They’ve been two of California’s biggest stories for months: the simmering anger over the light sentence given in early June to Brock Turner, a former Stanford swimmer, for sexually assaulting an unconscious fellow student in early 2015, and Gov. Jerry Brown’s push for Proposition 57, a far-reaching ballot measure that would speed the parole process for those convicted of “nonviolent” crimes.

But the crime that Turner committed is one that Brown’s ballot measure labels “nonviolent.” It appears that it wasn’t until Associated Press reporter Don Thompson wrote a 984-word story last Friday that this angle was covered in the news sections of California’s daily papers. Thompson’s summary:

A November ballot measure backed by Gov. Jerry Brown would allow earlier parole for thousands of California inmates, but critics say it could result in the very situation that led to public outrage in the case of former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner.

The proposal is aimed at controlling overcrowding in state prisons and reining in costs, and is limited to nonviolent offenders. But in California, “nonviolent” is broadly defined.

It applies to certain rapes and sexual assaults, such as Turner’s conviction, along with vehicular and involuntary manslaughter, assault with a deadly weapon, domestic violence, exploding a bomb with intent to injure and other crimes.

Because of that, the ballot measure could mean less time in prison for people like Turner, prosecutors say. The one-time Olympic hopeful swimmer was released Friday after completing half of a six-month jail sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a trash bin near a fraternity house hosting a party.

Many already were upset that the law allowed him to avoid hard time.

Yes on 57: Corrections, parole officials can block release

While some California opinion pages and writers covered the Turner-Proposition 57 link — most prominently Dan Walters with his Aug. 8 column in the Sacramento Bee — other journalists appeared reluctant to connect the dots. A Nexis hunt of U.S. newspapers using “Brock Turner and Proposition 57” showed no news coverage before the AP report. One possible reason is that Sacramento reporters thought that the case a Yes on 57 spokesman offered in the Associated Press story was credible: Either Corrections Department officials, parole authorities or both could block the release of a sexually violent convict.

But going forward, that explanation isn’t likely to stop leaders of the anti-57 campaign — the California District Attorneys Association — from invoking Brock Turner over and over again. And the extent of anger over Turner’s case could help reduce Gov. Brown’s biggest advantage in this fight: his huge war chest. He entered the 2016 campaign season with $24 million in two accounts.

In late June, the district attorneys group indicated it had little money for ad buys and would rely on getting the word out about Brock Turner being labeled “nonviolent” by the governor’s measure. It took two months, but it finally happened with the AP account, which the wire service touted as its “Big Story” of the day last Friday. The headline the Daily Post online newspaper based in the Palo Alto area used over the AP story: “Measure may let rapists out early.” The No on 57 campaign may build momentum with fund raising if such headlines continue.

At the least, there will also now be public pressure on a long list of California Democratic politicians — starting with Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, Attorney General Kamala Harris, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom — to explain their view on whether what Brock Turner did should be labeled a “nonviolent” crime.

Many of these politicians voiced support for legislation inspired by Turner’s short sentence that was approved by lawmakers and sent to the governor last week. It mandates that prison time must be served by individuals who sexually assault an intoxicated or unconscious individual.

Gut and amend is a catchall phrase thrown around Sacramento. In general, it means removing all or a substantial part of a bill and replacing it with new provisions that have little or nothing to do with the bill’s original intent, especially after the bill’s shell has passed through a part of the process, like a committee hearing or a vote in one chamber.

Proponents say there are instances when it’s necessary, but detractors say it leads to bad legislation and limits the power of those with an opposing view. The times that irk opponents the most are when a bill is gutted and amended sometimes just hours before a vote.

Members of Rendon’s staff said the Paramount Democrat, who has taken a more soft-handed approach to leadership than some of his predecessors, does not encourage the practice, but leaves legislators to decide how to best handle their legislation.

“There are many situations where a gut and amend may be actually be needed,” said Rendon spokesman John Casey. “Regarding the Speaker’s involvement on the issue, he does not tell members to do anything. They are the masters of their own legislation and are entitled to amend their bills in any way they see fit.”

Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon’s office did not respond to requests for comment, but the Los Angeles Democrat has not opposed gut and amends in the past. 

Examples

Proponents of a bill generally care little for how it gets passed as long as it becomes, and remains, law. So the murky gut and amend process is a means to an end for advocates.

For example, last year, the Legislature officially amended a shell with 104 pages of language changes that dissolved 400 redevelopment agencies statewide, which subsidized local development, which advocates of the move said eliminated wasteful and corrupt agencies.

However, right or wrong, the gut and amend circumvented the normal vetting process, critics said.

“SB 107, redevelopment rewrite, may (or not) be a great bill but springing it on final day of session as a budget trailer bill is shabby,” Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters tweeted at the time.

A year prior, the Legislature pushed through a 112-page bill limiting school districts’ ability to fund reserves, without even a committee hearing, which Walters called one of the “most pointlessly cynical legislative act(s) of this still-young century.”

And years before that, the Legislature jammed through a bill streamlining the strict environmental review process for local development to pave way for a proposed football stadium in Los Angeles — the shell of the bill required recycling and compost bins in schools — only to have a court later rule part of the measure “unconstitutional.”

And so on.

Rules

Legislative rules in both chambers already prohibit “non-germane” amendments, meaning those amendments that have nothing or little to do with the shell. A prime example waiting in the wings is Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez’s bill to even out when farmworkers are given overtime pay — a measure that died earlier this year but has since been added to a bill originally focused on teachers.

However, the rules can be, and are routinely, waived. Leaders generally like having as many legislative tools as possible at their disposal, and anything that speeds up the process or lacks scrutiny limits the power of the minority to impact in the debate.

Proposition 54, which is to be decided by the voters this November, would, among other things, require the final version of a bill to be in print and made available online for 72 hours prior to a vote.

“The only way to actually fix this problem is by changing the California Constitution,” said Sam Blakeslee, a former Republican legislative leader and proponent of Prop. 54. 

But do some deals need to be passed in the eleventh hour?

Prop. 54 would prevent the last-minute gut and amends, but it would also thwart other quickly-passed and negotiated bills that may not qualify as gut and amends, like the 2008 budget deal advocates say staved off bankruptcy. 

Democratic political consultant Steven Maviglio argues that Prop. 54 is just another “tool” for special interests to unravel legislative deals at the last second, pointing to the 2008 budget agreement, the 1959 Fair Housing Act, the 2006 climate change bill (AB32) and the 2014 water bond — all voted on without 72 hours notice. 

“Let’s not give special interests any more tools to prevent lawmakers from doing the right thing, whether it be unnecessary delays in enacting legislation or ways to demonize the Legislature,” wrote in The Sacramento Bee. 

Does the three-time White House hopeful read about Hillary Clinton’s slide and left-winger Bernie Sanders’ surge in their presidential duel and wonder whether party leaders might, in desperation, turn to a popular, seasoned big-state governor who’s just a few years older?

This prompted some reaction in political circles before it was drowned out Saturday by reports former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg might make an independent bid for the presidency.

But there are two interesting angles here worth noting. One is that the presidential candidate that Sanders most sounds like is arguably … Jerry Brown, the 1992 version.

Sanders 2016 = Brown 1992

Veteran California political analyst William Bradley, writing in the Huffington Post in 2014, described Brown’s “Take Back America” campaign of 1992:

Running a not infrequently angry populist campaign, Brown vowed to “take back America from the confederacy of corruption, careerism, and campaign consulting in Washington.” He called for term limits on Congress and vowed to take contributions only from individuals and in amounts no greater than $100. In those pre-Internet days, Brown financed his campaign largely through an 800 number, which he flogged relentlessly. Just as some do with web sites URLs today. …

 

In addition to his now customary themes on renewable energy and climate change, Brown championed a progressive version of a flat tax (in which corporations and some wealthy individuals would pay more), living wage measures and a single-payer health care system, and questioned international trade deals.

