Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wildfire “strike force” surprised some with the vagueness of its most important recommendation: That it’s time to revise the “inverse condemnation” state law that holds energy utilities can be held fully responsible for fires that were caused by their equipment even if the equipment was properly maintained. The law appears to be an existential threat to Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s largest investor-owned utility, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January after being blamed for fires that resulted in $30 billion in damages.

Newsom’s pointed deference to state lawmakers – saying he hoped they could hash out a plan by mid-July – is an example of the “leading from behind” management gambit, which has a mixed history. Just as the Obama administration did with aspects of its foreign policy, the Newsom administration is expecting its allies to take the helm. The governor said he believes progress is more likely with him in the background.

“I’m purposely not including my personal opinions because I actually want to accomplish something. And I believe it’s incumbent upon me to create the conditions where we can actually get something done, versus to assert a political frame,” Newsom told Capitol reporters.

The governor may also perceive political risk if he puts out his own specific blueprint for how PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric can survive in a hot, dry era in which massive wildfires are common annual events.

Tactic seen as best for long-range causes

Leadership experts, however, think the “lead from behind” gambit works better for issues with low stakes or for long-term causes – for the most famous example, Nelson Mandela’s decades-long effort to end apartheid in South Africa – and isn’t necessarily right for addressing pressing problems.

Jack Dunigan, a longtime management consultant who runs The Practical Leader website, believes that “it works best in times and places of non-crisis. If a child is running into the street and into traffic, it is not the time to convene a focus group to discuss the threats of playing in the street. It is the time for action. Leading from behind, as [Harvard business professor Linda] Hill describes it, works best in non-threatening, non-urgent conditions.”

Given that PG&E emerged in 2004 after three years in bankruptcy and returned to regular operations, that may suggest that there is no urgent reason for Newsom to take a bolder approach. But the idea that the Legislature will be able to come up with a plan in three months or less is difficult to square with its recent history – and the intense dislike that many state lawmakers and Northern California residents have for scandal-scarred PG&E.

In January, after PG&E’s bankruptcy filing, state Sen. Bob Hertzberg told a Sacramento TV station, “Nobody in the Capitol wants to bail out PG&E, period, exclamation mark, end of story, full stop. They just don’t.”

While lawmakers don’t hold Southern California Edison and SDG&E in such contempt, any attempt to help them deal with wildfire liabilities that also protects PG&E would face tough sledding.

This background is why Newsom’s predecessor, Jerry Brown, got nowhere last year with his proposal to give state judges the flexibility to limit the amount of liability a utility has for wildfire damages based on circumstances – including consideration of the importance of a utility being able to continue to provide power to millions of customers.

Further complicating the prospects for relatively quick approval is that “inverse condemnation” is written into the California Constitution. Changing it would appear to require a vote of the public as well as two-thirds approval of both the state Assembly and Senate.

Governor-elect Gavin Newsom says he hopes to amend the California tax code to lessen its dependence on income and capital gains taxes paid by the very rich. Yet the last two serious attempts at tax reform were both dead on arrival, and the political dynamics since their failure appear unchanged or even more unfavorable.

With the state overdue by historical standards for another recession, Newsom is well aware of the revenue nightmare that is looming. After the Great Recession hit a decade ago, state revenue plunged nearly 20 percent – leading to harsh budget cuts in education, public health and social services. Since income and capital gains taxes generate about two-thirds of state revenue, volatility is common.

The revenue decline a decade ago led then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to create a commission that in 2009 recommended slashing taxes on income and capital gains while imposing taxes on broad categories of services including legal work, haircuts and tickets to sports and entertainment events. The goal was a tax code rewrite that was initially revenue-neutral but that could end up creating considerable new revenue because of provisions designed to promote economic growth.

Democrats see income-tax cut as gift to rich

Yet while commission heavyweights like former Treasury Secretary George Shultz and many economists touted the wisdom of the proposal, the commission’s tax-overhaul blueprint was blasted by both parties from the moment it was released.

