Rushing to meet last week’s deadline for filing amicus briefs, dozens of local governments and other groups in California have jointly and separately beseeched the high court to uphold laws targeting sleeping in public. Such laws are seen as a key way to crack down homelessness.

The flood of legal filings came in support of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court filed by the city of Boise, Idaho. The city opposes a September 2018 ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals that held that just as governments “may not criminalize the state of being ‘homeless in public places,’ [the city of Boise] may not criminalize conduct that is an unavoidable consequence of being homeless — namely sitting, lying or sleeping on the streets.”

In July, Boise hired attorneys Ted Olson and Theane Evangelis of the Los Angeles-based law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher for its appeal. The attorneys sought amicus briefs from affected local governments and stakeholders in the states bound by the 9th U.S. Circuit’s ruling: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

Lawyers for Boise say court overreached

Olson’s and Evangelis’ argued that the Boise ruling could create never-ending legal fighting by taking away a tool communities need to deal with homelessness, as well as create massive new fiscal obligations.

As CalWatchdog reported last week, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors backed joining an amicus brief prepared by the California State Association of Counties. Among the other government bodies that decided to back Boise:

• The city of Los Angeles. City Attorney Mike Feuer said last week that the ruling “could place the city at risk of litigation as leaders strive to fashion the humane, practical solutions this crisis urgently demands.” Mayor Eric Garcetti, an outspoken advocate of what he sees as a humane approach to homelessness, did not support Feuer’s decision.

• Riverside, Orange and Fresno Counties.

• The cities of Sacramento, Fullerton, Torrance and Newport Beach.

The decisions reflect a rift between high-profile politicians like Garcetti, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg who call for a compassion-first approach on homelessness and politicians who are responding to frustration and anger from their constituents over homeless encampments disrupting neighborhoods. Homelessness has gotten steadily worse in most California cities over the last dozen years, fueled initially by the Great Recession and then by the high cost of housing.

But the Boise ruling also is unpopular across the West. The Idaho Statesman reported that 20 amicus briefs supported by 81 different groups from a range of states had been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers doubt high court will take case

The newspaper noted that one was filed by MaryRose Courtney, whose brother is homeless and mentally ill, and the Ketchum-Downtown YMCA in Los Angeles. Unlike many of the briefs, it didn’t focus on the fiscal and quality-of-life headaches that could result from the Boise ruling. Instead, Courtney challenged the notion that tolerating sleeping in public was humane.

This approach is “leading to more aggressive policing, as police prohibited from enforcing anti-camping laws turn to arresting homeless people for more serious offenses like public urination, public defecation and public nudity,” she wrote. “Court rulings like the 9th Circuit’s in this case do far more harm than good because they lead to deregulation and generate apathy and inaction, as well as a sense of frustration that discourages further efforts to help the homeless.”

But plaintiffs’ lawyers from Idaho Legal Aid Services and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty told the Statesman that they were skeptical the Supreme Court would take up the case because the ruling by the panel of 9th Circuit judges was based on earlier court rulings on homeless ordinances that had not been overturned. 

Plaintiffs have four weeks to prepare a response to the amicus briefs.

If the high court decides to take up the case, a hearing is expected in the spring with a ruling by the end of the court’s term in June, the Statesman reported.

But in key ways, the dynamics appear different. In Los Angeles and Oakland, the public and the local media were clearly sympathetic. Teachers had not had significant raises in years, and with the cost of housing going up arguably have lost purchasing power in recent years.

In Sacramento, however, the argument that the local school district simply can’t afford raises because of the huge long-term increase in pension costs and loss in state funding because of declining enrollment has resonated far more than similar warnings did in Los Angeles and Oakland. Coverage in regular and social media has repeatedly emphasized three points:

• The Sacramento City Teachers Association secured an 11 percent raise for most members in September 2017 after threatening a strike. The Sacramento County Office of Education warned at the time that without significant cuts, the district faced fiscal disaster. But the local teachers union has rejected calls to reduce the cost of health benefits that the state Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) says are the most generous in the Sacramento region.

• The warning from school officials that even without having to provide new raises, the district faces a $35 million hole in a nearly $400 million annual budget and is on track to run out of money in November. At that point, under state law, the district could seek an emergency loan from the state Legislature, but on the condition that it accept an appointed administrator to make key financial decisions going forward, taking away most of the school board’s and Superintendent Jorge Aguilar’s powers. The primary goal of those decisions would be ensuring the district pays back the state loan.

