Shiroma, a Democrat, was an outspoken opponent of 2010’s Proposition 23, which would have suspended AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, until unemployment in the state dropped to 5.5 percent. Shiroma was also Board Chairwoman of the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District.

A 2009 study of AB 32, “Cost of AB 32 on California Small Businesses,” was by two Cal State Sacramento economists, Sanjay B. Varshney and Dennis H. Tootelian. It found that AB 32 would kill 1 million jobs by 2020.

On farming specifically, the study found that small farm businesses would be hit with $498 million in additional costs for AB 32 compliance due to increased prices for fuel, machinery, fertilizer, etc. Farm income would decline by $195 million. Farm workers would lose $101 million in income. And 3,671 jobs at small farms would be killed.

Despite such warnings, Prop. 23 was opposed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, then-gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown and most of the state’s political establishment.

In her comments at a 2010 Sacramento event, Genevieve Shiroma, also president of the board of directors for the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, said the utility helps to advance economic development and create jobs through its environmental programs, the Sacramento Press reported in 2010, in “Johnson, SMUD official protest Prop. 23.”

Mayor Kevin Johnson, Shiroma, and other representatives from public agencies and businesses receiving green subsidies said that Prop. 23 would harm the environment, green businesses and air quality.

“AB 32 has provided the vital regulatory certainty needed for venture capital investment, entrepreneurial innovation and market development to prosper in California,” Shiroma said while President of the Board of Directors for SMUD.

If Shirmoa had taken a different position on Prop. 23, it’s doubtful Brown would have re-appointed her as board chair.

After a highly funded demonization campaign, voters roundly rejected AB 23, 62 percent to 38 percent.

Part 1 of the ARLB series, What is the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, can be found here.

Part 2 of the series is background on Shiroma, and can be found here.

This is part 2 of a series on the ALRB. Part 1 is here.

Genevieve Shiroma, chair of California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which oversees the relationship between farms and farm workers, grew up the daughter of a farm worker in San Joaquin County.

Staying close to her farm roots, according to AllGov California she earned her “associate of arts degree in math and science from San Joaquin Delta College in 1974.” After which she trekked only 70 miles away and in 1978 earned her bachelor of science degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Davis, one of the state’s premier agricultural schools. She then joined CARB “as an air quality engineer. She worked there for 21 years, eventually becoming chief of the Air Quality Measures Branch.”

It was a natural step for her to chair the board itself, a post Gov. Gray Davis appointed her to in 1999. That position expired in 2005. In 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her as a regular board member. And in 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown again appointed her as chair, making her the longest-serving current member of the ALRB.

ALRB

The five-member board was created in 1975 to implement the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which Brown signed into law that year. The board’s authority is divided between the five board members and a General Counsel, all appointed by the governor. The ALRA stipulates: 

“It is hereby stated to be the policy of the State of California to encourage and protect the right of agricultural employees to full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, to negotiate the terms and conditions of their employment, and to be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers of labor….”

According to its website, the ALRB is:

1. “[R]esponsible for the prevention of those practices which the Act declares to be impediments to the free exercise of employee rights…”

2. “[R]esponsible for conducting elections to determine whether a majority of the employees of an agricultural employer wishes to be represented by a labor organization, whether they wish to continue to be represented by that labor organization, a rival labor organization or no labor organization at all.”

SMUD

In 1998, voters first elected Shiroma to the board of the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, where she currently is vice president. The board elected her its president in 2002, 2006 and 2010. Currently she serves as its vice president.

Someone in a political position not surprisingly gets involved in politics. In local Sacramento politics, even more than in California, the Democratic Party dominates. She is a sponsor of the Harry S. Truman Democratic Club.

In 2006, as president of the board Shiroma led the battle for Measure L, which would have allowed the public utility to annex some of Pacific Gas & Electric’s private property in Yolo County. It lost, 61 percent to 39 percent.

Electric Utility Week reported on Nov. 13, 2006:

“SMUD’s initiative on the November 7 ballot would have allowed the muni to annex about 70,000 PG&E customers in Yolo County in Northern California. PG&E spent more than $10 million to defeat the annexation, while the pro-annexation campaign spent about $1 million.”

The pro-annexation campaign was called SMUD Customers Say YES to Low Rates, and was led by Shiroma and other SMUD board members. The Sacramento Bee reported on Jan. 2, 2006:

“The group has hired political consultant Richie Ross, Shiroma said Friday.”