Democrats said the plan was a giveaway to the rich. Republicans knocked it for expanding government taxation to new areas.

The scheme – dubbed the Parsky plan because Rancho Santa Fe GOP businessman Gerald Parsky chaired the commission – never even came up for a committee hearing.

Six years later, in 2015, state Sen. Robert Hertzberg pushed a similar proposal, but with a twist. Instead of being revenue-neutral, has plan would yield $10 billion in new revenue a year. Yet Hertzberg’s plan was also DOA in the Capitol for the same reasons as Parsky’s.

Now, with the progressive wing in more complete control than ever of Democrats, their antipathy toward the idea of tax relief for the rich may never have been stronger. That was reflected in the recent Sacramento Bee story about Newsom’s interest in revamping the state tax code.

Jessica Bartholow, policy advocate at the Western Center on Law & Poverty, told the Bee that the tax code shouldn’t be changed to help the rich and big business.

“Capital gains is money earned by people who didn’t earn it,” Bartholow said. “If wealthy corporations and people are having an upswing in their interests, then why shouldn’t the poorest people?”

Republicans fear reform would prove bait-and-switch

The strongest voice in support of tax reform the Bee cited was Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable. But the basic sentiment conservatives expressed about the Parsky and Hertzberg plans – Sacramento wants to tax even more human activities? – is at least as intense as in 2009 and 2015. There is considerable suspicion that any reform plan would end up as a Trojan horse for much higher taxes.

This is fueled by evidence that Democrats are gearing up for a huge push to hike taxes even though state revenue is at an all-time high. The most high-profile gambit is qualifying a measure for the 2020 ballot that would end Proposition 13 protections against property tax hikes of more than 2 percent a year for commercial and industrial properties.

This tax-hike fervor is already evident in local governments, including some under Republican control. As CalWatchdog reported last month, more than 150 local governments asked voters to raise taxes in the June and November elections. While most of the tax hikes were adopted after campaigns depicting them as crucial to public safety and to maintaining government services, by far the fastest-growing category of local spending is on pension costs, which are predicted to roughly double for California cities from 2015 to 2025.

Seven months after her office released sweeping recommendations for reform of California’s bail system, state Supreme Court Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye may have a chance to force changes without going through the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown.

Last week, the state Supreme Court agreed to take up a January appellate court ruling that took dead aim at a bail system that some say turns county jails into “debtor prisons.” More than half of jail inmates are there not because of convictions but because they can’t raise bail, which usually requires providing a bail bonds office with cash or property worth 10 percent of the total bail sum. California has the highest cash bail rates of any state, according to Human Rights Watch.

“A defendant may not be imprisoned solely due to poverty,” Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline said in a 3-0 decision of the 1st District Court of Appeal that ordered a new bail hearing for Kenneth Humphrey, a retired maintenance worker living in San Francisco who was accused of threatening a neighbor, stealing a bottle of cologne and $5, and demanding more money. Humphrey said he was seeking payment of a debt. But a judge followed a standard bail schedule that took note of Humphrey’s previous felony convictions and set his bail at $600,000, which was later reduced to $350,000.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the case, which he had requested after state Attorney General Xavier Becerra chose not to appeal the appellate ruling. “We’re pleased,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I’ve made it very clear that I’m not a proponent of money bail. But getting rid of money bail doesn’t entail that we will never have pretrial detention. There are still some people that are going to be either a flight risk or dangerous, and what we have now is a state of the law that is unclear, and the standard in terms of dangerousness may be way too high.”

Cantil-Sakauye urged bail changes in 2016 speech

While the appellate ruling was stayed pending the state high court’s ruling, criminal justice reformers were hopeful that Cantil-Sakauye’s history hints at the court’s eventual decision.