• The fact that the four other employee unions in Sacramento City Unified have sided with Aguilar’s warning that a raise could seal state control of the school district for a decade or more, as has happened in other California districts that have been unable to pay their bills. They don’t buy the teachers union claim that the district has failed to honor the contract it signed in 2017, thus making a strike necessary even though state law says such a strike would be illegal since the teachers are still under contract.

Writing Monday, Sacramento Bee columnist Marcos Breton warned the teachers union that it risked disaster not just for the district and its 42,000 students but for a city that has built up civic momentum in recent years under Mayor Darrell Steinberg.

“Sacramento’s efforts to sell itself as a place for companies to invest would be damaged because a major selling point is good schools,” Breton wrote. “How many investment opportunities would be lost if Sacramento became known as the city whose schools were bankrupt?”

Aguilar arrived in 2017 at the district and is given good marks in most circles for his determination to avoid financial disaster. But a FCMAT audit released in December pointed out a vast array of problems in Sacramento City’s management that dated back many years. It cited incompetence and poor communications by the district’s business team and a failure to properly analyze budget data that indicated the headaches to come.

Union leaders say these management failings are not their responsibility and should not be held against their push for better pay.

The union’s hope that a strike authorization vote would lead to new concessions hasn’t happened so far. A union statement said the strike was coming “at a date likely in the next month.”

Sacramento has become the latest city to consider responding to California’s acute housing crisis with “tiny homes” – small, prefabricated studio homes with bathrooms and built-in hook-ups for electricity and water.

In an era in which $2,000 apartment rentals, $600,000 homes and $300,000-plus “affordable” public housing units are normal in the Golden State, the appeal of housing that can cost as little as $40,000 per unit is obvious to government leaders dealing with growing homelessness and increased fears that expensive housing will make it difficult to attract needed workers or drive them away.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg last month proposed spending $21 million to help pay for the addition of up to 1,000 such homes – from prefab 300-square-foot modular homes to container units that could be set up inside warehouses. Steinberg offered the proposal as the centerpiece of his agenda to respond to his city’s homelessness problem and suggested that public housing vouchers could be used for construction costs.

“It’s all in our grasp,” the mayor said in his annual State of the Downtown address. “Public funding, private funding, tangible goals, public accountability and a community commitment to whatever it takes to make this homeless problem better in Sacramento.”

Sacramento only added 235 housing units in its central city in 2017, according to the Sacramento Bee. The newspaper also recently reported that in one eight-day stretch in January, nearly 35,000 residents got on the waiting list for public housing vouchers, formerly known as Section 8 vouchers.

San Jose, Fresno, Clovis see potential in housing alternative

Some other local governments in California pursuing “tiny homes”:

San Jose – In December, the City Council voted 9-2 for a $2.3 million “tiny home” pilot program in which 40 homes would be built in one location. If the project works out, officials hope to add “tiny home” villages in each of the 10 City Council districts, the San Jose Mercury-News reported.

The cost of the first 40 homes is $73,125 each – a pittance in the metro area which in 2016 became the first in the nation to have homes cost an average of more than $1 million, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Fresno – In 2016, it became one of the first cities in the nation to formally encourage “tiny homes” when a law took effect. “The pint-sized houses on wheels – complete with kitchen, living room and loft – are now considered backyard cottages thanks to changes in the city’s zoning and development code,” the Fresno Bee reported. “That means tiny homes can be used as independent living quarters on the same lot as a single-family house granted it meets some requirements. Previously, the mobile units could only serve as temporary lodging.”

The 270-square-foot model pre-approved by the city is built by a Fresno firm. Prices start at $45,000.

Clovis – In June, in interviews with the Fresno Bee, city officials touted a long-term development plan for the city’s Old Town that sees “tiny homes” of no more than 400 square feet build in residential alleys as the key to its revitalization.

City officials are working with a local builder to develop three models with designs that are pre-approved by the city and are available for free to the public. The city believes the “tiny houses” would cost about $50,000 on average, according to a report from Fresno County’s ABC 30 News.

Perhaps the American city farthest down the road in embracing the small housing approach is Boston. In 2014, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh launched a Housing Innovation Laboratory. City officials have developed a prototype called an Urban Housing Unit, or Uhu,  a 385-square-foot modular apartment. The prototype, which may cost as little as $40,000 to manufacture, is pictured above.

