California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Brian Kelly worked over the summer to reassure anxious state lawmakers that a new management team could revive the troubled bullet-train project. He also proceeded to push out key officials overseeing contract and property decisions.

Yet the changes haven’t stopped a new wave of bad news in September for the project, which was once envisioned as a statewide network of high-speed rail but has been downsized to a 119-mile link between Bakersfield and Merced expected to cost in the range of $20 billion. 

A Los Angeles Times report outlined the huge problems still facing the rail authority’s land-acquisition efforts after seven years in the Central Valley. Not only does the agency need to buy about 300 more properties to be able to build the train, the Times reported that consultants believe at least an additional 488 parcels will need to be bought to deal with complex issues related to easements on sites with infrastructure owned by Pacific Gas & Electric and other utilities as well as AT&T, railroads and irrigation districts.

This adds new doubts about the rail authority’s projection it could finish construction of the Central Valley route by 2026.

One project manager, after warning of severe delays, told the Times that “I am going to ride this train, but I am afraid it is going to be my ashes in an urn. I told my kids to take my ashes on the bullet train.”

The Times also noted that the rail authority had been forced to buy larger lots than it needed to accommodate the rail route to such an extent that it now owns hundreds of properties – including “toxic waste sites, vacant lots and rental homes” – that it must manage. The list includes at least 466 acres of cultivated agriculture fields.

San Jose area critics push for costly elevated lanes

There was also bad news for the project from Northern California. At a rail authority board meeting held in San Jose, trustees voted unanimously to approve a route connecting the San Joaquin Valley with San Jose after the Central Valley initial segment is built. Yet testimony at the hearing showed the intensity of opposition to building any new rail route that didn’t minimize disruptions to the neighborhoods and communities it traveled through.

According to a Fresno Bee report, speakers complained to the rail board that early promises that elevated rail lines would be built had given way to plans for regular, surface rail lines. But since elevated rail costs two to four times more per mile, choosing it would make project costs explode – and Gov. Gavin Newsom has already said there’s not nearly enough funding likely to be available to complete the $78 billion statewide project advocated by his predecessor, Jerry Brown.

That argument didn’t move San Jose resident Danny Garza. According to the Bee, he said that not building elevated tracks in his neighborhood was “a bait-and-switch” given past guarantees of minimal impacts. “Please don’t use our neighborhood to balance your budget,” he told the board.

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told trustees that his city could drop its support for the project if the rail authority didn’t use “best practices”  to “provide our community with the safety it deserves.”

The section of the proposed route in the San Joaquin Valley also drew complaints, according to the Bee. Rick Ortega, general manager of the Grassland Water and Resource Conservation Districts, said the staff report “contains no design detail on how the authority intends to mitigate impacts through the ecological area.” The Grassland Environmental Area is a 160,000-acre site mostly in Merced County that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has repeatedly said must be preserved because of the crucial ecological importance of its wetlands.

Ortega also said elevated tracks were necessary – or that the rail authority should change its planned route.

Board members said the staff would consider the complaints, but offered no promises about the nature of possible mitigation efforts, according to the Bee.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority – the agency in charge of building the state’s bullet train system – has already faced a tough year, with Gov. Gavin Newsom signaling in February that he’s not confident the full system can ever be built. But now the rail authority has two new public relations headaches on its hands.

In the Central Valley, farmers were already upset over state use of eminent domain to seize their property for construction of the project’s first segment – a 110-mile route from Bakersfield to Merced projected to cost $12.2 billion. But a recent report in the Los Angeles Times documented how slow the rail authority was in paying for seized land and in refunding farmers for the cost of the train project’s effects on their businesses.

The Times’ story focused on a kiwi farmer who lost 70 acres of land to the project more than a year ago and who since has gone unpaid for $250,000 incurred in “relocating wells, removing trees, building a road and other expenses.” It also noted farmers who had been owed $1.9 million and $630,000 for three years, and two others owed $500,000 and $150,000, though for shorter periods of time.

State officials questioned by the Times had no explanation for the delays beyond saying the project was complex in its legal and engineering challenges.

A follow-up story by Fox News emphasized why the delayed payments are particularly upsetting to many Central Valley residents. Not only is there a chance the initial segment between Bakersfield and Merced will never be completed because the state doesn’t have enough funds, there is a good chance that even if the segment is finished, some of the property that has been seized won’t be used for the project. That’s because even now – more than five years after the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown decided to start the bullet train’s construction in the Central Valley – authority officials still haven’t agreed on the exact details of the final route.