The chief justice conveyed her support for bail reform in her 2016 State of the Judiciary speech. A task force she convened issued a report in October that said the state’s system “unnecessarily compromises victim and public safety because it bases a person’s liberty on financial resources rather than the likelihood of future criminal behavior” and was “unsafe and unfair.” It called for pretrial assessments that would help judges gauge the risk posed by each defendant and for “pretrial programs [that] would also give judges more tools to supervise defendants, such as drug testing, home confinement, and text reminders for court dates.”

This approach was used with Humphrey, 64, after the appellate court ruling overturned his $350,000 bail. He was released from jail after agreeing to supervised around-the-clock detention at a substance abuse facility and to wearing an ankle monitor.

Despite lobbying from Cantil-Sakauye, Gov. Jerry Brown and progressive and civil rights groups, the Legislature has so far been mostly cool to two years of efforts led by Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, to scrap the state’s money bail system. Their legislative proposals mirror the recommendations of the chief justice’s task force. One version passed the state Senate last year on a party-line vote before stalling; another was rejected by the Assembly.

Last week could be remembered as a turning point for California criminal justice as state Attorney General Xavier Becerra

Becerra did so with his announcement that he would not challenge a state appellate court ruling that ordered a new bail hearing for a retired shipyard worker in San Francisco who had been held in jail for more than eight months, unable to raise $350,000 bail. Kenneth Humphrey was accused of threatening a neighbor and stealing from his apartment.

The appellate panel held it was unacceptable to set bail so high for a defendant who appeared to not be a public threat. Becerra agreed with the finding and going forward essentially encouraged public defenders to routinely challenge bail they found unjust by saying his office would no longer defend heavy bail or bail that was imposed by local judges without a consideration of flight and safety risks or bail alternatives.

The state’s harsh bail practices were the target of legislation meant to end the “money” bail system that Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Los Angeles, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, introduced in late 2016. Senate Bill 10 would have in many cases eliminated bail, based on assessments of the accused’s flight risk and danger to the public. It also would have directed judges to consider the ability of accused individuals to raise bail.

The Hertzberg-Bonta initiative was in response to complaints from civil rights groups that heavy bail destroyed lives by costing the accused their jobs or their ability to attend school and preventing them from becoming productive individuals. More than half of those in county jails in California are there because of an inability to make bail, not any convictions.

Governor, chief justice negotiating final reform plan

The measure made some progress last year until it was abruptly pulled on Aug. 25 with an announcement from Gov. Jerry Brown that he and state Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye would work with Hertzberg and Bonta to fine-tune their measure before bringing it back to the Legislature this year.

“I believe that inequities exist in California’s bail system and I look forward to working this fall on ways to reform the system in a cost-effective and fair manner, considering public safety as well as the rights of the accused,” the governor said in a statement.

Brown is looking to carve out a late-career legacy on criminal justice reform, playing a key role in the adoption in 2016 of Proposition 57, which makes it easier for those accused of nonviolent and some violent crimes to win parole. Crime experts have long pointed out that crime is largely a young man’s game and that nations with relatively few prisoners in their 40s or 50s are at least as safe as the United States.

But the strength of the case for bail reform so far is somewhat murkier in the United States. While some local governments report success – notably in New Orleans – a bold bail reform law that took effect on Jan. 1, 2017, in New Jersey at the behest of then-Gov. Chris Christie has proven controversial. It uses algorithmic tools to determine whether cash bail should be assessed.

While the new law is credited with reducing New Jersey’s jail population 19 percent in its first five months, one of the algorithm’s decisions didn’t work out. The tool recommended the release last April of a Bridgeton, New Jersey, man named Jules Black, 30, after he had been arrested on suspicion of being a felon in illegal possession of a firearm. Days later, Black allegedly killed Christian Rodgers, 26, a neighborhood adversary, after shooting at him 22 times.

Rodgers’ mother, June, is suing Christie, the inventor of the bail assessment tool and others, seeking wrongful death damages and an injunction preventing further use of the bail algorithm.