In 2016, this sounds far more like Bernie Sanders than Jerry Brown’s current iteration as fiscal hawk who plays mostly small-ball politics, except on the environment.

Brown alleged Clintons were corrupt

The other interesting angle is that there may be no more prominent Democrat in America to publicly hold a low opinion of Bill and Hillary Clinton than Brown. In  the 1992 presidential race, as the Christian Science Monitor notes, the bad blood was plain to the world:

They slammed each other’s positions and records, sometimes falsely – Clinton suggesting that Brown had raised taxes during his first stint as governor, Brown alleging that Clinton (as governor of Arkansas) had directed state contracts to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s law firm in Little Rock. And of course it’s all on tape.

Since then, Brown has had little good to say about either Clinton. In a March 2015 Washington Post story about his decision not to run for president again, Brown was asked about his relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton. His vague response: “It’s all been written about.”

And Brown wouldn’t give her a pass on a controversy that is still in the news.

When asked about the recent controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account as secretary of state, Brown said he is not convinced the issue is a passing storm, as many other Democrats contend.

 

“I don’t know that,” Brown said. “With these things, what makes a difference, you often don’t know until it unfolds because nothing is just what it is. It’s always in part of a larger context. Things unfold and things happen.”

Brown singled out Arkansas to mock

More recently, during his only debate with Republican challenger Neel Kashkari in 2014, Brown held up the Clintons’ home state for ridicule when he was asked about California’s ability to deal in the long term with its large unfunded pension liabilities.

“Are we in Arkansas or Mississippi? This is the eighth-largest economy in the world,” he said, ridiculing the idea that the nation’s richest, most populous state would struggle with such a challenge.

When singling out states that are considered the most socially and economically backwards, comedians and social media yuksters usually cite Mississippi or West Virginia. But not Jerry Brown.

While surveys of business executives still rank California as one of the worst places to do business, the record on job creation has been bright in the Golden State over the last year.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported California led the nation over a 12-month period ending Jan. 31, creating 498,000 jobs. Part of the credit for this, according to the California Chamber of Commerce, is the Chamber’s annual effort to rally against bills that would hinder job creation and hurt the economy.

The effort is called the “job killer” campaign. It alerts legislators, the governor and citizens about bills that increase taxes and regulation on businesses, hindering jobs creation.

For example, from the current list, Assembly Bill 357 is by Assemblyman David Chiu of San Francisco. According to the bill, it’s needed because, “Unpredictable scheduling practices and last-minute work schedule changes cause workers who are already struggling with low wages to live in a constant state of insecurity about when they will work or how much they will earn on any given day.”

But according to the Chamber, among other things, AB357 “imposes an unfair, one-size fits all, two-week notice scheduling mandate on any entity that performs retail sales activity, and penalizes the employer with ‘additional pay’ for making changes to the schedule with less than two weeks notice.”

It is worth considering how the positive job creation news would have fared without the CalChamber’s annual job-killer campaign. Over the past four years, the Chamber marked 129 bills as job killers. Only 8 of these measures have been signed into law. If many of the defeated bills passed, would California’s job-creation number be so strong?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, California created 100,000 more jobs than the runner-up job creator, Texas, to which California is often compared as an economic rival. However, as Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters pointed out, the job gain in Texas was a 3.5 percent increase. In more populous California, the job increase represents a 3.2 percent gain. “A tie,” Walters declared.

High unemployment

California’s unemployment at 6.7 percent is still one of the highest in the nation. The national rate is 5.5 percent. More jobs are needed to help get many Californians out of poverty, with California leading the nation in that category.

Job creation in California has been uneven. Twenty counties still have double-digit unemployment, while the hot job creation Bay Area counties have unemployment as low as 4 percent.

The Chamber’s goal is to keep business costs low to improve the economy statewide.