“The property owners are very frustrated that the High-Speed Rail Authority [doesn’t] seem to know what they actually need,” Sacramento attorney Mark Wasser said. “We have farmers who the authority has come back four times to change where they want to take.” Wasser has more than 70 clients affected by the rail authority’s Central Valley project.

Audit warnings validated by ethics probe

Meanwhile, state audits which have long warned that it is problematic for the rail authority to rely so heavily on outside consultants have been vindicated with what appears to be evidence of a conflict-of-interest scandal.

Recently, the authority’s deputy chief operating officer – Roy Hill – was suspended pending an investigation by the state Fair Political Practices Commission. Hill is a top executive with the WSP consulting firm employed by the authority. Evidence suggests that Hill approved a $51 million increase in a bullet-train contract held by the Spanish firm Dragados despite his apparent ownership of more than $100,000 in stock in Jacobs Engineering, a multibillion-dollar multinational corporation that is providing key services to Dragados on the California project.

The FPPC approved the request of Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, to investigate Hill, his actions and his personal economic interests.

“This is such a deep conflict that it calls into question whether the entire High-Speed Rail Authority and the contractors they have put together are involved in a massive corruption,” Patterson told Fresno TV station KMJ.

The rail authority says it will cooperate with the FPPC probe.

Hill has not yet commented publicly on the matter.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court hearing where the justices’ conservative majority appeared prepared to accept the Trump administration’s decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census form has triggered sharp criticism from California Democrats. If the question leads to millions of unauthorized immigrants not filling out forms, as the Census Bureau expects, that would lead to a significantly lower population count in the Golden State, which has the most such immigrants.

This has led to analyses predicting that California could lose one or two of its 53 House seats and, over the long term, billions of dollars in several categories of federal aid. These are divvied up based on census reports of total population. A Legislative Analyst’s Office study released in December detailed how in 1990, California had a census undercount with a similar effect.

But what has received less attention is the potential of the citizenship question to reduce the number of safe Democratic seats and to increase the number of swing seats in the House and state Legislature. Because House, Assembly and Senate seats are apportioned based on total population data from the 2010 census, turnout of voters — who have to be U.S. citizens — is often much smaller in rural agricultural areas which have a higher proportion of unauthorized immigrants, as well as in poor areas of Southern California.

Democrats much more likely to win low-turnout races

According to the official state results from November’s election, excluding races in which both candidates were from the same party, there were 21 House seats that Democrats won with fewer than 150,000 votes and only three such seats where Republicans won. In the 21st House district, Rep. T.J. Cox, D-Fresno, won with only 57,239 votes.

State Senate districts have on average about 25 percent greater total population than House districts. In November’s election, again excluding races in which both candidates were from the same party, of the 20 seats up for grabs, six were won by Democrats with fewer than 180,000 votes versus only one won by a Republican. In the 14th state Senate district, Melissa Hurtado, D-Sanger, won with just 80,942 votes.

State Assembly districts have on average half the population of state Senate districts. In November’s election, again excluding races in which both candidates were from the same party, of the 80 seats up for grabs, 22 were won by Democrats with fewer than 90,000 votes versus six won by Republicans. In the 32nd Assembly district, Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield, won with just 39,328 votes.

With Democrats having overwhelming numerical advantages in California’s House, Senate and Assembly seats, too much can be read into statistics showing they are far more likely to win low-turnout races. Democratic candidates in affluent communities in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley and Southern California often won high-turnout races.

But the extremely low turnout districts concentrated in the Central Valley and Los Angeles County all elected Democrats. These districts are likely to change considerably after the reapportionment following the 2020 census, if the citizenship question is asked and has the effect of reducing the number of state residents who fill out census forms.

The Supreme Court is expected to release its decision in the census case in late June.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement in his State of the State speech in February that he didn’t believe California had the resources to complete its $77 billion statewide bullet-train project produced a backlash that Newsom didn’t seem to expect. Within hours after the speech, his aides said the media was inaccurately reporting that Newsom’s only commitment was to build a $12.2 billion, 119-mile high-speed link between Merced and Bakersfield in the Central Valley and nothing more. They said he remained a supporter of the full project.