The 2017 session of the California Legislature may be remembered as when the criminal justice reform movement in America’s largest state lost its momentum.

The movement entered the session with a head of steam after winning majority support from the Legislature and then the public for Proposition 47 in 2014 and for Proposition 57 in 2016. The former measure reclassified dozens of “nonviolent” and “nonserious” offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. The latter made it easier for nonviolent felons to win parole.

This year, the same rationale that civil liberties groups, progressive think tanks and minority organizations offered for Propositions 47 and 57 was invoked in seeking sweeping statewide bail reform and a pilot program allowing drug addicts to inject themselves in safe settings in several cities and counties. That rationale: California’s criminal justice system is not only far too punitive, it focuses too much on punishment and not enough on rehabilitation.

State Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, led the push for putting sharp limits on the state’s money bail system in favor of a system that largely trusted suspects without serious criminal histories to not go on the lam. They argued that California’s highest-in-the-nation bail requirements were unnecessary to get the accused to show up for trial and had the effect of destroying lives of suspects by forcing them to spend months in jail, unable to post 10 percent of their bail and secure a guarantee from a bail bondsman.

The fact that more than half the people in state jails are there not because they had been convicted of crimes but because they can’t post bail resonated not just with those who saw bail laws as unfair but with those who saw the system as wildly expensive.

This prompted optimism from Hertzberg in an interview with the Los Angeles Times before the 2017 session began: “Now you have a whole host of groups on both sides of the aisle looking at the cost and fairness of the system,” he said.

But the high point for the reform push came on May 31, when Hertzberg’s SB10 passed the Senate 26-11. A day later, the Assembly rejected AB42, Bonta’s identical bill, on a 35-37 vote.

Supporters of the measures expressed frustration that the governor waited until late August to offer support – and then only with the proviso that the bills be taken up in 2018, not in the closing days of the 2017 session. But it’s an open question whether Brown could have muscled the measures to passage. While other local and state governments have reported success with bail reform, Maryland’s adoption of no-cash bail reform last year has won wide attention for its troubled start. The Washington Post reported in July that the number of trial no-shows had more than doubled under the new system.

No to ‘government-sanctioned drug dens’

The other proposed reform made similar halting progress before being put aside for possible reconsideration in 2018. AB186 by Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, would have established safe areas in a handful of cities and counties for drug users to inject themselves without fear of being charged with crimes, among several provisions. Drug law reformers argued that this would reduce the carnage from the opioid crisis by making it easier to treat overdoses and by getting addicts in touch with health care professionals. The program would lapse in 2022.

But law enforcement groups voiced sweeping objections to the law, saying it would create “government-sanctioned drug dens with no requirement that participants enter treatment,” in the words of a state Senate analysis, among many criticisms.

The bill passed the Assembly on June 1 with 21 votes – the bare minimum for approval – before being rejected by the Senate on Sept. 12 after gaining only 17 of the needed 21 votes.

Not only has it been a disappointing year for the lawmakers and civic leaders behind the recent push for sweeping reforms of California’s criminal justice system, their achievements are under harsh fire in Los Angeles County.

Last December, Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, and state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Los Angeles, proposed to largely scrap cash bail on the grounds that it wasn’t essential to getting people to show up for their trials, was destructive of individuals’ lives and would sharply reduce costs and crowding at county jails. But while one of the two related bills the lawmakers introduced passed the Senate on mostly party lines, the other stalled on the Assembly floor, only getting 35 votes in support. The bail bonds industry has strong relationships with both parties, especially in urban areas where bail bond agents are often significant donors.

On Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown and Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye announced their support for the measure – but for review and passage in 2018, not the remaining few days of the current legislative session.

