “transparency in government” is the latest rallying cry of lawmakers, Grand Jury proceedings rely on candid testimony by witnesses at risk of retaliation.

Perhaps Dickinson misunderstands that the transparency is needed in the lawmaking process, and not in the important testimony of government whistleblowers.

The bill will be heard in the Assembly Appropriations Committee for fiscal considerations on May 11.