But nearly two months later, the initial reaction to Newsom’s speech remains the enduring takeaway for most Capitol watchers: He’s off the bullet train bandwagon. Building unions and green lawmakers who believe in the statewide project’s potential to help in the fight against climate change remain among the most upset.

Yet easily the most intense reaction is in the area where Newsom still wants the project to proceed: the Central Valley.

Coverage from The Bakersfield Californian, the Los Angeles Times and small newspapers in the region reflect anger over how the valley has been treated. Valuable farmland and family homes have been acquired with eminent domain for a project that no longer will link the area with the rest of the state – despite promises from Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown.

‘My mouth was just open with shock’

“I don’t want to talk political because I don’t do it very well,” Fairmead resident Vickie Ortiz told the Times. “But you know, you had a governor that was pushing-pushing-pushing for the high-speed train, and we started getting used to the idea that we can’t stop a train but maybe we can use it to help the community. But then you get another governor and he says: ‘No, I don’t want to do that any more.’ My mouth was just open with shock.”

In the Antelope Valley Press, retiree Bill Deaver, a former official in the Federal Railroad Administration, blasted the “politics and ignorance” of project critics who he blamed for Newsom’s decision.

“Politicians used [high-speed rail] to score political points rather than supporting something that will be able to handle huge increases in traffic projected in coming years. That sort of behavior is one of the biggest barriers to progress.”

Newsom’s decision didn’t surprise some in the Central Valley who never believed a statewide bullet train would get built. “People lost their homes and businesses. And for what?” Visalia farmer Randy Van Eyk told the Times.

Some see commitment to help region

But other remarks the governor made about the Central Valley have resonated more positively – and created an expectation that he will do more than past governors to help the region.

“The people of the Central Valley endure the worst air pollution in America as well as some of the longest commutes. And they have suffered too many years of neglect from policymakers here in Sacramento. They deserve better,” Newsom said in the same speech in which he outlined his views on the bullet-train project’s future.

Bakersfield Californian columnist Robert Price said if Newsom was serious, he should help Kern County diversify its economy away from “two industries under assault in the Central Valley: agriculture and, especially, oil and gas.”

Anna Smith, another columnist for the Californian, also said Newsom should promote economic diversification. But she also called on him to address the Central Valley’s social ills, including “high rates of illiteracy and obesity, lack of access to quality education and health care (especially in rural communities), water contamination and extreme poverty.”

At a time when many Democrats and Republicans alike believe often-drought-stricken California needs more water storage projects and infrastructure, an $8.9 billion bond measure that earlier this year seemed to be a sure thing now faces a somewhat less certain fate.

The odds of passage are still strong. As a Bay Area News Group analysis noted, state records show that over the last quarter-century, voters have approved 80 percent of bonds put before them – 24 of 30.

But Proposition 3 – which was placed on the ballot after a signature-gathering campaign – is facing unexpectedly vigorous pushback on several fronts.

The strongest objections deal with the fact that unlike water bonds placed on the ballot directly by the Legislature, Proposition 3 funds wouldn’t be divvied up based on a careful evaluation process in which the merits of individual projects are rated and weighted. Instead, the ballot measure amounts to a pay-to-play initiative in which proponents of projects agreed to pay signature gatherers in support of a bond that specifies that a lengthy list of their projects will be funded.

This has led the Sierra Club of California, the League of Women Voters and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon to formally oppose Proposition 3.

Measure depicted as favor for rich farm interests

Sierra Club executive Eric Parfrey has written scathingly of the measure as a “bailout for billionaires,” citing provisions that pay for $750 million in repairs to the Madera and Friant-Kern canals that he believes should be paid for by large agribusinesses. Other specified projects involve far smaller sums but also raise eyebrows, such as providing funds for infrastructure that critics say should be the responsibility of the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Proponents say this criticism ignores the big-picture value of having improved water infrastructure, especially in the Central Valley.

“Everything we eat comes out of there,” said Jerry Meral, the former deputy director of the state Department of Water Resources, who has led the push for the ballot measure. “We just can’t let it go. You might also say, why should the state pay for urban water conservation? Why should the people who don’t have kids pay for schools? An agricultural water supply means we have a food supply. You have to invest in the state,” he told the Bay Area News Group.