The support of Brown and Cantil-Sakauye was depicted as good news by Bonta and Hertzberg. But the governor’s and chief justice’s delay in getting on the bandwagon and the Assembly’s coolness to the concept showed that bail reform never enjoyed as much support as two other recent criminal justice reform measures. Adopted by state voters in 2014, Proposition 47 reclassifies several nonviolent crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies for those without criminal records involving crimes of violence or related to guns. Approved in 2016, Proposition 57 made it easier for those guilty of “nonviolent” crimes to win parole.

Reforms face intense blowback in L.A. County

Now, however, enthusiasm for these reforms has faded in the largest county in the state and nation.

In Los Angeles County, some law enforcement and women’s groups are upset with Proposition 57 over how many of the crimes it considers “nonviolent” involve considerable violence, including types of sexual assaults.

But many local leaders, politicians, law enforcement members and citizens are furious over the effects of Proposition 47. They say it amounts to a “get out of jail free” card for drug addicts who no longer face incarceration for their crimes but who face no punishment when they don’t honor requirements they meet with drug counselors. Anecdotes about addicts being arrested over and over and over without consequence have been common in police circles for more than two years. Similar stories abounded in a harsh October 2015 Washington Post analysis of the early effects of Proposition 47. It concluded the well-meaning state law kept addicts out of jail, but not out of trouble.

These concerns led Los Angeles County supervisors to vote 3-0 on Aug. 15 to set up a commission to examine “the challenges and opportunities” created by Propositions 47 and 57 and AB109, a 2011 state law that “realigned” criminal justice by having those convicted of many “low-level” crimes serve their sentences in county jails instead of state prisons.

The reforms have been the focus of anger over two gun murders on Feb. 20 in Los Angeles County, allegedly committed by convicted felon Michael C. Mejia – one of a family member, the other of Whittier police Officer Keith Boyer. Mejia had been released from state prison 10 months before the killings and the Los Angeles gang member reportedly committed several parole violations without being sent back to state prison before Feb. 20.

After the killings, Whittier Police Chief Jeff Piper and the Los Angeles Police Protective League blamed AB109 and Proposition 47 for making it easier for Mejia to avoid being returned to state prison for breaking parole.

Reformers said Proposition 47 had nothing to do with Mejia’s treatment. They said that while AB109 changed how Mejia was treated after being released from prison, it did so by assigning responsibility for his oversight to the Los Angeles County Probation Department – not the state corrections department.

But the argument that the county was blaming state reforms for its own failings never took hold. The day after officer Boyer’s death, Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell said state reforms were “putting people back on the street that aren’t ready to be back on the street.” He said his jail system had so many dangerous inmates that it amounted to a “default state prison” – undermining claims that reforms would have positive or benign effects on local communities.

SACRAMENTO – California’s Legislature is back from its recess and legislators kicked off the session by focusing on two highly partisan matters.

Assembly Republicans first voted to keep Chad Mayes as Republican leader, despite pressure from activists to oust him because of his vote to extend the governor’s cap-and-trade system. But Mayes said Thursday that he will step down and will be replaced by Brian Dahle, R-Bieber. Democrats pushed new legislation that would change state election rules to help Democratic Sen. Josh Newman of Fullerton thwart a high-profile recall effort.

As divisive political wrangling settles down, legislators do plan to address some substantive policy issues. At the top of the list is housing. Before the recess, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democratic leadership promised to introduce a package of bills to help boost housing supply, given that escalating home prices have reached crisis levels.

Keep an eye on Senate Bill 35, which would create “a streamlined, ministerial approval process for development proponents of multi-family housing” in localities that have “not produced enough housing units to meet its regional housing needs assessment.” A ministerial approval would spare developers from a drawn-out process before planning commissions and city councils.

Local governments are opposed to the bill because it limits their authority, but backers say the measure is needed to jump-start some types of housing projects, given that local growth controls and environmental lawsuits have slowed housing construction.

The bill recently was amended to expand its application beyond big urban centers to include smaller cities and suburban locales. It’s a rare instance where Republicans and Democrats have some common ground, with the former wanting to encourage private companies to build more and the latter hoping to see the construction of high-density housing. The building industry opposes provisions that would require paying union wage scales.

