A bill with the potential to worsen California’s already-frosty relationship with the Trump administration passed the Legislature on a near-party-line vote in late August and was presented to Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature last week.

Senate Bill 349, by state Sen. Ricardo Lara (pictured), D-Bell Gardens, is a direct response to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s embrace of the tactic of detaining unauthorized immigrants when they come to state courthouses to deal with matters in the California criminal justice system.

Exact statistics are not provided by ICE on its detentions. But there have been regular reports of ICE raids at state courts and their parking lots in California – especially in the Fresno area – as well as in Arizona, Texas and Colorado within the last year.

ICE officials issued a formal notice in January of their intent to go after targeted individuals when they have scheduled appearances in state courts. Some have said they moved to adopt new policies after the California Legislature adopted and Gov. Brown signed “sanctuary state” legislation last year limiting state cooperation with federal immigration officials.

Lara’s bill would specify that state court officials have the authority to block activities that interfere with the proceedings and operations at state courts. It would require federal immigration agents to have a warrant before they can enter schools, courthouses and state buildings to arrest or question people. It would ban civil arrests in courthouses and authorize the state Attorney General’s Office to pursue civil claims against individuals who violated SB349’s provisions.

The legislative aides who wrote the analysis of the bill cited historical evidence that the practice of not picking up people at courthouses for offenses unrelated to their visits – known as “the common law privilege for civil arrests” – goes back hundreds of years and far predates any controversy over illegal immigration.

Brown and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra have been joined in their sharp criticism of ICE’s tactics by California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. In a statement issued last month, she blasted arrests at state courts as “disruptive, shortsighted, and counterproductive … . It is damaging to community safety and disrespects the state court system.”

Some sheriffs want more cooperation with feds

Nonetheless, conservative sheriffs in some counties who oppose “sanctuary” policies are supportive of ICE’s aggressive tactics, according to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times. Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims is openly looking for ways to increase her department’s cooperation with ICE in spite of the state law.

That suggests that even if Lara’s bill is signed by Brown, some police agencies may be far less enthusiastic about enforcing it than others. Court battles over what exactly “sanctuary”-style laws compel these agencies to do seem likely.

At issue is the scope of the generally accepted doctrine that the federal government cannot compel state law enforcement agents to enforce federal regulations and that state laws prevail unless they directly conflict with federal laws.

Historically, conservatives in the post-Reagan era and Southern Democrats in the 1950s and 1960s have had more of a “states’ rights” approach to interpreting this doctrine, while liberals have leaned more toward the idea that the federal government deserves deference in gray areas open to different interpretations.

In the Golden State, these political roles have been swapped in the Trump era.

While sharply critical of the Trump White House on many immigration issues, Brown has not commented specifically on Lara’s bill. He has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it and the hundreds of other passed bills he has not yet made a decision on.

Lara is the Democratic candidate for state insurance commissioner on the November ballot. He is running against Steve Poizner, who is now an independent after serving as insurance commissioner from 2007-2011 as a Republican.

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.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump’s promise to help Central Valley farmers get more water and to reduce environmentalists’ influence over the federal government got him a

As president, for a variety of reasons, Trump so far has only been able to provide part of the relief on water supplies that many in the Central Valley sought, even in the wake of a winter rain deluge. But Trump has signaled his intent to honor his promise to help the region by choosing David Bernhardt – a veteran of California’s water wars – for the No. 2 job in the Interior Department.

Bernhardt is a Colorado-based partner in Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a multi-state law firm which has on four occasions represented the Central Valley’s Westlands Water District, the largest U.S. irrigation district, in lawsuits targeting Interior Department policies. The law firm has been paid $1.3 million by the water agency since 2011.

Bernhardt’s Senate confirmation is expected this week or soon thereafter, but it may be close to a party-line vote. At a May 17 meeting of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Bernhardt was grilled by ranking Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington and other Democrats over the conflicts of interest he would face because of his history representing Westlands and Cadiz, a Los Angeles land development firm that has fought with federal regulators over its audacious plan to access the water in a Mojave Desert aquifer.