Nevertheless, a Sacramento Bee editorial opposed Proposition 3 on the grounds that there isn’t strong evidence that it would pay for “the projects that California needs most right now, or that they couldn’t get the money elsewhere.”

But Proposition 3 also has heavyweights in its corner. The state Chamber of Commerce, labor groups and farming coalitions back the project, as does Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Some environmental groups have also endorsed the measure, most notably the Nature Conservancy.

However, Gov. Jerry Brown and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the strong favorite to succeed Brown, have kept quiet.

Brown’s silence has surprised some veteran observers. He has long opposed the sorts of state borrowing that many governors found unobjectionable, and as a result California now spends considerably less on bond service as a percentage of its general fund budget than it did under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Voters have approved $31 billion in bonds since 2000

Yet this doesn’t mean the state has skimped on bonds. The Legislative Analyst’s Office reports the state has approved about $31 billion in general obligation bonds for water and environmental projects since 2000, with nearly a third of the bonds as yet unspent. In 2014, voters approved a $7.5 billion water bond, and just in the June primary, another water bond – this one for $4.1 billion – was backed by voters.

Brown has been joined in skepticism about new state borrowing by those who question why the state would use bonds paid off over 30- or 40-year spans in an era in which the Legislature and Brown have been able to salt away more than $15 billion in state reserve funds because of swelling revenues.

The total cost of repaying Proposition 3 has been estimated at about $17.2 billion, slightly less than twice as much as the face value of the bond measure.

As of the last campaign reporting deadline, Yes on Proposition 3 reported $4.7 million in contributions, mostly from farming groups. No on Proposition 3 reported no donations.

The long-expected showdown between the Trump administration and the state of California over water, farmers and the Central Valley appears to be imminent. On. Aug. 17, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke issued a memorandum declaring his staff had 15 days to draft a plan that would increase water for the region’s agricultural industry by reinterpreting relevant federal policies and laws and by targeting “unacceptable conditions” advocated by the state of California.

Zinke specifically cited the need to “streamline” the process under which the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the National Environmental Policy Act are considered and invoked in Central Valley decisions. He wrote that this has prevented long-term changes in federal water decision-making.

Behind the bureaucratic language, it appears the Trump administration is taking dead aim at broad water policies that Central Valley House Republicans like Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes have long said valued the interests of declining fish populations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta over the interests of the region’s farmers, who have made the Central Valley the nation’s agricultural breadbasket.

But even if the Zinke deadline is met and the Interior Department has new water allocation rules and policies in place by the Sept. 1 deadline, quick change seems unlikely. That’s because environmental groups which have fought previous changes sought by the previous Republican presidents, in particular George W. Bush, have long found judges to be sympathetic to their interpretation of the ESA. A significant number of moderate GOP lawmakers also oppose major changes in existing green regulations.

The green coalition contends that the health of salmon and Delta smelt in Central Valley waterways and rivers is a proxy for the health of Northern California’s ecosystem. Greens say that giving more water to farmers by diverting some of the fresh water now pumped into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta could lead to a disaster that affects the whole state – very much including the 19 million residents who deeply rely on water from the rest of the state that’s distributed by the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Trump’s promises to Central Valley farmers during an August 2016 campaign appearance in the region foreshadowed Zinke’s order. But a more specific, recent cause may have been farmers’ complaints about the California State Water Resources Board, which took two days of public testimony last week on its plan to increase water pumped into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta from February to June to shore up endangered salmon.

Farmers, allies also weigh court challenges

Just as environmentalists threaten legal action over how federal decisions affect Central Valley water use, those aligned with farmers vow court fights over the proposed state policy change.

“If they vote to take our water, this does not end there,” state Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Modesto, told the Associated Press. “We will be in court for 100 years.”

While Trump was nearly doubled up in 2016 California voting by Democrat Hillary Clinton, he ran far better in farm regions. He won easily in the two counties with the state’s largest agricultural economies, taking Kern County by 55 percent to 40 percent and Tulare County by 53 percent to 41 percent.

Years of lobbying for what the Brown administration dubbed the WaterFix project had produced more indifference and outright opposition than support. The $16.7 billion plan would build two 35-mile-long, 40-foot-high tunnels to take water south from the Sacramento River to the State Water Project pumps in the town of Tracy. The governor argued that this would sharply reduce the intermittent heavy pumping that played havoc with endangered species in the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and would firm up supplies both for Central Valley farmers and the 20 million-plus residents of Southern California.

