“The commercial side of the DMV is so backlogged that if you finished your truck driving courses today, you’d have to wait 56 business days for an appointment to take your driver’s license test,” according to the office of Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno. Would-be truck drivers have contacted him for help, complaining people will camp outside the DMV overnight to be able to get a place in line and get their test taken.

The DMV recently disputed the long wait times, telling a local TV station its Fresno office is offering appointments within six days. This contradicts the response received by Patterson’s office, who were told of eight-week waits, excepting occasional last-minute appointment openings.

The director of the Fresno Department of Transportation sent a corroborating letter to Assemblyman Patterson noting similar challenges the city’s bus service faced over the past two years navigating new drivers through the DMV process.

“In November 2016, the delays were so long that the department sent drivers to Sacramento,” wrote Fresno Department of Transportation Director Brian Marshall. “The department paid wages and overnight lodging for 15 drivers.” Only two drivers, however, were able to get tested, even after making the trek to Sacramento.

Marshall supports new legislation, authored by Assemblyman Freddie Rodriguez, D-Pomona, and co-authored by Patterson, allowing third-party testing of drivers. The state currently accepts third-party testing and licensing in a variety of areas. For instance, Californians can handle many DMV functions at American Automobile Association offices, while Realtors are tested and licensed through quick third-party processes.

In an interview Tuesday, Patterson said the DMV had not made significant progress on the issue until legislators introduced Assembly Bill 301. This legislation “seeks to reduce the severe backlog in availability of commercial Driver’s License (CDL) skills test appointments at the DMV by expanding current law to allow additional third parties, including training schools and government entities, to conduct skills tests,” according to the legislative fact sheet. Unions would be authorized to offer the tests, as well as municipalities and independent schools.

Patterson says the DMV’s current efforts to reduce wait times to four weeks is still unacceptable. “There are 30,000 unfilled trucking driving jobs in this state,” he said. “People are begging to get their licenses so they can go to work. We need to do everything we can to make sure that happens.”

The assemblyman indicated the gravity of this statewide problem. According to June DMV self-reporting data, wait times were approximately 50 days to get an appointment in Arleta, Fresno, Fremont, Ukiah and Lancaster. According to the fact sheet, “wait times in California ranged from a minimum of 19 business days before the next available appointment, to a high of 61 business days. In December 2016, 17 of the state’s 23 locations that provide CDL skills tests had wait times longer than three weeks with the longest wait being in Montebello at 65 business days, or 13 weeks.”

The legislation points to a nationwide truck-driving shortage, which is why 39 other states allow some form of third-party commercial-truck license tests. Under the bill, the DMV would have the authority to approve the private testing sites.

Critics of the current DMV process are concerned about the implications for would-be drivers, who can’t always afford to wait two months before they get started on the job. And then there are the taxpayer implications, as the Fresno transportation situations makes clear. Simply stated, taxpayers are paying drivers, who can’t work until they get through the licensing process, along with the cost implications for firms that rely on commercial truck drivers.

The DMV on February 22 dedicated a new truck-test center in Gardena that “will conduct approximately 7,000 drive tests and process 4,000 commercial driver licenses related applications annually. The office is staffed with 23 employees,” according to the agency’s statement. That may help reduce the backlog in parts of Southern California by consolidating operations that were spread around the region, although the legislation’s backers argue third-party testing offers more hope for quickly fixing the statewide problem – and that using third-party vendors is less costly for taxpayers than creating new centers.

The DMV said that it doesn’t comment on pending legislation and didn’t directly address the specific problems raised by Assemblyman Patterson. “The DMV noticed a higher volume of Commercial Driver License applicants requesting appointments to take the behind-the-wheel skills test,” the agency said. “As a result, on Jan. 7, 2017, the DMV began offering Saturday appointments only to individuals wanting to take this specific exam at nine locations across the state,” it added in response to CalWatchdog’s questions. “The DMV strives to offer commercial drive test exams to our customers within 30 days of making an appointment.”