From pioneering air-pollution control programs in Los Angeles County in

So when Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León introduced Senate Bill 100 in January, the expectations were high. The measure committed California to generating 50 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2026 – four years earlier than the present goal – and to 60 percent by 2030 and to 100 percent by 2045. No government remotely as large as California’s had made such a commitment.

In spring interviews with reporters at an energy conference in Orange County, the Los Angeles Democrat depicted his bill as a common-sense measure to goad investor-owned utilities into making long-term shifts in their infrastructure to prepare for an all-renewable future. He said progress had been so quick that he expected the state to meet the 50 percent renewable standard “in the early 2020s without breaking a sweat.” But he also depicted SB100 as setting up “the most ambitious program in the world.”

When it passed the California Senate on a mostly party-line vote in May, the world took notice. The New York Times set the tone: In a 2,100-word analysis headlined “Fighting Trump on Climate, California Becomes a Global Force,” it depicted the bill as a key part of California’s determination to take over the global lead in environmentalism from Washington.

But earlier this month, SB100 failed to even get a floor vote in the Assembly as lawmakers wrapped up business for the year. A Desert Sun report depicted the decision as “unexpected.”

That’s not how it looked to some insiders. Business groups spent months hammering home the argument that it was risky to commit to 100 percent renewable energy use when it was not clear that was either feasible or safe for a modern economy. In a June interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Gary Ackerman, executive director of the Western Power Trading Forum, depicted SB100 as “reckless” and with a huge downside. The arguments echoed those made by Pacific Gas & Electric, Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, the state’s three giant investor-owner utilities, which quietly have established strong ties with Democratic lawmakers in poor districts buffeted by high energy costs.

IBEW adopted, modified utilities’ argument

Meanwhile, de León didn’t enjoy unified support on the Democratic front. An argument the utilities had been making – that SB100 was potentially a hugely disruptive force – was adopted and modified by some labor leaders. They worried what a 100 percent commitment to renewable energy might mean for thousands of union members. According to an NBC News report, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 1245, began opposing the bill in late summer because the local union alleged de León had gone back on his promise to protect union jobs.

But a third factor may also have been at play. De León has never enjoyed the broad goodwill accorded his predecessor, Darrell Steinberg, now the mayor of Sacramento. Soon after taking over as Senate leader in late 2014, de León was the target of a scathing column by then-Sacramento Bee pundit Dan Walters for mistakes, power plays and a lack of humility. He faced similar criticism from the Sacramento Bee’s editorial board.

De León has since emerged as a legislative powerhouse, at least according to the conventional wisdom that holds that the 2017 session was one of the most productive in recent history. But his clout couldn’t overcome the late-emerging opposition to SB100.

The lobbying will begin all over again for the measure in January, the Greentech website reported.

“We’re going to be back next year,” said Peter Miller, Western energy project director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the website. “I don’t want to underestimate the challenges to moving to a fully zero-carbon grid, but we can get there, and we will.”

Uber’s defiance of a California Department of Motor Vehicles’ demand that the pioneering transit company stop testing its self-driving Volvo sport-utility vehicles in San Francisco ended Wednesday when the DMV revoked the vehicles’ registrations, making them illegal to operate on state roads.

The DMV first ordered the Uber tests to end in a Dec. 14 letter. But Uber — which is headquartered in San Francisco — defied the letter and argued that its tests weren’t subject to rules the DMV issued in October. It said those rules were meant to govern testing of fully autonomous vehicles.

Instead, Uber said it was using vehicles with self-driving technology akin to the in-dashboard tech seen in some Tesla models, and that humans were in the vehicles. A human tester’s failure was blamed for the incident last week when an Uber test Volvo was caught on video running a red light in San Francisco.

The company based its claim that the DMV didn’t understand its own rules on language that defined an autonomous vehicle subject to state regulations which said these vehicles did not require “the active physical control or monitoring” of a person. “We can’t in good conscience” accept a bureaucratic sanction based on ignorance, a Google official told reporters in a conference call last Friday.

It’s not clear whether Uber will face further sanctions from the DMV or the state Attorney General’s Office. But the company’s history of slowness or outright refusal to comply with regulatory agencies may work against it, both in decisions made by state officials and in the court of public opinion. Also damaging was Uber officials’ quick concession after complaints from San Francisco bicycle riders that its test vehicles needed better programming in dealing with bicycle lanes that are ubiquitous in the Bay Area.