But in September, the board of the Westlands Water District – which serves 600,000 acres of farmland in King and Fresno counties and is the largest U.S. agricultural district – voted 7-1 against providing about $3 billion for the project. Westlands officials trashed claims made for WaterFix, questioning whether it would actually stabilize the Delta ecosystem and predicting cost overruns.

In November, the Trump administration announced that the federal government would not provide any financial assistance to get the project built. While the Interior Department statement was not unexpected, it contributed to the sense the WaterFix proposal was foundering. By February, Brown administration officials had put the word out they would accept building only one tunnel under the delta and adding a second later.

MWD backed scaled-back project, then changed mind

The death of the original plan appeared confirmed on April 2 when officials with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California – the giant, politically powerful water wholesaler serving 19 million people – issued a memo expressing support for the one-tunnel option. The rationale: a lack of a consensus for the two-tunnel plan among the water districts south of Sacramento that would need to pay for the project.

But after intense lobbying by the Brown administration, on April 10, the MWD board voted by a 3-to-2 margin to endorse the two-tunnels project and to agree to pay for about two-thirds of the tab – about $10.8 billion. The weighted vote, based on the size of individual agencies, came over the objections of the MWD board’s single largest member, the San Diego County Water Authority.

Momentum continued to build last Wednesday when the board of the Santa Clara Valley Water District – the biggest water agency in Silicon Valley – voted 4-3 to commit its 2 million ratepayers to pay up to $650 million for the project, or nearly 4 percent of the total tab. Santa Clara officials had previously narrowly opposed providing funding.

On Thursday, Brown hailed the decision in a speech to a conference of the Association of California Water Agencies in Sacramento. But the governor also warned that the project still had big obstacles that went beyond getting more water districts to agree to share construction costs. He noted that state and federal regulators still had yet to issue required permits.

On this front, WaterFix may face more skepticism in Brown’s backyard than in Washington. As CalWatchdog reported last year, the Trump administration gave a key senior Interior Department post to Colorado lawyer David Bernhardt, a veteran of California water wars and a critic of the federal government’s traditionally high-profile role in land-use decisions in Western states.

Meanwhile, the California Water Resources Control Board has sided with environmentalists in a long list of previous decisions. In filings with the state board, Restore the Delta and several other environmental groups have challenged the governor’s project on its central claim: that it improves the health of the Delta ecosystem.

Even if the state and federal permits are granted, the tunnels plan still faces hurdles. The Bay Area News Group reported last week that more than two dozen state and federal lawsuits had been filed against the project.

SACRAMENTO – A federal appeals court last week has taken the highly unusual step of finding a U.S. constitutional cause of action in a challenge to a California state law – the latest wrinkle in a long-running and bitter dispute between a farm workers’ union and two large Central Valley fruit growers.

The California Legislature approved a law last year that was designed to protect the state’s businesses after two court decisions left them open to unforeseen liabilities regarding the minimum wage. The measure, Assembly Bill 1513, passed by solid majorities, was a sign of concern about broad economic harm if companies who had acted in good faith were forced to pay various fines for some commonly accepted payment practices.

This legislative overhaul of the state’s wage-and-hour law waived all penalties if, by this Thursday, the companies paid their piece-rate workers back wages for any unpaid rest periods. The legislation would have been largely noncontroversial, except that it included carve-outs for two Fresno-based fruit growers – Fowler Packing Co. and Gerawan Farming. In other words, the law apparently applied to every California business, except for these particular companies, both of which had run afoul of a union.

According to AB1513’s language, the bill does not apply to “Claims for paid rest or recovery periods or pay for other nonproductive time that were made in any case filed prior to April 1, 2015, when the case contained by that date an allegation that the employer has intentionally stolen, diminished, or otherwise deprived employees of wages through the use of fictitious worker names or names of workers that were not actually working.” That portion exempts the two companies because of an allegation made in a lawsuit.

These two firms allege that they were exempted from the benefits of the new law because the UFW had threatened to otherwise oppose the legislation, according to a Sacramento Bee report. The measure, by the way, was pushed through at the end of the legislative session as a “gut-and-amend” deal – language was stripped out of an existing bill and replaced at the last minute with new language. Such bills circumvent requirements for a full set of hearings and legislative vetting.

