Despite requests from more than 20 civic groups that she keep recruiting applicants for the California Citizens Redistricting Commission past the present Aug. 9 deadline, state Auditor Elaine Howle doesn’t appear to believe it is necessary. 

Last week, California Common Cause, the California NAACP and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials were among the organizations that asked that the deadline be moved to Sept. 30. They cited statistics showing that whites were heavily overrepresented in the first 7,500 applicants, that Latinos and Asian Americans were heavily underrepresented, and that women were somewhat underrepresented.

“California voters only get one shot every 10 years to draw the lines that shape our future,” their letter to Howle said. “We, the people, want a chance to make a real impact for our families, neighborhood and state.”

Common Cause chief says applicants not diverse enough

Rey Lopez-Calderon, executive director of California Common Cause, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the redistricting commission had gotten a much worse response than in its recruitment efforts before the 2010 census, when there were about 30,000 applicants. That was the first time the commission handled redistricting after being created by Proposition 11, a 2008 ballot measure that put the state auditor’s office in charge of setting up the commission.

“We need differing views on the commission, and not just ethnic views,” Lopez-Calderon said. “[We] need people who know the different parts of the state.”

But in a news release on Tuesday, Howle didn’t address or give any credence to the civic groups’ concerns.

“I am pleased to announce that as of this morning, over 10,300 Californians have stepped forward for a chance to serve on the second 14-member Citizens Redistricting Commission,” Howle’s statement said. “This is great news for direct democracy! As we enter the final days of the initial application period, my staff and I will continue working to encourage even more eligible individuals throughout the state to apply.”

After applications close, Howle’s office expects to come up with a list of 40 finalists by next April. The committee’s 14 members will be chosen by Aug. 15, 2020. Under the rules of Proposition 11, the commission includes five Democrats, five Republicans and four people who are independents, decline to state a party preference or are members of another party. 

U.S. Supreme Court: Partisan gerrymandering allowed

The ballot measure was passed over the bipartisan objections of most of the state’s political establishment at the behest of then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and good-government groups. They successfully argued that the task should be taken away from the state Legislature because it had long since proven it drew election district boundaries to protect incumbents. In 2004, for example, not a single one of California’s then-51 House seats changed parties.

But the belief that partisan gerrymandering is fundamentally bad and must be avoided took a huge blow from the U.S. Supreme Court in June. On a 5-4 vote, the court’s conservative majority declined to force changes to extreme gerrymanders adopted by Republican lawmakers in North Carolina and by Democratic lawmakers in Maryland.

“We conclude that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties, with no plausible grant of authority in the Constitution, and no legal standards to limit and direct their decisions.” 

University of California Regents have bought UC President Janet Napolitano’s story about how her office came to interfere with an audit of its performance ordered by the state Legislature, with regents saying they were disappointed by the scandal but prepared to move on after reprimanding Napolitano.

But there could be more fallout on two fronts: in the Legislature and in the governor’s race, where the frontrunner, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, is an ex-officio UC regent.

That’s because Napolitano’s story seems so implausible. According to an independent report prepared at regents’ behest by former California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno and the Hueston Henningan law firm, after state Auditor Elaine Howle sent surveys to UC campuses in October 2016 asking for their assessment of UC’s Office of the President, Seth Grossman, Napolitano’s chief of staff, and Bernie Jones, her deputy chief of staff, put out the word that they needed to review the responses. This was done even though Howle had emphasized the responses were supposed to be confidential. Subsequently, three campuses – UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine and UC San Diego – revised their responses to make them more favorable to Napolitano’s office.

But Napolitano told the Legislature in May, and Moreno’s investigators more recently, that while she approved the plan to have her office review the responses, she did so because she wanted to ensure the responses were correct – not because she wanted to protect her image. She also said campuses had requested help.

Moreno’s report did not suggest the UC president was lying. But it found no evidence that campuses sought help with their responses. And it noted that UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal said that he was chewed out by Napolitano for his campus sending in a response to Howle without running it by her staff. UC Santa Cruz’s response was the harshest of any campus, giving Napolitano’s office one “poor” and three “fair” ratings out of the 10 categories in the survey questions. After Blumenthal’s telephone conversation with what he described as a “furious” Napolitano, UC Santa Cruz changed the “poor” and “fair” ratings to good and upgraded three “good” ratings to “exceptional.”

Napolitano said she remembers her conversation with Blumenthal as being routine, not angry. But Blumenthal’s account is consistent with other findings in the Moreno report, such as Napolitano’s declaration in a text message that Howle was on a “witch hunt.”

The two aides cited in the Moreno report resigned a week before the report’s release and declined substantive comment on the allegations against them.