There’s more controversy over two other housing-related measures. Senate Bill 2 would impose $75 to $225 fees on property transfers (excluding home sales) to fund government-subsidized affordable housing. Senate Bill 3 would put a $3 billion housing bond on the November 2018 ballot, which also would fund housing subsidies.

Another top Capitol priority is passage of Assembly Bill 1250, which essentially would ban 56 of California’s 58 counties from outsourcing certain services to private contractors. It is backed by a vast array of public-sector unions.

“While cheaper services and employee layoffs may appear to save dollars in the short term, the savings are often illusory with hidden costs that are not accounted for and diminished services or contractor failures that require cities and counties to ultimately re-hire and/or re-train staff to provide the outsourced service,” argues author Reginald Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles.

But county governments, and companies that provide myriad services to them, argue that the bill will dramatically raise costs for taxpayers and will lead to diminished services. Given increasing costs of pensions, medical care and other employee benefits, these governments say they can’t afford to hire permanent employees. This is likely to be one of the most contentious bills to make its way through the Legislature during the final month of session.

On Wednesday, activists promoting bail reform held an event on the Capitol grounds, thus highlighting a growing reform movement. Senate Bill 10 — by Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys — would replace the current system of money bail with a judicial-based pre-trial system, whereby defendants are released or kept in custody based on an assessment of their flight risk and the nature of their alleged crimes.

Opponents of the current bail system argue that it’s unfair to keep people in jail, as they await trial, based solely on their ability to post a bond. Studies show that low-income people are more likely to accept plea bargains – largely so they can get out of jail and get back to work and caring for their children. The bail-bonds industry sees the legislation as an existential threat, and Republicans fear that the new system could make it tough to keep dangerous people behind bars.

Senate Bill 54, which would turn California into a so-called sanctuary state by limiting “the involvement of state and local law enforcement agencies in federal immigration enforcement,” is another hot-button issue in the waning days of the session. As the Sacramento Bee reported, the measure “sailed through the Senate and appears likely to pass the Assembly with a majority vote,” but “it’s unclear where Brown stands on the issue.”

Its passage would put the state on a collision course with the Trump administration, which has threatened to halt crime-fighting funds to cities — and presumably, states — that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials.

Legislators and activists have talked about other, less-substantive but highly controversial issues, as well. Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de Leon promised in a speech this week to hold hearings on white supremacists in California, which he called “a cancer on our nation.” Silicon Valley entrepreneur Tim Draper, who had failed to qualify for the November 2016 ballot a measure to break up California into six states, filed a new measure to split up California into three states.

There’s plenty to watch as the legislative session winds down – and as political battles heat up for the 2018 election.

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

The same coalition of Democratic lawmakers and interest groups that worked with Gov. Jerry Brown on Propositions 47 and 57 — which lessen the amount of time convicts must spend behind bars for relatively minor crimes and make it easier for convicts to gain parole, respectively — have a new target: the state’s harsh bail laws.

Brown has yet to sign on to the campaign led by state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland. But given that Hertzberg and Bonta’s main arguments have echoes of the arguments made on behalf of Propositions 47 and 57, it may be just a matter of time.

They are highly critical of California’s bail laws, which require suspects to post an average bail of $50,000 — more than five times the national median — before they can be released. In a state with the nation’s highest rate of poverty, these rules are so punitive that they routinely ruin suspects’ lives, Hertzberg and Bonta contend. Unable to afford bail, suspects languish in local jails until their trials start, losing their jobs and their ability to take care of their families, who sometimes lose their housing as a result — even if the suspects are never convicted of crimes.

Hertzberg says he’s finding GOP support for his interest in lowering bail rates. Perhaps his best tool in swaying tough-on-crime Republicans is the evidence that states with much lower, less punitive bail amounts do not have any trouble getting criminal suspects to come to their trials. If California adopted reforms and “risk-assessment” evaluations of the sorts used in Kentucky and New Jersey, Golden State taxpayers could save hundreds of millions of dollars.