Bernhardt: Effect on jobs should matter in regulatory decisions

At the hearing, Bernhardt repeatedly said he would avoid issues involving former clients unless given the blessing of Interior Department ethics lawyers. But Bernhardt’s remarks in answer to another question explain why he may be such a threat to the Central Valley’s water status quo.

When asked about his commitment to “scientific integrity” in enforcing Interior Department policies, Bernhardt said, “I will look at the science with all its significance and its warts. You look at that, you evaluate it and then you look at the legal decision you can make. In some instances the legal decision may allow you to consider other factors, such as jobs.”

This is music to the ears of many Californian Republicans, starting with Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare. He has long contended that the Central Valley has suffered from a “man-made drought” because of bureaucratic decisions that interpret laws in ways that place the interests of  endangered fish such as the delta smelt over the needs of humans – despite no compelling legal obligation to do so.

The Obama administration rejected the contention, saying that its actions to use fresh water supplies to help sustain the delta smelt instead of helping Central Valley farmers followed laws requiring the federal government to protect endangered species and the ecosystem of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Administration representatives said the decisions Nunes slammed as arbitrary were anything but.

Yet the highest-profile fight between Bernhardt’s law firm and Obama’s Interior Department wasn’t about the delta smelt or allegedly dubious bureaucratic maneuvering. It was over toxic substances in the irrigation water coming from Westlands’ 940 square-mile district. Despite criticism from environmentalists, the Obama administration agreed to a settlement on how the problem would be ameliorated that the Fresno Bee estimated could save the water agency more than $375 million. Greens who didn’t like the ruling couldn’t overcome the case that Bernhardt built that federal courts had consistently held that the federal government bore the burden for building drainage systems to limit the impact of the toxins.

Feds control 100 million acres of land in California

But Bernhardt’s confirmation would also insert him in other California water issues.

As a Sacramento Bee editorial noted, the deputy interior secretary historically has been “directly involved in virtually every aspect of California water, from the Colorado River agreement in the south to the Klamath River in the north, and, especially, the operations of the Central Valley Project.”

Given that the federal government owns or effectively controls 100 million acres of land in California – second only to Alaska in federal land holdings in the 50 states – this focus by the agency’s number two official is unsurprising.

The water contamination scandal in Flint, Michigan, triggered national outrage and prompted Congress last month to pass a bill rushing

The local regulators who knew about the severity of lead contamination and protected themselves but not the community are facing criminal charges. That’s because a high presence of lead in the blood is associated with low IQs and cognitive problems and can be devastating for infants and children.

Now a massive study by Reuters — based on federal health data from 21 states and broken down by ZIP code — points to at least 13 areas in California with problems as bad or worse than what is now seen in Flint, where 5 percent of tested children have elevated levels of lead in their blood. The national norm is 2.5 percent.

Oakland neighborhood has worst problem

The problem appears worst in the Oakland community of Fruitvale (ZIP code 94601), where 7.57 percent of children had high levels of lead.

Next is the Seaside-Sand City area (ZIP 93955) east of Monterey, where the rate was 7.44 percent.

Nine ZIP codes were in the Fresno area, which has already had a lead scare this year, as CalWatchdog reported in August. The results were worst in Selma, 15 miles southeast of Fresno (ZIP 93662), where 6.62 percent of children had high levels of lead in the their blood.

The last two California communities with lead contamination problems worse than Flint were in Los Angeles County.

In south-central Los Angeles (ZIP 90011) in an area east of the 110 Freeway and south of the 10 Freeway, the rate of children with elevated lead in their blood was 5.28 percent.

In the Rosemead-South San Gabriel area (ZIP 91770), the rate was 5.17 percent.

The federal health statistics are mostly based on blood samples from at least 500 children in each ZIP code for five- or 10-year increments ending in 2015. California did much better that most of the 20 other states whose data was studied. In total, 278 ZIP codes had much worse lead problems than Flint, with the biggest concentration in industrial centers in the Midwest and in areas with a history of heavy mining.

Flint fits that profile. But its problems were at the least exacerbated by city officials’ 2014 decision to stop bringing in water from the Detroit system in favor of a switch to cheaper local sources, including the heavily polluted Flint River.