The district court dismissed the companies’ complaint. But in the recent ruling, the U.S. 9^th District Court of Appeals partially reversed that decision and sent it back for further review.

Although the written opinion is still forthcoming, this is a significant ruling that focuses attention on the concept of equal protection, which was the main allegation made in the lawsuit. As their complaint argued, a key section of the law “not only arbitrarily excludes and punishes one employer based solely on an unproven allegation. It arbitrarily includes and protects employers, alleged to have used ghost workers, so long as they were sued after April 1, 2015. … (T)he ghost worker allegation carve-out is simply a mechanism to subject Fowler to disparate and punitive legislative treatment based solely on an allegation of wrongdoing.”

The appeals court, however, rejected the farms’ claim that the law had violated “bill of attainder” provisions in the U.S. Constitution. That refers to an act by any legislature that inflicts punishment without the protections of due process or judicial review – i.e., “trial by legislature.”  The plaintiffs had argued that the California Legislature exempted those companies based on some union allegations and was a form of punishment against them, in that it singled out Fowler and Gerawan, and did so without any legitimate, non-punitive purpose.

“By denying those employers the protection that every other employer enjoys, the Legislature essentially adjudged them to be guilty of egregious conduct. But the Constitution does not give legislatures the power to determine guilt, it grants that authority to courts,” explained the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Wencong Fa, in a column in the San Francisco Daily Journal. The foundation had filed an amicus brief on behalf of the companies and several farm organizations including the California Farm Bureau and Western Grower.

The Fowler and Gerawan labor disputes have been a long-running California saga. The UFW has had a variety of disputes with Fowler. In the Gerawan situation, the company says the UFW had re-emerged at the farm after a long hiatus, claiming to be the rightful representative of the farm workers there. The state Agricultural Labor Relations Board had refused to even count the ballots in a union de-certification election there – and imposed a seemingly unwanted contract on workers there. It’s become a national news story and litigation continues.

AB1513 was supported even by some agricultural organizations because of the advantages it provides to the industry in general. There’s little disagreement it was the result of tough negotiations – a point the Brown administration has made in support for the law. But that doesn’t mean Fowler and Gerawan don’t make a valid argument. The new law could be of overall benefit to most California agricultural companies while still unfairly singling out two companies involved in disputes with one of the groups involved in those negotiations.

The official Assembly bill analysis puts the issue in perspective: “Supporters argue that this bill is a fair compromise for both employers and workers, addressing a situation where there was a significant development in case law. … Opponents argue that these arbitrary provisions set forth a troubling precedent that represents political targeting that sacrifices some companies to continued legal exposure in exchange for legal protections afforded to others.”

Fowler and Gerawan asked the state to suspend enforcement of this week’s deadline pending the outcome of the case as the federal courts take the rare step of reviewing a constitutional challenge to piece of state legislation. 

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

Farm worker OT bill awaits verdict from Gov. Brown

Good morning. Happy Tuesday. But more importantly, happy second-to-last day of the legislative session.

A big ticket item was crossed off the list Monday when a bill expanding overtime pay for farm workers passed the Assembly. It now heads to the governor for a final verdict.

The bill would, over the course of a few years, bring the overtime structure for farm workers in line with that of many other professions by giving overtime past eight hours in a day, where currently the threshold is at 10 hours, and over 40 hours in a week, where it’s currently at 60 hours.

Some members opposed on procedural grounds. Assembly rules prohibit a measure from being reintroduced if it had already been defeated during that legislative session — the same measure was defeated in the Assembly earlier this year.

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:

• “An Aug. 17 California appeals court ruling rejected a public employee union’s claim that its members had a right to “pension spiking,” which the court described as “various stratagems and ploys to inflate their income and retirement benefits.” Public employees often will pad their final salary total with vacation leave, bonuses and “special pay” categories to inflate the pension benefits they receive for the rest of their lives,” reports CalWatchdog.
• “State lawmakers passed a bill Monday to add mandatory prison sentences for certain sexual assaults – a measure inspired by a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge’s decision not to sentence a Stanford University student to prison in a high-profile case this year,” writes the Los Angeles Times.
• “California lawmakers’ response to the controversial series of videos that purported to show Planned Parenthood breaking the law has alienated some liberal allies of the organization, which is now negotiating changes to save its bill in the final days of the session,” writes The Sacramento Bee.
• “The state’s plan to build an initial stretch of high-speed rail line, from San Jose to a map point in the midst of Central Valley farmland, came under renewed attack at an oversight hearing Monday,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

• Who will Gov. Jerry Brown believe: the Mothers Against Drunk Driving or his own Department of Motor Vehicles? Brown will have to choose when deciding whether to sign Senate Bill 1046, a measure that would require drivers convicted of DUI to purchase and install “ignition interlock” devices in their vehicles. CalWatchdog has more.