A Public Policy Institute of California study backs up these theories. According to the PPIC, in 2014, 50,000 of the 80,000 people held daily in local jails in the state were there because they couldn’t make bail. A key PPIC conclusion: “California’s high rates of pretrial detention have not been associated with lower rates of failure to appear or lower levels of felony rearrests.”

Bail bond industry has fended off previous reform pushes

Given the heavy costs of incarceration, excessive and unnecessary bail would seem to have been low-hanging fruit both for criminal justice reformers and opponents of government waste during the budget wars seen during California’s revenue recession from 2008-2012. But the bail bond industry — with annual state revenue of $2 billion — has fought off reform with heavy lobbying, campaign donations and warnings of the risk to public safety if bail laws are weakened.

This could change in the 2017 session. “Now you have a whole host of groups on both sides of the aisle looking at the cost and fairness of the system,” Hertzberg told the Los Angeles Times.

There is also the possibility that changes in California bail laws could be demanded by state judges. The Equal Justice Under Law group is suing the cities of San Francisco and Sacramento over what the group calls unconstitutional bail policies that create two separate and unequal types of justice systems — a reasonable one for middle-income and wealthy families and a brutally harsh one for poor people.

At a state insurance commission hearing last month, state Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones praised Equal Justice Under Law for raising the issue.

“We shouldn’t have a system where your detention is based on your income. There are allegations that that’s the system we have,” Jones said, according to San Francisco TV station KPIX-5.

Indeed, the system is so ubiquitous – bail-bonds offices cluster around courthouses – that it’s just an accepted part of the system. Yet that could all be changing. As Calwatchdog reported last month, reforming the state’s bail system will be a top priority as legislators return to the Capitol. Sure enough, the press conference was held shortly before the new session came to order and included several prominent Democratic legislators.

After an arrest, a judge will typically set a bail amount based on the seriousness of the alleged crime and on the defendant’s perceived flight risk. The defendant can post the full amount or pay a bondsman 10 percent of the bail, which is nonrefundable. The bail company assumes the financial risk if the defendant is a “no show.” The bond is meant to provide a strong financial incentive for the defendant to show up at the appointed court date.

But Newsom and the assembled legislators argued that the current system is antiquated and unfair – the “modern equivalent of debtors’ prison,” as sponsors of a reform bill put it. “We punish poor people literally for being poor,” argued Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland. “In many cases, if you have enough money to pay your bail, you can get out of jail regardless of whether you are a danger to the public or a flight risk.”

And the converse is true, supporters say: Those who are poor but pose little danger or flight risk must stay in jail until the wheels of justice turn. They often turn slowly, which means people in tough financial straits risk losing their job, their home and their car as they languish in a jail cell. A single parent risks losing his or her children to Child Protective Services. It’s a tough burden for those who have not been found guilty of a crime.

It’s the first day of session, so the legislation includes intent language: “It is the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation to safely reduce the number of people detained pretrial, while addressing racial and economic disparities in the pretrial system, to ensure that people are not held in pretrial detention simply because of their inability to afford money bail.”

Legislators say their intent is to “reform” the system, but appears the ultimate intent is to move to a risk-based system of the type embraced by the federal government and some local jurisdictions such as Washington, D.C. In other words, details are still hazy, and the bail-bonds industry has plenty of time to gear up for what could pose an existential threat.

The industry has argued that it offers an economical system that minimizes the costs to the court system. That’s because bond companies privately assure – without extensive court monitoring – that defendants show up for their trial. But critics argue that far more people remain in jail than would be the case with a risk-based assessment – and that the jail costs (around $100 a day in California) counteract any other savings.