“Jobs in California’s high tech and health care sectors and along the coast are fueling our economy and this is good news, however, when one third of Californians are on Medi-Cal we need to enhance our efforts to improve the overall job picture,” said California Chamber of Commerce president Allan Zaremberg.

Critics contend the bills are needed to help the work environment. Steve Smith, a spokesman for the California Labor Federation, charged of CalChamber’s 2014 list, “By placing measures to give workers earned sick days and combat wage theft on their hit list, the Chamber, once again, has shown how tone-deaf it is to the needs of most California families.”

However, the Legislative Analyst’s Office surveyed 50 school districts around the state, including the 11 largest, and warned in a January report that not one had proper safeguards to prevent diversion of funds. In Los Angeles Unified, among other districts, the local teachers’ union last summer pointed specifically to new, incoming LCFF dollars as a kitty to tap for pay raises.

In coming months, this issue is likely to emerge as a point of contention in Sacramento because of concerns raised by the California Legislative Black Caucus about State Board of Education rules governing how LCFF funds are used. Here are three of the caucus’ main points:

— Any authority for the use of supplemental or concentration grants to schoolwide and districtwide expenditures must clearly link the services to demonstrated effectiveness in increasing student achievement and closing achievement gaps, and demonstrate that the expenditures are proven effective for “concentrations” of unduplicated children in schools in the district where concentrations exist.

— The terms “most effective” or “effective” should be defined, and at a minimum be tied to demonstrated effectiveness in meeting the “student achievement” goal and closing any persistent achievement gaps or deficiencies as it relates to the unduplicated students, and not just a generic reference to the state priority areas.

— The proposed regulations also do not provide the Board or county superintendents clear standards by which districts must explicitly demonstrate or explain, at a minimum, how expenditures of supplement and concentration grant funds will support services that will actually improve the academic achievement of unduplicated students or close persistent academic achievement gaps.

These concerns are from Assemblywoman Shirley Weber’s remarks to the State Board of Education at its Jan. 16 meeting on behalf of the Black Caucus.

Dan Walters wrote a Feb. 26 column in the Sacramento Bee noting that a “broad coalition of civil rights and education reform groups” had expressed worry about the LCFF not being implemented according to the goals cited in 2013 upon its passage. But this effort seems likely to be much stronger with the aid of state lawmakers.

The Black Caucus has 12 members — Weber, Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer Sr., Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, Cheryl R. Brown, Autumn Burke, Jim Cooper, Mike Gipson, Christopher Holden, Kevin McCarty and Tony Thurmond in the Assembly, and Isadore Hall III and Holly J. Mitchell in the Senate.

That’s according to a new study by the U.S. Census Bureau, “State Government Finances Summary: 2013. Economy-Wide Statistics Briefs: Public Sector.”

According to the summary by Dan Walters, “California contains 12.2 percent of the nation’s population but its state government accounted for 13.8 percent of all state spending in the 2012-13 fiscal year.”

Of course, California is an extremely expensive state. So the higher spending might be justified to pay for higher salaries for government workers.

Except a previous Census Bureau study found California has the nation’s highest poverty rate. So one reason non-government workers are so poor is their salaries are drained to support an above-average size of state and local government.

The instant media consensus after Thursday night’s first and only debate between Gov. Jerry Brown and Republican challenger Neel Kashkari was that the underdog GOP novice did better than expected but that no one got in a knockout punch.

But what about self-inflicted wounds? The governor shouldn’t get a pass for his bizarre claim that his 2012 reform measure ended pension spiking by public employees. It was just last month that the board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System approved 99 ways for government workers to spike pensions above their base pay.

Who just made this point about CalPERS just two weeks ago? Dan Walters, the co-dean of the Sacramento press corp:

Among other things, the reform legislation sought to reduce “spiking” of pensions by restricting their calculation to regular pay.

This week, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, whose board is dominated by union representatives and union-friendly politicians, revealed a very generous interpretation of that provision.

It declared 99 forms of pay over and above regular salaries to be “pensionable.”

Read the whole column by Dan here.