When lead contamination problems are found in the United States, the problem is usually exposure to lead-based paint, especially in older housing, and from old water pipes.

Official misconduct in Fresno endangered residents

Such pipes caused the lead scare in Fresno earlier this year, but official misconduct was part of the problem. In January, after many reports of discolored water, Fresno officials began reviewing how the city water agency dealt with complaints. They discovered that a water official named Robert Moorhead had failed to pass along as many as 1,400 complaints from 2005 to 2011 about problems with water from the treatment plant in northeast Fresno that he managed. Moorhead, who was fired for undisclosed reasons in 2011, has denied wrongdoing.

But a subsequent city probe found evidence of excessive lead in pipes in 51 of the first 280 homes it inspected, or 18 percent. Eventually, city officials warned residents of the 93710, 93720 and 93730 ZIP codes that they could have pipe problems and thus potential exposure to excessive lead.

But the Reuters study should offer some relief to residents of those ZIP codes. None were found to have Flint-level contamination rates.

High-flying clean-energy industrialist Elon Musk has doubled down on his production plans in California. Tesla, his auto company, “took a major step toward its ambitious goal of one day building 1 million cars a year by seeking to double the size of its Fremont, Calif., assembly plant,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Under a long-term zoning proposal submitted to Fremont’s Planning Commission, the electric car maker wants to eventually add 4.6 million square feet of space to its factory’s existing 4.5 million square feet.”

Musk “told analysts this spring that the Palo Alto-based automaker hopes to ramp up annual production to 500,000 vehicles in 2018 and build 1 million vehicles by the end of 2020,” the paper added. “The 2018 goal alone is nearly a tenfold increase from the 50,580 vehicles that Tesla produced last year in Fremont. The automaker has forecast this year’s deliveries at 80,000 to 90,000. Quality problems and production delays plagued the plant early this year and threatened sales plans. But the company said last week that those problems are behind it and that it expects to come close to its forecast for 2016.”

Broad deals

Musk has not hesitated to link up with government resources and opportunities in order to advance his business interests. This month, he aligned SpaceX closely to take advantage of President Obama’s call to use private industry to help bring Americans to Mars. “Within the next two years, private companies will for the first time send astronauts to the International Space Station,” Obama announced. “One of those private companies tasked with ferrying astronauts to the ISS and who will essentially return human spaceflight to American soil in late 2018 is SpaceX,” the Observer noted.

And last month, Musk inked a deal to change the way California backstops its energy needs. “Tesla Motors Inc. will supply 20 megawatts (80 megawatt-hours) of energy storage to Southern California Edison as part of a wider effort to prevent blackouts by replacing fossil-fuel electricity generation with lithium-ion batteries,” Bloomberg reported. “Tesla’s contribution is enough to power about 2,500 homes for a full day, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. But the real significance of the deal is the speed with which lithium-ion battery packs are being deployed,” the site added — “months not years.”

Outracing critics

As Musk has accelerated his increasingly ambitious plans, however, he has attracted a greater share of criticism toward the mechanics of his business operations. “The pressure is now on Tesla for a smooth launch of the relatively affordable Model 3. A quality product pumped out at low cost and high volume is essential to meeting the ambitious goals of the company and its investors, auto analysts say, whereas long delays could threaten the company’s reputation — and survival,” according to the Times.

Meanwhile, wariness has centered separately around SolarCity, a startup run by family members. “The Tesla-SolarCity deal looks so bad on paper that many investors worry it’s simply a bailout of SolarCity, which Musk co-founded and continues to chair,” the MIT Technology Review noted. “While SolarCity dominates the market for leasing, installing, and maintaining solar panels for residences and businesses, it’s racked up more than $2 billion in losses over the past five years. “

“Its business model requires it to raise huge amounts of capital to cover the up-front costs of providing panels for no money down to consumers on multiyear contracts. Since its inception, the company has accumulated more than $3 billion in debt against just $1.5 billion in revenue. Now it is having a harder time convincing people to lend it money.”