Obama administration pushed much laxer regulation

The Uber-DMV dispute underlined how different California’s approach to driverless-vehicle regulation is from the federal government. In September, the Obama administration issued recommendations — not hard rules — for regulations of self-driving vehicles. It called for there to be a uniform policy in all states to promote innovation and experimentation with a technology that many hope will reduce pollution and congestion and end up being a trillion-dollar industry.

Four weeks later, the California DMV issued rules that said autonomous vehicle testing could only be done by companies whose testing programs were designed to “constantly ensure the technologies comply with local laws [in California’s] 58 counties and 482 incorporated cities,” according to the San Jose Mercury-News. The DMV rules required that formal permission for testing be granted by any local government whose roads would be part of tests.

As CalWatchdog reported, the California approach to regulating self-driving cars produced sharp blowback from automakers and tech giants.

Uber’s problems in San Francisco have prompted sympathy and perhaps opportunism from new Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg. The Associated Press reported that Steinberg invited Uber to shift its testing to Sacramento if it wanted friendlier treatment. “We want Sacramento to be the hotbed for companies seeking to develop driverless car technology,” he told the wire service.

Some advocates for police reform worry about what a new Trump administration will mean for these discussions given the president-elect’s expectedly different approach toward the matter than President Obama’s Department of Justice. But others argue the election will send reform back to where it really belongs: at the local level.

Two northern California cities, Sacramento and San Francisco, are good examples of the latter. They are currently plowing ahead with major oversight and accountability proposals for their police departments – the result of local policing scandals that have little to do with national political changes. Sacramento takes up the matter at a City Council meeting on Tuesday.

The Sacramento reforms were prompted by a video of two police officers in pursuit of a mentally ill homeless man, Joseph Mann, who was armed with a knife and acting erratically. As the Sacramento Bee reported, the video sequence shows “the officers gunned their vehicle toward Mann, backed up, turned and then drove toward him again, based on dash-cam video released by police. They stopped the car, ran toward Mann on foot and shot him 14 times.” One officer is recorded saying “f— this guy” shortly before they shot him.

The killing raised questions not only about the appropriate use of force in such situations, but about the city’s willingness to provide the public information about what transpired. Top city officials – the police chief, city attorney and city manager – didn’t release the video of the event until after the Bee acquired the footage from a private citizen. The shooting led to community protests and has been a source of strife – and council debate – ever since.

In September, the newspaper’s Editorial Board published this pointed editorial: “The city could have been upfront with Mann’s family about how many times he was shot and how long the investigation into the shooting would take. Instead, his brother, backed by enough activists to fill City Hall, had go before the City Council to beg for information. The city could have been clear about what training officers receive to handle people who are mentally ill. Instead, police still haven’t responded to a Public Records Act request for a copy of the department’s policy.”

Reformers argue that the proposed policy doesn’t go far enough, although backers argue that it is about as far as it can go given state law. Specifically, the measure would transfer power of the civilian oversight committee from the city manager’s office to the mayor and City Council – thus providing a more independent level of oversight given that the city manager also oversees the police department. Council members are at least beholden to voters.

The city’s proposal also does the following: “This resolution requires the city manager to ensure that all police officers of the Sacramento Police Department abide by council specified guidelines with regards to use of force. Key components of the resolution include the timely release of video after an officer involved incident occurs and the immediate notification of family members after an officer involved shooting.” That attempts to deal with the public-records issue.

Civilian-oversight commissions are still limited by the state Supreme Court’s Copley decision. In that 2006 case, the San Diego Union-Tribune tried to gain access to a disciplinary hearing regarding a deputy sheriff who was appealing his termination. As the newspaper reported, “The court ruled that police disciplinary hearings are closed — and the public has no right to learn about allegations of police misconduct, even when they are aired in a civil service commission.” Legislative efforts to roll back parts of the decision have repeatedly been stymied by police union lobbying.

In San Francisco, officials have been reacting to controversy following three officer-involved shootings and a scandal involving racist text messages that were allegedly sent by police officers. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in April, “The messages are loaded with slurs and ugly stereotypes, and include one from an officer responding to a photo of a blackened Thanksgiving turkey. ‘Is that a Ferguson turkey?’ the officer asks, referring to the city in Missouri that saw widespread protests after police fatally shot an unarmed African American man in 2014.”