The California legislation is part of a nationwide movement by civil-rights and civil-liberties groups to change the pretrial system across the country. The focus is less on cost savings than on justice-related issues. As a 2013 research paper from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation explained, “A study, using data from state courts, found that defendants who were detained for the entire pretrial period were over four times more likely to be sentenced to jail and over three times more likely to be sentenced to prison than defendants who were released at some point pending trial.”

The reason? Those in jail awaiting trial are “more likely to cop a plea,” said Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a Van Nuys Democrat and co-author of the legislation. If a defendant is in jail awaiting trial, and faces the prospect of losing everything he or she owns, then there’s intense pressure to do something – anything – to get out. An arrest doesn’t mean guilt, so a person out on bail can continue life as usual while the process plays out. Hertzberg’s office notes that “63 percent of inmates in county jails are awaiting trial or sentencing.”

The American Civil Liberties Union pointed to racial disparities. “Nationally, bond amounts for African American men are 35 percent higher than bond amounts for white men,” according to an ACLU fact sheet handed out at the press conference. “Latino men’s bond amounts are 19 percent higher than the amounts for white men.” One woman who spoke at the event talked about a relative’s situation. To her family, the $5,000 bond amount might as well have been $10 million, she said, given her family’s lack of resources to pay it.

The bail-bonds industry points to a U.S. District Court decision in October that slaps down the due-process criticisms made by bail reformers. “The state’s interest in ensuring criminal defendants appear for trial dates is a legitimate one, and detaining individuals before their arraignment is rationally related to that legitimate interest,” rule Judge Troy Nunley.

Furthermore, the industry-backed American Bail Coalition argues that “surety bail outperforms every form of public sector pretrial release and own recognizance release as well.” In a July article, the Washington Post evaluated the District of Columbia’s pretrial system, which uses risk assessments rather than bail. It interviewed those who found the system to be a success, but also pointed to a couple of “high-profile lapses,” including an incident where “a man released from court on a misdemeanor charge of assaulting a police officer was charged in a fatal stabbing two days later on a Metro train.”

Bail reformers point to cases of people who have been killed or committed suicide while in pretrial detention. The Arnold Foundation report pointed to a study showing “that low-risk defendants who were detained pretrial for more than 24 hours were more likely to commit new crimes not only while their cases were pending, but also years later.”

This obviously is a complicated issue, and the stakes are high given that people’s lives are in the balance. It’s particularly germane in California, given that the state’s historic realignment – moving state prisoners to local jails, to conform to a federal prison overcrowding order – puts an increasing premium on jail space. This much seems likely: More Californians will be thinking about the bail-bonds system as the new session gets underway.

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

A bill to stop automatic suspensions of driver’s licenses for unpaid fines is only a few votes and one signature from becoming law.

Senate Bill 881, sponsored by Sen. Bob Hertzberg, has cleared the Senate already and is working its way through the Assembly. But the momentum has been building a while. 

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is pushing a poll suggesting Rep. Darrell Issa is tied with his unknown and underfunded Democratic challenger after a poor primary showing for the Vista Republican earlier this month. Disclaimer: The DCCC’s sole purpose is to get Democrats elected to Congress. But while the source of the poll has an interest in skewing the race, the results of the primary suggest the poll may accurately reflect voter sentiment at a certain moment in time. 
• “Read the letters recently exchanged between Bakersfield’s Republican assemblywoman and the head of California’s largest state employee union and you’ll sense the antipathy that two failed bills stirred up. Again,” writes The Sacramento Bee. 
• After voting to fire the executive director of the California Coastal Commission in February, one commissioner lost the Del Norte County supervisor seat she’d held for 20 years. Capitol Weekly has more. 
• “Dozens of faith-based colleges in California are objecting to legislation that they say would infringe on religious freedom by allowing lawsuits from gay and transgender students who feel discriminated against because their sexual orientation conflicts with church tenets,” writes the Los Angeles Times. 

Assembly:

• Full slate of hearings. 

Senate: 

• Full slate of hearings.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events scheduled.

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