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

Harris received highly positive coverage in such publications as U.S. News and World Report for her declaration that it was long overdue for there to be “an honest, transparent and data-driven conversation about police use of force.” U.S. News also depicted Assemblyman Freddie Rodriguez, D-Pomona, as a visionary for coming up with the idea in 2014.

Harris and Rodriguez may end up amply deserving credit if they do usher in a new era in which statistical tools illustrate the extent of police misconduct. But little of the coverage of URSUS focuses on the question of incentives within law enforcement agencies. As Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and many others have written over the past 40 years, police of all ranks have many reasons to create tidy narratives about their actions.

Officers have an incentive to not report their violent incidents and to depict injuries suffered by suspects as not their fault; the other officers who witness such violence have an incentive to not report or to inaccurately depict such injuries because of a police culture with a still-strong “code of silence”; and police chiefs and top police brass have an incentive to not accurately report incidents within their ranks because of concerns on how it would reflect on them and their departments.

This long history of police not acting to limit misconduct is a factor in the huge gap between African American and white perceptions of police misconduct, according to recent research by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Justice.

State law requiring reporting of fatalities flouted in L.A.

Now the San Francisco Chronicle, analyzing research done by Texas State University covering the years from 2006-2015, has given an example of how the incentives for police to resist oversight have resulted in a lax police culture in California.

A state law adopted long before the controversies over police killings in New York City, Baltimore and Cleveland requires local law enforcement to report fatal shootings by officers to the state government.

But the Chronicle’s analysis found it to be broadly ignored over the 10 years of data compiled by Texas State University researchers. Some of the key findings:

• At least 439 fatal police shootings were never reported to the state, 30 percent of the estimated 1,480 such killings over the decade.
• The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the largest sheriff’s department in the United States, didn’t report at least 34 fatal shootings; the Los Angeles Police Department didn’t report at least 21; and the Fresno Police Department didn’t report at least 24.

The Chronicle’s data suggests California law enforcement agencies may be getting better at reporting such fatal shootings. The 10-year average of unreported police killings was 30 percent. Last year, the percentage appears to be closer to 25 percent, though exact numbers are not yet available.

But in San Francisco, the percentage of unreported police killings in 2015 was 100 percent. The Chronicle said city police officials didn’t notify the state of any of the six police killings last year.

Official Portrait – Chancellor Linda Katehi | Flickr, courtesy of UC Davis

Two state lawmakers took to Twitter on Thursday and joined the growing chorus of Democratic legislators who are calling for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi after a series of unflattering stories by The Sacramento Bee.

On Wednesday, The Sacramento Bee reported that the university paid consultants at least $175,000 to scrub the Internet of negative postings about the pepper-spraying of students in 2011, in an effort to improve the school’s and the chancellor’s reputations.

The Bee also reported that between 2009 and 2015, the school’s strategic communications budget increased from $2.93 million to $5.47 million.

In response, Democratic Assemblymembers Freddie Rodriguez of Pomona and Mike Gatto of Los Angeles took to Twitter to condemn Katehi and demand her resignation.

.@ucdavis don't spend millions to cover up a bad reputation. Invest in students. Time for Katehi to resign. https://t.co/Fodn4fNV7V

— Freddie Rodriguez (@AsmRodriguez52) April 14, 2016

Spend millions on PR while student costs soar? It is time for Katehi to resign. @dianalambert

— Mike Gatto (@mikegatto) April 14, 2016

Other incidents

In March, it was reported that Katehi, who receives $424,360 annually as chancellor, earned an additional $420,000 between 2012 and 2014 as a board member for textbook publisher John Wiley & Sons.

Katehi had also came under fire in March for violating University of California policy by accepting a $70,000 per-year seat on the board of DeVry, a for-profit university.

Katehi has since stepped down from DeVry board and pledged $200,000 in John Wiley & Sons stock to a scholarship fund. And she apologized.

But those actions weren’t enough and Democratic Assemblymembers Luis Alejo of Watsonville, Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, Kevin McCarty of Sacramento and Evan Low of Campbell had called for her resignation, who Gatto and Rodriguez have now joined.