What’s more, Musk has had to contend with a rebellion among his own shareholders. “As of earlier this week, seven Tesla stockholders have filed lawsuits against Elon Musk over the proposed acquisition of SolarCity and alleged Musk was in breach of his fiduciary duties for not disclosing the proposed merger properly. Some of these stockholders are asking the judge for an injunction to prevent the merger from going through,” Recode reported. But the two companies have announced the merger is going ahead anyway. “The companies have set the date for their respective shareholders to vote on the $2.6 billion all-stock transaction for Nov. 17.”

Bill curbing abuses of “policing for profit” clears major hurdle

Good morning! It’s only Tuesday, but the week is rolling right along. And in fact, yesterday was a landmark day for civil libertarians in the state.

The California Assembly on Monday approved one of the most significant civil-liberties reforms of the legislative session. Remarkably, the bill – to put limits on the controversial practice of civil asset forfeiture by police agencies – had no major opposition after legislators and law-enforcement groups pieced together a compromise that seems to genuinely satisfy both sides. It passed by a 67-7 vote.

Asset forfeiture is the practice by which police agencies grab assets – cash, cars, boats, homes – of suspected criminals. Designed originally to fight drug kingpins, asset forfeiture has morphed into a means by which agencies bolster their budgets. The overwhelming percentage of forfeiture cases involve people who have not been convicted or even accused of a crime. 

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “The Department of Water Resources has been drilling for weeks in Yolo County without permits required by state law designed to protect against ground water contamination, under the belief its activities are exempt. Like other counties’ battles with Caltrans over the same issue, Yolo County believes even government agencies need to obtain permits and conform to the state’s Water Code and subsequent regulations, which clearly express that state agencies are not exempt,” CalWatchdog has more.

• Amid concerns of a tainted water supply, authorities in Fresno have brought in outside experts to take a close look while overhauling city water practices. First residents complained about discolored water. Then city officials reviewed the city’s response and whether it had complied with laws requiring water issues be reported to state regulators. Then it was discovered that a former city water official kept hidden several hundred complaints from about 2004 to 2011, raising the prospect that thousands of young Fresno residents among the city’s half-million population may have been exposed to lead poisoning growing up, which can cause cognitive problems that persist for a lifetime, reports CalWatchdog.

• “Donald Trump will be presented to California voters on Nov. 8 as the nominee of two different political parties, after leaders of the ultra-conservative American Independent Party voted to select the New York real estate developer as its standard bearer,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
• “In a bid to preserve California’s cap-and-trade program beyond 2020, Gov. Jerry Brown has quietly proposed amending major environmental legislation to expressly authorize the regulation’s extension,” writes The Sacramento Bee.

Assembly:

• Next floor session is Thursday. 

Senate:

• Next floor session is Thursday.

Gov. Brown: 

• No public events announced. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @IvanLevingston

Sitting state senator passes

Sad news today: State Sen. Sharon Runner has died.

The Lancaster Republican has battled health issues for sometime, having survived a double lung transplant in recent years. She announced earlier this year that she would not run for re-election.

“Sharon Runner’s life was one of service,” California Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte told The Sacramento Bee. “Whether it was establishing a Christian day school to help educate children, serving first in the California State Assembly and then in the California State Senate, or fighting for initiatives to protect families in California – Sharon was committed to the people of her community and our great state.”

• After shooting an unarmed teenager last month, Fresno PD took a rare step Wednesday by releasing body camera footage of the incident. The Los Angeles Times has more. 
• Newly uncovered court documents allege Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones — a Republican who is challenging Rep. Ami Bera, R-Elk Grove, for his seat in Congress — made unwanted sexual advances toward a subordinate. The Sacramento Bee has more.   
• Sending a 550-person delegation to Ohio for the Republican National Convention is neither easy nor cheap, reports Capital Public Radio. 
• “Last week, a coalition of California Central Valley water districts sued the Bureau of Reclamation in the latest installment of the litigation wars over the delta smelt.  The new lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Fresno, and coming on the heels of the Governor Brown administration’s announcement to release an additional annual 200,000 acre-feet of water for the smelt, challenges the Bureau’s recent issuance of an environmental impact statement purportedly assessing the effects that the smelt-inspired water cutbacks have had on the San Joaquin Valley,” writes the Pacific Legal Foundation.