Bee ‘fact-check’ ignores Brown’s huge favors for teachers unions

Media coverage of Thursday night’s debate also included this hysterical “fact check” from the Sacramento Bee on “Is Brown too close to teachers union?”

The Bee’s conclusion seems to be “no.”

It is true that the CTA gained broader influence in state politics after Brown, when he was governor before, signed the Rodda Act in 1975, requiring school districts to engage in collective bargaining. The CTA spent millions of dollars helping Brown win election in 2010 and remains a major supporter.

Yet despite their generally favorable relationship, Brown has irritated the union in the past with his advocacy for charter schools. He started two charter schools while mayor of Oakland and lobbied against legislation to unionize charter school teachers.

That is all the context offered. What truly awful journalism.

We are coming off a two-year period in which first the governor, at the behest of the CFT and CTA, got income and sales taxes raised with Prop 30, with the proceeds mostly going to school districts’ operating budgets — in other words, to make it much easier for union-controlled school boards to raise teacher compensation after years of tight budgets.

Then Brown changed school funding formulas in a way that delivered far more money to L.A. Unified, which is dominated by the single most powerful local union chapter in the state — United Teachers Los Angeles. The extra funds are supposed to go to help struggling students. But as the L.A. Daily News reported last month, the UTLA has explicitly said they should be used to give teachers a huge raise.

Concluding a second round of contract talks Wednesday, teachers union leaders released a statement … . United Teachers Los Angeles said district administrators explained that educators could receive either smaller class sizes or be “compensated fairly,” but not both.

“We don’t buy it,” the statement says.  “Millions of extra dollars have already flowed into the district as part of the state’s new funding formula.”

The teacher’s union wants a 17.6 percent pay raise, while district officials say they can only afford a 6.64 percent across-the-board raise and 2 percent bonus.

Oh, yeah, Jerry and the teachers unions aren’t tight because a decade ago Jerry wanted charters in Oakland!

LOL.

“For more than a decade, lawmakers have ignored the increasing shortfall. Consequently, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System is now $74 billion underfunded, holding only 67 percent of assets it should have.

“Brown now wants to start paying down the debt this year. But he would stretch the installments until 2046, meaning it would take 32 years to restore full funding and that the debt would continue growing for the first 12 years.

“That’s not fiscally responsible; it’s merely less irresponsible than what lawmakers do now.”

It’s not irresponsible enough for Dem majority

And guess what? In the least surprising development of all time, even the governor’s irresponsible plan is too responsible for the Legislature. This is from Dan Walters:

“State legislators heard a heavy litany of complaints from school officials this week about Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to make the State Teachers Retirement System solvent and in response temporarily toned down the bite on their budgets.

“The Brown plan aims to close a $70-plus billion unfunded liability by eventually raising contributions to $5-plus billion a year, with the lion’s share coming from the budgets of local school districts.

“But school officials told a joint legislative hearing that the sharp increases would wipe out much of the gains in state aid they are scheduled to receive during the remainder of the decade.

“In response, the chairs of the two legislative committees involved asked for a modification and on Friday, the Legislative Analyst’s Office released a revised chart that would reach the same level of financing sought by Brown by 2020, but lower the increase in the early years and raise it later.”

Yeah, sure, they’ll “raise it later.” To paraphrase an old Baltimore Sun columnist, no one will ever go broke underestimating the people in charge of the California Legislature.

The California Center for Jobs & the Economy noted these stats on Monday. The first:

“California’s Labor Force Participation Rate (not seasonally adjusted) in April 2014 was 61.8%, the lowest rate since April 1976.  While the significant drop from March 2014 suggests there are also statistical or sampling issues in play, this milestone is a stark reminder that California’s participation rate remains below the US average (62.6%), and like the US rate is currently on a decline.

“This sustained decline in the labor force participation rate has been a statistical factor behind the improving unemployment numbers, but also reflects the perception of many potential job seekers on the opportunities available through the current economic mix.”