In Katehi’s defense

UC Davis spokesperson Dana Topousis would not say whether Katehi intended to step down (which likely means the answer is “no”). In a statement responding to only the most recent article from The Sacramento Bee, Topousis defended the overall cost of communications.

Here is the entire statement:

“Communicating the value of UC Davis is an essential element of our campus’s education, research, and larger public service mission. Increased investment in social media and communications strategy has heightened the profile of the university to good effect.

“As part of this overall communications strategy, it is important that the excellent work underway at UC Davis with respect to educating the next generation of students, pursuing groundbreaking research, and providing important services to the State is not lost during a campus crisis, including the crisis that ensued following the extremely regrettable incident when police pepper-sprayed student protesters in 2011. Communication efforts during this time were part of the campus’s strategic communication strategy. In fact, one of the main objectives during this time was to train staff on how to effectively use digital media to improve engagement with our stakeholders.

“Communicating the value of UC Davis is among the many reasons why our campus was able to increase its endowment to $1 billion last year, garner more than $700 million in research grants, and attract the highest caliber of students and faculty from around the country, with a record number of student applications this year.

“Most of the growth in the communications budget is tied to raising the visibility of our College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the School of Veterinary Medicine, both rated the best in the nation.

“In a 2014 Chronicle of Higher Education Report titled, “Higher Ed Marketing Comes of Age,” the mean amount that universities spend on marketing was reported as $3.7 million, with the highest at $25 million. We believe UC Davis compares favorably with other institutions of higher learning. Communications spending represents a small fraction of the $4.3 billion operating budget of UC Davis.”

Responding to years of mismanagement and voter frustration with state roads, coupled with successful transportation programs administered in his home county, Sen. John Moorlach is pushing a measure that would create a five-year pilot program empowering two counties to assume the responsibility of Caltrans in their jurisdictions.

That responsibility would include the operation, maintenance and improvements of all state highways in their counties, with Caltrans relinquishing all responsibility and funding. The two counties would volunteer, with one chosen from the north and one from the south.

Moorlach said eliminating Caltrans could be an eventual byproduct of the bill, but the purpose of the bill is to empower counties to handle work in their areas at a lower cost with less overhead, compared to Caltrans which has a history of cost overruns.

“How can you go to people and say you want to spend more money on roads when you’ve got a Department of Transportation that’s a mess,” the Costa Mesa Republican told CalWatchdog in an interview.

The bill will be heard on April 12 in the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee.

Voters want better roads

Almost seven of 10 voters say more money should be spent on the maintenance of roads, highways and bridges, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll released this month.

Moorlach said more funding could help roads, pointing to counties’ ability to tax themselves. In conservative Orange County, where he served as supervisor, voters twice passed a temporary increase in sales tax to widen highways.

“If you want to tax yourself, do it in your county,” Moorlach said. “But don’t give it to Caltrans for crying out loud. What a mistake.”

Audit 

The bill was introduced last month, but has resurfaced after a scathing report on the maintenance division from state Auditor Elaine M. Howle earlier this month alleging Caltrans mismanaged funds.

The audit highlighted Caltrans spending $250,000 on a budget model that it didn’t use and then telling the Legislature it was implementing the budget model. Apparently, the budget model was scrapped after it made a recommendation Caltrans didn’t like, such as the reduction of staff by 100 people in its Los Angeles district.

“Instead of trying to determine why the model produced such allocations, the maintenance division decided to abandon it,” Howle wrote in a summary.

The audit also called out Caltrans for not allocating funds by need and not using funds to hold counties accountable for poorly maintained districts and for not promptly performing certain maintenance work.

In a response addressed to Asm. Freddie Rodriguez, the chair of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, Malcolm Dougherty, Caltrans director, said the auditor’s office took too narrow of a look at Caltrans’ practices, but acknowledged that the language to the Legislature “mischaracterized” the way funds were allocated. Dougherty apologized.