A reticent judge

“San Diego Superior Court Judge Gregory Pollack said his court is not unsympathetic to their plight but lawmakers — not a judge — would need to change the law barring such prescriptions,” according to the Associated Press. “Pollack said in his written ruling that the current law that makes it a felony to assist a suicide in any way is constitutional and so he does not have the power to suspend its enforcement.”

The plaintiffs in the case, expected to appeal, became the latest terminally ill patients to rise to prominence as Californians grapple with the propriety of induced death. “Christy O’Donnell, 47, a cancer patient and the lead plaintiff in the case, had sought to obtain the legal right to end her life because, in part, many common painkillers, including morphine, have not worked for her,” the International Business Times reported. “Another plaintiff, Elizabeth Wallner, 51, was afflicted with Stage IV colon cancer that has metastasized and reached her liver and her lungs.” Pollack insisted “new law” must be made “by the Legislature or by a ballot measure.”

Wallner, for her part, conveyed her steady determination to keep the case going. “This is certainly frustrating, but it’s a temporary setback,” she said, according to KQED. “I am optimistic that we’ll prevail in the end. It’s too big of an issue to leave uncovered.”

No legislation

The frustration of Pollack, O’Donnell and sympathetic activists has been fueled by a successful effort to sink a bill in Sacramento that would have wiped out the state’s ban through the legislative process. As the AP reported, earlier this month, Senate Bill 128 — modeled after neighboring Oregon’s law — cleared the state Senate but ran aground in the Assembly Health Committee, “a panel that includes multiple Democratic lawmakers from heavily Catholic districts in the Los Angeles area, where the archdiocese actively opposed the legislation.”

Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez targeted fellow Latino Catholics Jimmy Gomez, D-Los Angeles, Roger Hernandez, D-West Covina, and Freddie Rodriguez, D-Chino, urging in a strongly worded letter that SB128 be rejected. After the assemblymen turned against the bill, cosponsors Sens. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, and Bill Monning, D-Monterey, had to pull it — leaving observers to wonder whether it might be introduced in altered form at a later date.

The ordeal counted as something of a win for Gov. Jerry Brown, who had not indicated whether he would sign a right-to-die bill, and likely wished to avoid the divisive controversy either way.

A broader trend

For activists nationwide, what had seemed like a possible tipping point in California has led to disappointments around the country. “Some advocates say they thought the nationally publicized case of Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old California woman with brain cancer who moved to Oregon to legally end her life last fall, might usher in a wave of state laws allowing doctors to prescribe life-ending medications,” the New York Times noted, “but that hasn’t happened.”

Critics of legalizing the practice have viewed the shift from a legislative to a judicial strategy as evidence that the push for change has almost run its course. “Tim Rosales, a spokesman for California Coalition Against Assisted Suicide, said the lawsuits show right-to-die advocates are getting desperate after the setbacks,” according to the Times.

Nevertheless, the issue showed little sign of fading completely into the political background. Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and Washington have all passed laws permitting assisted suicide, and 70 percent of Californians voiced their approval for a similar approach in a poll conducted at the beginning of the year.

Will Gov. Jerry Brown’s Twin Tunnels project for the California Delta still make it into the $11 billion water bond projected for the November election? It’s still possible.

The bond has been postponed twice already because legislators didn’t think it would pass muster with voters in 2010 and 2012. But the ongoing state drought gives it more urgency this year.

The new wrinkle is that Republicans now are part of the negotiations because putting the bond on the November ballot requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of the Legislature. Democrats still have a two-thirds supermajority in the Assembly. But due to scandals that have suspended three Democratic senators earlier this year, that supermajority was lost in the Senate.

And Republicans from drought-stricken areas want the water the tunnels would convey. The GOP’s new point man in this legislative water war is state Sen. Andy Vidak of Hanford. Vidak said he would not vote for the proposed bond bill unless funding for conveyance is included.

By putting tunnels underground to convey water southward, a water highway interchange could be created that separates fish water and farm water for the first time, pleasing both environmentalists and farmers.

The public’s concern about the tunnels is mainly the final $15 billion cost.  Northern Californians say it is a “boondoggle” that will cost $67 billion. But that is with bond interest.

Water bonds are tax-exempt, which usually knocks about 2 percentage points off the bond interest rate. If the bond rate were the same as the inflation rate the state would be borrowing money for free. If the inflation rate were higher than the bond interest rate, then the state would be paying back less than $15 billion on the bond. Most investors consider 3 percent inflation a historical benchmark today.

Opposition

But on Monday, two powerful Democratic legislators, State Sens. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Lois Wolk, D-Davis, opposed the project on the Senate floor. Wolk cautioned that including the Twin Tunnels likely would lead voters to reject the bond.  Previous polls have found weak support for the project.

Wolk also was upset at Republicans changing their minds on including the Twin Tunnels in the bond, backing off from the previous agreed deal for the water bond without the tunnels. Wolk’s bond proposal includes three new dams, underground water storage and environmental re-creation of the Delta for fish.

Wolk openly told Republicans on the Senate floor, “At some point, you need to stick to your word. You ask for things and you … get what you want … and it’s time to say yes.”

But Republicans don’t have to say “yes.” The loss of the Democratic supermajority changed that.

And Republicans have been picking up legislative seats in Democratic strongholds in the Central Valley over the hot issue of “fish versus farmers.”

Bond monies would go for alternate water conveyance plan

Steinberg, the former Senate president pro tem, was interviewed on NBC TV News Los Angeles by Conan Nolan and said the tunnels have to stay out of the water bond to avoid a North-South water war.

Steinberg acknowledged that Brown and a majority of legislators favor of the tunnels. Surprisingly, Steinberg said, “Money [in the bond] will go to helping support the agenda of those who want to see some form of alternative conveyance built.  It’s how it’s done.”

Nolan was quick to retort, “The governor has not said whether or not he will support putting an alternative on the ballot for the water.”

Alternative plan

On June 22, Central California businessmen and farmers urged the state to abandon the current water tunnels part of the Water Plan for a less expensive plan called the Western Delta Intake Concept.  The proponent of the WDIC is water engineer Robert Pyke.

Bill Berryhill, a Stockton farmer and former Republican Assemblyman, supports Pyke’s conceptual plan. Berryhill has formed the Citizens Coalition for Delta Protection to try to get the Legislature to adopt Pyke’s concept.

But Pyke’s concept would do nothing to re-create uninterrupted fresh water fish flows for salmon from the San Joaquin River to the Bay Delta and ultimately the ocean. In 1982, voters defeated a ballot proposition to build the Peripheral Canal that today would be about half of the cost of the proposed tunnels.

The Senate has until Thursday to adopt the water bond or it will not appear on the November ballot in the middle of the drought.