National politics plays a bigger role in the San Francisco case. That’s because the federal Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services department published a study last month looking at San Francisco’s police department. The mayor and former police chief had asked the department to review police practices following these scandals.

As the report’s summary explained, “Although the COPS Office found a department that is committed to making changes and working with the community, it also found a department with outdated use of force policies that fail the officers and the community and inadequate data collection that prevents leadership from understanding officer activities and ensure organizational accountability. The department lacked accountability measures to ensure that the department is being open and transparent while holding officers accountable.”

San Francisco officials have vowed to implement the 479 recommendations made in the Justice Department report. “We will continue to implement the recommendations for reform which will be built on the most current policing policies and practices, fostering an environment of trust and strong relationships with our communities,” said acting Police Chief Toney Chaplin.

In Sacramento, Mayor-elect Darrell Steinberg, who is inaugurated on Dec. 13, told the Bee “the public certainly has a right to know whether a particular officer who has been accused of misconduct continues to serve in the role of police officer. … There ought to be a clear presumption of openness and the burden ought to be on the city attorney and police to demonstrate in a compelling way why anything is not public.” There’s concern that a federal lawsuit by Mann’s relatives will allow the city to shut down public access to information about the shooting.

This much is clear: Whatever changes a new administration makes at the Department of Justice, local officials throughout California are on the front lines of the police-reform movement. 

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

While dozens of measures are vying to make it on the November general election ballot, one proposal is ready for the June primary — even though no one is campaigning for or against it.

Proposition 50 is a constitutional amendment empowering legislators to suspend other legislators without pay with a two-thirds vote of the respective chamber.

The measure is in response to three suspensions with pay in 2014: Democratic state Sens. Roderick Wright of Inglewood, Leland Yee of San Francisco and Ron Calderon of Montebello. Wright was suspended after being convicted of felony perjury and election fraud and the other two were suspended after federal corruption charges were filed.

The measure has a good chance of passing, as public perception of the Legislature took a hit following the rash of incidents in 2014 (in February of 2015, it rebounded a bit but was still in the low 40 percent range).

“From a voter’s perspective, it’s pretty straight forward,” said Kathay Feng, the executive director of the good government group California Common Cause. “There’s not much love for misbehaving legislators.”

Feng said some may question whether this measure violates the spirit of innocent until proven guilty, but others are sure this won’t be an issue.

“Guilty until proven innocent when it comes to legislators,” said Steven Maviglio, a Democratic campaign strategist, noting that the measure is “totally non-controversial.”

Politics and Process

The measure doesn’t have any opponents actively fighting it. But no one is pushing for it either. When contacted by CalWatchdog, former Democratic Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who introduced the measure, deferred through an aide to sitting senators or the Senate Rules Committee for more info.

But sitting senators would refer it to an outside group to handle the campaign, yet no such committee has been formed. No one is campaigning for it.

“All of the people who were originally involved seemed to have left this as an orphan for somebody else,” said Feng.

If the measure’s passage is truly inevitable — a slam dunk — then there may be little need to push for it, especially in the absence of opposition. But some observers say it could be that the pressure is off now that no one is in trouble.

“Out of sight, out of mind,” said John J. Pitney, Jr., a Roy P. Crocker professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. “The idea may regain currency if another legislator gets into major trouble, but until then it is in the political memory hole.”

The measure will appear on the June ballot because it is a constitutional amendment added by the Legislature. Measures that go through the signature gathering process can only appear on the November general election ballot — of which it appears there will be plenty.

How Else Can They Be Punished?

Besides suspension, legislators have other punitive actions they can take against lawmakers, although they are rarely used.

According to Alex Vassar, who runs the California political website One Voter Project, censure (it’s basically a public shaming by peers) was last used in 1982 to strongly condemn comments made about abortion rights protesters by O.C. Republican John G. Schmitz.

Expulsion, according to Vassar, was last used in 1905 against legislators colluding to solicit bribes (Wright was threatened with an expulsion vote). And members can also be stripped of committee assignments, which was used last with Yee, Wright and Calderon.

But even at a time when school funding has reached an all-time high, districts are apprehensive at having to spend so much more on pensions. This month, their strategy has become clear: establish separate, specific state funding for districts to cover their increased contributions. Ed Mendel of Calpensions.com has more:

… a coalition of school districts, including the giant Los Angeles Unified School District, is proposing a separate budget item for the CalSTRS rate increase within the Proposition 98 school-funding guarantee.