Legislature:

• Gone ’til August

Gov. Brown:

• On vacation

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @LDozierSHRA @Warx2TheMovie

State voters last November rejected Proposition 48, which would have ratified Brown’s and the Legislature’s approval of the proposed $350 million, 2,000-slot machine casino. Opposing the ballot measure was largely supported by the state’s editorial pages on the grounds that the casino would be built on land purchased by North Fork Rancheria that’s more than 30 miles from tribal lands. The fear was this would set up a precedent for a sharp expansion of Indian casinos in heavily populated urban areas.

But the main groups funding the push to reject Proposition 48 were Indian tribes who didn’t want to see their market share reduced, not civic activists worried about gambling expansion. U.S. District Court Judge Anthony W. Ishii’s ruling appears to clear the way for such an expansion. This is from the Fresno Bee:

Ishii said federal law requires the governor to negotiate with the tribe and conclude compact negotiations within 60 days. If both sides can’t reach agreement, the judge will appoint a mediator. The state and the tribe will then have 60 days to present a final offer for the mediator’s selection.

 

The North Fork tribe argued that under federal Indian gambling law, the power rested in the hands of a federal judge to order the governor back to the table and, if necessary, select a mediator to choose between a state-proposed compact and one from the tribe. The complaint was filed after the governor’s office sent a letter to the tribe’s lawyers declining further negotiations.

 

“The state does not now contend that any of the (Department of the Interior) secretary’s determinations were incorrect, nor does it articulate a basis for its refusal to negotiate regarding the Madera parcel,” the judge said in requiring the governor to negotiate.

Construction of the North Fork casino would be paid for by Station Casinos, the Las Vegas company that would operate the facility and share profits with the tribe.

Senate president worries about rapid gambling expansion

The federal court’s ruling is likely to be treated with alarm by some state lawmakers. State Senate President pro Tem Kevin de Leon has a history of raising concerns about off-reservation casinos. In July 2013, he wrote a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown in reaction to approval of the North Fork project.

“I am deeply concerned by the current ad hoc process of approving off-reservation gaming projects which does not sufficiently protect state interests and our residents,” he declared.

But Brown has been working much more closely with Indian tribes to advance their casino projects, at least their non-controversial ones, than his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Republican actor-turned-politician used his 2003 recall campaign as a platform to demand that Indian tribes share their gaming revenue with the state. Subsequent deals his administration cut with tribes were conditioned on such revenue sharing. But in 2011, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held up a trial court summary judgment ruling throwing out any such state requirements. The blistering opinion mocked the state of California’s official position that demanding a cut of tribal gaming revenue wasn’t really a tax.

“No amount of semantic sophistry can undermine the obvious: a non-negotiable, mandatory payment of 10 percent of net profits into the state treasury for unrestricted use yields public revenue, and is a ‘tax,’” the ruling held.

Brown’s administration chose not to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. That suggests the governor, a Yale Law School graduate, expected the North Fork ruling but didn’t want to resume negotiations with the tribe until ordered to by a federal judge so as to not seem to be defying voters’ rejection of Proposition 48.

But — surprise! — an updated Brookings Institution study found the inland metropolitan areas of California beat out the upscale coastal cities in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley for overall economic growth in 2013-14.

What most Californians hear and read in the media is the cities of San Francisco and San Jose are leading the jobs recovery in California, with the inland areas still mired in recession.  And indeed those two cities are doing well.

But when measured at the level of Metropolitan Statistical Areas, Fresno, Sacramento and Riverside were ranked higher in combined positive change in employment and Gross Domestic Product growth per person for 2013-2014.

The Brookings Institution’s Metro Monitor survey analyzes to what degree the world’s 300 largest metropolitan economies have recovered to 2007 levels of income and employment.  Eight California cities were ranked in the survey.

Fresno leads the pack

Fresno was the highest-ranked California metro area in 2013-14, with a rank of 49, mainly due to 4.5 percent employment growth. Fresno actually had a negative 0.9 percent growth in GDP.

Next came the San Jose metro area, ranked 72, with a tiny 0.2 percent growth in GDP, but a 3.5 percent jump in employment.