Assembly:

• In at 10 a.m.

Senate:

• In at 2 p.m.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced for today. Will attend 20th Annual Lake Tahoe Summit on Wednesday.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @elmayedda

These contrasting results were underlined Friday by officials with the federal Central Valley Project — the U.S. government’s elaborate system of moving water around Northern California and in the Central Valley using dams, pumps and canals. Normally, farms get at least three-quarters of this federal water, though not in times of drought, when cities are favored. As the San Jose Mercury-News reports, the feds’ interpretation of its own rules leads it to widely different conclusions about how much water goes where:

South [Bay Area] cities will receive 55 percent of their contracted water amounts this summer — up from 25 percent last year — from the Central Valley Project, California’s largest water delivery system.

 

Heavy rains in March boosted the amount of water in Northern California’s large reservoirs such as Shasta and Folsom, allowing farmers in the Sacramento Valley and wildlife refuges to receive 100 percent of their contracted amounts, while the Contra Costa Water District also will receive 100 percent, up from 25 percent a year ago.

Water allocations: Some farmers more equal than others

But the news was brutal elsewhere. In the San Joaquin Valley, federal regulators announced that only 5 percent of normally supplied water would be available. In interviews with the Sacramento Bee, farmers and their allies said the drought essentially had never left:

While a 5 percent supply is better than the zero allocation they received in each of the past two years, those farmers will again have to scramble to buy water from growers with stronger water rights – assuming the officials who monitor endangered fish in the Delta even allow for the extra water to be pumped south. The limited water shipments will put continued pressure on the valley’s groundwater basins, which in many areas have been pumped to record low levels in the drought.

 

The huge disparities in water allocations reflect California’s hodgepodge water rights system, which generally favors farmers north of the Delta. … On top of that, concerns over critically endangered fish have prompted federal and state officials to limit pumping to the south state even though Delta flows surged dramatically after March storms. The pumping restrictions drew complaints from south-of-Delta advocates who argue that stormwater flowing out to sea is being “wasted.”

 

[Federal reports] said that, in total, the federally operated reservoirs hold 86 percent of their average water for this time of year, but the south-of-Delta facilities are comparatively empty. New Melones Reservoir, which dams the Stanislaus River and is the state’s fourth-largest reservoir, is just 26 percent full – a figure so low that the Central San Joaquin Water Conservation District and Stockton East Water District will receive no water from the CVP this year.

Most, but not all, of SoCal struggling with supplies

In Southern California, meanwhile, the raw numbers illustrate the drought’s continued hold on the region:

The water level of Lake Mead, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam that stores Southern California’s Colorado River supply, stood last week at 1,081.32 feet above sea level — a recovery of about 6 feet since it reached a recent low point in June. But that’s still the lake’s lowest level in any March since 1937, when it was still filling for the first time. Mead is currently at about 39 percent of capacity. …

 

Reservoirs in Central and Southern California remain well below their averages, with Don Pedro Reservoir in the Sierra foothills at 82 percent of its average and 60 percent of capacity, and Perris Lake in Riverside County at 43 percent of its average and 36 percent of capacity. While the snowpack is calculated at 87 percent of normal overall, its depth varies widely across the state — rising over recent months to roughly 100 percent of the average in the far north of the state, but reaching only about 75 percent of the average toward the south. The U.S. Drought Monitor still shows much of Southern and Central California to be facing long-term “exceptional drought.”

That’s from an L.A. Times’ analysis calling for a “statewide approach” to address California’s continuing water crisis.

Only San Diego County is doing well in the state’s southern realms. The county water authority’s 25-year-old emphasis on seeking new sources of water independent of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has paid off so well that two months ago, its reservoirs brimming, it had to dump some 500 million gallons of treated drinking water.