The change would not require the state to spend more money on schools. But the coalition thinks a separate budget item could ensure that funding for the CalSTRS rate increase, as it’s phased in over seven years, “will grow at a predictable rate” for all school districts.

As it stands now, school districts would have to pay for the CalSTRS rate increase with money from a new K-12 funding plan adopted two years ago, the Local Control Funding Formula.

No carve-out from Proposition 98

There had been speculation that the CTA and CFT would seek to have pension funding separated out from Proposition 98 spending — money the state is required to give schools under a 1988 ballot measure that guarantees about 40 percent of revenue goes to K-14 campuses. But that’s difficult under Prop. 98’s dense, specific language.

Instead, the education establishment expects to use the flexibility and extra dollars provided by the Local Control Funding Formula to pay for the higher pension costs. But that’s not what the change in how schools are funded was supposed to be about, according to its champion, Gov. Jerry Brown. The governor’s website contains a 800-word account of the signing of the LCFF law on July 1, 2013. It depicts the funding change as being solely about getting more help to struggling English-learners, the state’s “neediest students.”

Brown’s quote in the account:

“Today, I’m signing a bill that is truly revolutionary. We are bringing government closer to the people, to the classroom where real decisions are made and directing the money where the need and the challenge is greatest. This is a good day for California, it’s a good day for school kids and it’s a good day for our future.”

Then-Senate President Darrell Steinberg’s quote:

“Our disadvantaged students deserve more resources to overcome the extra obstacles they face, and this formula does just that. At the same time, we’re investing more resources in all of our students, and building on proven programs of career technical education and partnership academies to keep our students engaged and give them better preparation for college and careers. This dramatic shift in funding allows our schools to target investment where it’s needed most. By empowering our students for success, we pave the way for a stronger California.”

“Today, an average California home costs $440,000, about two-and-a-half times the average national home price ($180,000). Also, California’s average monthly rent is about $1,240, 50 percent higher than the rest of the country ($840 per month). 

“California is a desirable place to live. Yet not enough housing exists in the state’s major coastal communities to accommodate all of the households that want to live there. 

“Households with low incomes, in particular, spend much more of their income on housing. High home prices here also push homeownership out of reach for many. … The state’s high housing costs make California a less attractive place to call home, making it more difficult for companies to hire and retain qualified employees, likely preventing the state’s economy from meeting its full potential.”

The LAO  prescribed two cures for high-cost housing in already dense coastal areas where frequent environmental opposition to new housing is most rampant.

Higher densities

First, the LAO called for much higher building densities in coastal metropolitan areas, including:

• More than doubling of single family home densities in Los Angeles, Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties from 4 units per acre to up to 9 units (Figure 10, LAO Report);
• More than doubling townhome and condominium densities in San Francisco from 18 units per acre to 35 to 40 units (Figure 10, LAO Report);
• Building 100,000 additional housing units along the coast each year. This would be the equivalent to building a new city along the coastline with a population of 300,000, or about the size of Riverside or Stockton — each year.

CEQA exemption

Second, the LAO recommends exempting new housing construction from lawsuits under the California Environmental Quality Act for reasons of reduction in traffic congestion and the avoidance of blocked views from “Not-In-My-Backyard” (NIMBY) lawsuits. The LAO report did acknowledge, “CEQA’s complicated procedural requirements give development opponents significant opportunities to continue challenging housing projects after local governments have approved them.” However, the LAO did not bring up the 2013 reforms of CEQA in Senate Bill 743, by then-Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, for infill development in high-density transit development zones.  SB743 eliminated traditional “auto delay” and “level of service” measures of traffic congestion, as well as any parking impacts, as a basis for determining significant impacts of infill housing development under CEQA. The provisions of SB743 will not become effective until sometime in 2016. The California Infill Building Association, the California Teamsters Public Affairs Council, and the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, which was seeking relaxation of CEQA for a sports stadium project, supported SB743.  Opposition to SB743 came from the Planning and Conservation League and the Sierra Club. SB743 should help a little with the constructing new dwellings.