Third came the Riverside metro area, ranked 103, with 0.2 percent GDP growth and 2.8 percent employment growth.

Fourth was Sacramento, ranked 122, attributable to a 1.1 percent increase in GDP and 2.0 percent boost in jobs.

Surprisingly, the San Francisco metro area came in fifth in California and 125th in the world.  Another surprise was that San Francisco had a 0.5 percent decline in GDP, coupled with a 2.6 percent increase in jobs. So high-tech job growth in the San Francisco area doesn’t tell the whole story.

Rounding out the bottom three metro areas in California were San Diego at 142, Los Angeles at 148 and Bakersfield at 178.

San Jose and San Francisco, however, still had the highest GDP per capita by a large margin over the other California areas.

Again surprisingly, California’s eight metro areas averaged a .325 percent decline in per capita GDP in 2013-14, but a 2.76 percent increase in jobs.

It needs to be pointed out that the above numbers only partly reflect the record drought, which worsened in late 2014 and likely will affect the numbers for the inland agricultural areas of California such as Fresno and Bakersfield.

CA Leaps over Brazil in GDP 

On Jan. 15, Bloomberg reported California’s total GDP surpassed Brazil to become the eighth-ranked in the world if our state were a country.  In 2013, California surpassed Russia and Italy.

Gov. Jerry Brown was quick to attribute this higher ranking to the diversity of California’s economy and his financial policies.

However, yet another surprise is that California’s surpassing of Brazil in GDP was mainly because of the decline of Brazil’s economy, much as Italy’s and Russia’s GDP also declined from 2012 to 2013 (see table below).

And California may have the eighth largest GDP in the world, but on a per capita basis, it ranks 18th among 50 states, below Illinois and above Nebraska.

Change in GDP 2012-2013 (in trillions – unadjusted for inflation)

Note: The above numbers reflect nominal, not real, GDP. California’s real GDP increase for 2013 was 2.0 percent. The main difference between nominal and real values is that real values are adjusted for inflation, while nominal values are not. As a result, nominal GDP will often appear higher than real GDP. Nominal vs. Real GDP, and the GDP Deflator — Investopedia.

On July 2, 2012, the California Supreme Court ruled that the state’s charter cities are not required to pay prevailing wages under state law for local public works projects that are funded by local funds.  In State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, AFL-CIO v. City of Vista, the court made clear that charter cities in California have the autonomy to decide individually whether to pay prevailing wages for local construction projects. This decision may tempt cities not organized as charter cities to change their legal status, as the city of Vista did in this case, in order to avoid the prevailing wage law.

That led the unions to induce the Legislature to pass a variant on this bill that banned charter cities from using state funds for public works projects unless they paid prevailing wages — and the tweaked version on Wednesday was upheld by a San Diego court. This is from the U-T San Diego:

An attempt by several cities to overturn a state law that forces them to choose between paying generally higher or “prevailing” wages on most public works projects or lose state construction dollars has been turned aside in a tentative court ruling.

San Diego County Superior Court Judge Joel Wohlfeil rejected arguments from the cities of Oceanside, Vista, Carlsbad and El Cajon [and El Centro and Fresno] that the requirement violates the state constitution. …

Wohlfeil wasn’t swayed in his tentative decision, ruling the law “appears to legitimately influence local governance by attaching conditions on the receipt of discretionary state funding.” He also said pursuing state policy objectives through financial incentives is generally constitutional.

But as I pointed out in a U-T San Diego editorial …

Wohlfeil cited the law’s purported objective — “the statewide concern of creating and maintaining a skilled construction work force” — but not the real one: helping unions.

The cities are expected to appeal if Wohlfeil doesn’t change his mind before issuing a final decision.

So much for spirit of CA Constitution

While I have blamed the unions and the Legislature in this post, it’s worth noting this never would have happened had Gov. Jerry Brown not signed the two bills into law.

It’s impossible to look at the intent of the charter city provision in the California Constitution and think these two bills bullying charter cities honor the spirit of the provision’s goal of local autonomy.

Who knows this? Yale Law School graduate Edmund G. Brown Jr.