Lawmakers unlikely to be satisfied with handling of scandal

The Legislature, which passed a bill last session subsequently signed by Gov. Jerry Brown making it a crime for a state agency to interfere with a state audit, could consider follow-up legislation. There’s considerable residual anger over Napolitano’s May testimony to a joint legislative hearing in which she repeatedly denied personal wrongdoing of any kind. Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, R-Dublin, vice chair of the Higher Education Committee, cited that testimony last week in calling for Napolitano to be fired.

In the gubernatorial race, UC-related sparks seem just as likely to fly. While Newsom told the Los Angeles Times that he considered regents’ decision to reprimand Napolitano “insignificant” – suggesting he wanted stronger punishment – he joined the unanimous vote to retain her as UC president.

This is tough to square with Newsom’s reported comments about how he would deal with corruption and ethical issues in state government: “I will not be known for being timid about this or anything else. Gov. Brown says reform is overrated; I say it’s underrated.”

As for Howle’s part, she wants regents to take additional actions beyond reprimanding Napolitano, according to a letter she sent to regents and an internal report by her office that were obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Howle asked regents to “consider disciplining university employees who repeatedly interfered with a state audit, tried to hide their actions, misled investigators and withheld requested information until threatened with court action,” the Times reported.

At the regents’ Nov. 17 meeting in San Francisco, they began consideration of measures meant to “clarify and strengthen” how UC officials who report both to the regents and to Napolitano must deal with state audits.

But when it takes years, even decades, do work through the court system, then that itself is a punishment.

But State Auditor Elaine M. Howle has found the courts don’t efficiently spend the money they already get. The long study title includes the conclusion: “Judicial Branch of California: Because of Questionable Fiscal and Operational Decisions, the Judicial Council and the Administrative Office of the Courts Have Not Maximized the Funds Available for the Courts.”

Howle first noted:

Public confidence in the judicial system stems, in part, from confidence that the system’s administrators manage its operations efficiently and appropriately. This report concludes that questionable fiscal and operational decisions by the Judicial Council and the AOC [Administrative Office of the Courts] have limited funds available to the courts.

State law affords the Judicial Council a significant amount of autonomy related to developing budgets and approving expenditures on behalf of the trial courts. With this autonomy, the Judicial Council has an obligation to act in the best interest of the public, especially during times of fiscal hardship.

Right. If you go to court over a property dispute, say, you want to be assured the court itself understands fiscal prudence. Especially in what still are tough economic times for many people, despite the economic recovery.

To maximize funding available to the courts, we expected that the Judicial Council and the AOC would have carefully scrutinized their operations and expenditures to ensure they were necessary, justified, and prudent. However, we found that this was not always the case. Specifically, the Judicial Council failed to adequately oversee the AOC—its staff agency that assists it in managing the judicial branch budget and provides administrative support to judicial branch entities. In the absence of such oversight, the AOC engaged in about $30 million in questionable compensation and business practices over a four-year period and failed to adequately disclose its expenditures to stakeholders and the public.

Furthermore, although state law authorizes the Judicial Council and the AOC to spend state funding appropriated for the trial courts on behalf of those courts, we have concerns regarding the appropriateness of some of the expenditures. Over the past four years, the AOC spent $386 million on behalf of the trial courts including $186 million in payments to consultants, contractors, and temporary employees using the trial courts local assistance appropriations; however, the AOC could have paid a portion of these costs using its own appropriation. If it had done so, some of those local assistance funds would have been available to support the courts.

As the third, independent branch of government, it is crucial that the courts operate efficiently and without scandal. Otherwise they invite interference by the legislative branch, which holds the purse strings, and the executive branch, which has investigative powers.

Howle recommended:

Given the lapses in the Judicial Council’s oversight and the AOC’s decision making, we believe significant change is necessary to ensure that the State’s courts receive the critical funding they require to provide access to justice for all Californians. As such, we made numerous recommendations that we believe will improve operations, increase transparency, and ensure accountability within the judicial branch.

The CPUC does this through its Transformation Enforcement Branch. But the audit found:

• The commission’s oversight of passenger carriers is insufficient to ensure consumer safety.
  • It does not have formal policies and procedures to address complaints against passenger carriers.
  • It does not ensure complaints are resolved timely or adequately.
  • When it issues citations to passenger carriers, the citations have been for amounts much lower than what state law allows.
• It does not perform periodic reviews of passenger carrier fee payments to ensure the State received the proper amount of fee revenue.

The auditor recommended the CPUC “should develop policies and procedures for receiving complaints and investigating passenger carriers by December 31, 2014.” The CPUC should prioritize complaints. And other reforms.

But a key factor was unaddressed: Why doesn’t the Legislature just fold the CPUC’s regulation of passenger carriers into the state Department of Transportation? Doing so would avoid duplication and provide a bit of regulatory relief to California companies.

And why is it, exactly, that rich people need to be regulated in their use of limos? Can’t they take care of that themselves?

In any case, according to the auditor’s report, the CPUC has agreed to make the changes.