20.6% of those classified as CA employed work part-time

If less people seek work, that may help the unemployment rate improve, but it hardly bolsters the narrative of a state on the economic rebound. The Bay Area, Silicon Valley and the tech centers in Orange County, L.A. suburbs and San Diego are doing from pretty well to great, but the rest of the state never left the Great Recession.

The second stat cited by the jobs center also reflects the state’s overall economic weakness:

“While the US percentage of employed who work part-time has continued to slowly decline to 18.0% in April 2014 (12-month moving average), the comparable number for California has remained at 20.6% for the past quarter, reflecting the fact that this factor remained level at a somewhat higher rate throughout 2013 as well.  The number of workers employed part-time for economic reasons also remains higher in California —7.2% for California vs. 5.2% for the US in April 2014.”

And this stat explains why California does badly in most revealing of official federal unemployment stats. It’s the U-6 category, which reflects how many people want to work full-time but can’t find such jobs.

The latest unemployment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics came out in late April. It shows California to have the second-worst U-6 rate in the nation at 16.7 percent. Only Nevada is worse.

The newsroom version of sportswriters’ resistance to ‘Moneyball’

The L.A. Times’ coverage did note that by the conventional measure of unemployment, California had the fourth-worst rate. But it and most other newspapers rarely talk about the state’s even worse U-6 rate. Dan Walters deserves credit for breaking with the crowd by doing so.

And few journos outside of the Sacramento Bee and U-T San Diego cite how poorly California does in the alternative federal measure of poverty that is adjusted for cost of living.

When that is factored in, the Golden State has by far the highest poverty rate in the U.S. at around 23 percent. When we pretend the cost of housing is the same in California as it is in Indiana, CA’s poverty rate is about 16 percent, only 1 percent higher than the national average. So why is the former, misleading rate the one that’s most reported?

Inertia is the likely answer, not bias. But it’s not a good answer.

Hey, journalists of California: In covering the economy, why would you rely on the equivalent of batting average and ignore the equivalent of OPS and Wins Above Replacement?

When better statistical measurements come along, are veteran news reporters going to be like veteran sports reporters and resist them for no good reason?

When it comes to California’s poverty and unemployment rates, it sure seems that way.

But if you’re the governor of that state, and the media think you’re a whiz-bang because there aren’t any more budget stalemates every summer, you can just blithely say that 24 percent poverty is just the way it is, man. This was in the Sac Bee.

“Brown defended California’s business environment, citing venture capital and foreign investment in the state.

“There’s a fellow named Schumpeter who talked about the creative destruction of capitalism,” he said, referencing the economist Joseph Schumpeter. “And, I put the emphasis on creative, and, change is inevitable. We’re getting 60 percent of the venture capital, we’re the number one place for direct foreign investment in the United States. Do we have everything in all respects? No. But we have an abundance that constitutes a two trillion dollar economy.”

Brown celebrates dynamics that are roiling San Francisco

As my Cal Watchdog colleague John Seiler notes, it’s pretty cool to see California’s governor invoke an economist who is a free-market icon, not a Krugmanite — even if it’s Texas that reflects Schumpeter’s core insights far more than Cali. But it’s also very curious in that anyone who celebrates the California status quo certainly isn’t looking at the 24 percent of folks in poverty. Or the stagnant middle class. More than anyone, such a celebration is about the tech titans of Silicon Valley and San Francisco — the allegedly evil 1 percenters.

It’s no stretch to say Jerry Brown is celebrating the same economic dynamics that have San Franciscan lefties going goon on rich techies.

But then we live in a state in which outside of Christopher Cadelago and Dan Walters at the Sac Bee and Steve Greenhut at the U-T San Diego and the editorial board of the U-T (which includes me), practically no one ever mentions that California has the nation’s highest poverty rate if cost of living is included.

Do these journos think cost of living shouldn’t be included? Or are they just clueless? Or are they scared to break with the pack?

I don’t know which of these is true. But it is stunning that so few of the articles about how California is doing simply omit our nation’s worst poverty ranking.