Home rule

The LAO also infers that, to lower coastal housing costs, California needs to usurp local “home rule” of zoning densities and the ability to file environmental lawsuits blocking or delaying new housing. But combining higher densities with environmental exemptions for affordable housing could result in even more displacements, especially of people in rent-controlled units in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Santa Monica. The LAO report specifically targeted higher multi-family housing densities in San Francisco to alleviate its current middle-class housing crunch. And the LAO wrote that “local governments limit how much landlords can increase rents each year for existing tenants. About 15 California cities have these so-called rent controls, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland.” But as described by Kriston Capps on CityLab.com of March 17, in “Why Did This Woman Get Stuck with a $6,755 Monthly Rent Hike?” San Francisco landlords are converting rooming houses back to single-family homes to remove the rent controls from their properties. L.A. Curbed on March 18 reported in “Mass Rent-Control Evictions on Rise in Santa Monica” that landlords are taking rent-controlled properties off the market for condominium development or an extensive remodel to resell as jumbo, luxury homes. The LAO report failed to discuss the consequences of displacing lower-income renters, something already rampant in highly dense coastal cities. In sum, although the LAO did shine some light onto the problem of high housing costs in California, many other factors are involved. Meanwhile, millions of the state’s residents continue to struggle to pay their rents and mortgages.

After more than a century in California’s political spotlight, the state’s initiative process will be getting a major revise next year. Even more surprising, both Democrats and Republicans in the famously partisan Legislature are happy to see it happen.

While Republicans made up most of the limited opposition when SB1253 made its way through the Legislature, the two GOP leaders, state Sen. Bob Huff of Diamond Bar (Los Angeles County) and Assembly member Kristin Olsen of Modesto, both voted “aye.”

“It was a bipartisan effort,” said former state Sen. Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento, the Democrat who authored the bill. “People like the initiative process but believe it can be improved.”

The measure opens the way for increased collaboration between lawmakers and backers of initiatives by requiring the Legislature to hold a joint public hearing on a proposed initiative as soon as 25 percent of the required signatures are collected. It also calls for the attorney general to open a 30-day public review before approving an initiative for circulation and lets supporters amend the initiative during that time.

A much-bigger problem: Slanted ballot language

These reforms make sense and should lean to cleaner ballot measures.  But if one looks back over the past 15 years, all of the biggest outrages in the initiative process involved another problem that the Legislature declined to try to fix: the extraordinary way that the last three attorneys general — Bill Lockyer, Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris — have slanted ballot language to achieve the outcome that Democratic special interests prefer.

Gov. Schwarzenegger’s bid to use a 2005 special election to force through major reforms was hurt badly by Lockyer’s ballot titles and language. Proposition 76 would have created a rainy-day fund and a less chaotic budget process. Lockyer made it sound like an attempt to hurt school kids, titling it “State Spending and School Funding Limits. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.”

In one week alone in 2010, then-Attorney General Jerry Brown had his ballot language thrown out by judges who agreed that Brown wasn’t playing fair on a ballot measure challenging AB 32 and one making it easier to pass a state budget without Republican votes. (He tried to sabotage the first one, Prop. 23, and promote the second one, Prop. 25.)

Kamala Harris has continued this unfortunate tradition. This CalWatchdog post looks at her attempt to help trial lawyers with their misleading 2014 ballot measure.

Lockyer, Brown and Harris all say they don’t draft the language; instead, they depict it as a chore that they leave to their “professional staffs.” But if that were the case, then why have all three AGs opposed reforms transferring ballot-language responsibilities to the FPPC, the LAO or a panel of retired judges?

Because they know being able to compose ballot language on measures digging with the biggest issues of the day gives the California attorney general extraordinary power.

The worst ballot-language abuser of all

But the twist to all this is that the single worst abuser of the privilege of writing ballot descriptions was the Legislature itself. In 2008, Democrats in the Assembly and Senate directly wrote the highly misleading title and summary for Proposition 1A, the measure which provided $9.95 billion in bond seed money for the bullet-train project. Here’s the summary:

SAFE, RELIABLE HIGH-SPEED PASSENGER TRAIN BOND ACT. To provide Californians a safe, convenient, affordable, and reliable alternative to driving and high gas prices; to provide good-paying jobs and improve California’s economy while reducing air pollution, global warming greenhouse gases, and our dependence on foreign oil, shall $9.95 billion in bonds be issued to establish a clean, efficient high-speed train service linking Southern California, the Sacramento/San Joaquin Valley, and the San Francisco Bay Area, with at least 90 percent of bond funds spent for specific projects, with federal and private matching funds required, and all bond funds subject to independent audits?'”

This prompted a Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association lawsuit. That suit led a state appellate court to issue a jaw-dropping decision that forever banned the Legislature from writing ballot language.