Ross is one of the most influential strategists in Sacramento. A strike organizer for United Farm Workers longtime President Cesar Chavez, Ross now is a registered lobbyist for the UFW, whose cases go before the ALRB.

(The Electric Utility Week and Bee articles no longer are online, but copies of them are in this document.)

Looking into the ALRB

One case involving the UFW now before the board concerns the farm employees of Gerawan Farming, one of the Central Valley’s largest growers of peaches, plums, nectarines and grapes. As I have reported in a series of articles, the workers have been fighting off unionization by the UFW.

Briefly, the Gerawan Farming workers have spent months protesting the UFW takeover attempt. The UFW has maintained that a unionization vote by the workers more than 20 years ago still is binding, and the workers must begin paying union dues.

The farm workers, led by farm worker Silvia Lopez, have insisted that the union has done nothing at all for more than two decades. Lopez personally led a petition drive for a decertification vote.

In response, the ALRB charged the company, Gerawan Farming, with circulating the petition among its employees. However, Lopez and other employees insist that they, not Gerawan, circulated the petitions. Based in part on the publicity from my articles, the ALRB conceded and granted the farm workers the right to vote on the union contract.

Considering Shiroma’s background and the controversies before the ALRB, I emailed her some questions. She graciously replied.

Q & A

Here is my inquiry to Shiroma, with the verbatim questions and answers:

“I am submitting the following questions and will follow up with a phone call.

“This Los Angeles Times article (below) mentions that Fresno area farming owner Dan Gerawan filed a complaint against the Board for members having accepted outside income when the law prohibits ALRB board members from receiving outside income.

“http://articles.latimes.com/2004/nov/11/local/me-boards11/2

“Though the primary target of the complaint appeared to be Board Member Daniel Zingale, the article mentions that you were also receiving outside income.

“The LATimes said: ‘Gerawan said he has his own attorney general’s opinion affirming the constitutionality of a ban on board members working at outside jobs. He is using that opinion in pursuing his case against Zingale. Zingale is not the only Agricultural Labor Relations Board member with outside employment. Bustamante works as a public relations consultant, and Shiroma is an elected member of the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District.’

“I have these questions:

Q 1: “Were you in fact receiving income outside of your ALRB position at that time? If so, please describe the type and amount of income.
”

Shiroma: “No, I have not and do not receive outside income since first being appointed to the Board in 1999.”

Q 2: “If so, did you stop receiving that income? ”

Shiroma: “See response to 1. above.”

Q 3: “And, if so, did you stop receiving that income subsequent to Dan Gerawan’s complaint?
”

Shiroma: “See response to 1. above.”

Q 4: “Finally, do you feel that Gerawan’s complaint, and its impact on ALRB board members, could in any way prejudice a member about matters related to Gerawan or its employees?

Shiroma: “No.”

Q 5: “Also, in these Board minutes

http://www.alrb.ca.gov/content/pdfs/meetings/minutes/2005/minutes050405.pdf

you and current board member Cathryn Rivera-Hernande voted to allow up to $50,000 to be spent for the legal defense of Board Member Zingale for having accepted outside income, in violation of state law (which both he, the Attorney General, and the governor admitted he was doing).

“In hindsight, as the Chairwoman of ALRB, then and currently, do you feel this was a proper expenditure of public funds?”

Shiroma: “Yes. Government Code 995 provides that, upon the request of an employee or former employee, a public entity shall(emphasis added) provide for the defense of any civil action or proceeding brought against him, in his official or individual capacity or both, on account of an act or omission in the scope of his employment as an employee of the public entity.”

Q 6: “Shouldn’t Zingale have paid for this himself?”

Shiroma: “See above.”

Q 7: “Finally, given that Dan Gerawan indirectly caused this expenditure approved by you and Board Member Rivera-Hernandez, do you still feel that the ALRB of Directors can act without bias in matters related to Gerawan?”

Shiroma: “Yes.”

————-

Update: Shiroma’s positions on AB 32 and Proposition 23 are reported here.

Editor’s note: This is Part 1 in a series on the ALRB.

California government includes many boards and commissions with members appointed by the governor. Most people never get to see who these decision makers are, despite the far-reaching effects of their decisions on the people of the state.

Such is the case with the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. Made up of five members, the board was created when the Agricultural Labor Relations Act was signed into law in June 1975 by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Only 18 days later, Brown nominated the ALRB’s first five members, which the state Senate confirmed:

* Chairman Roger Mahony, at the time an auxiliary Catholic bishop for Fresno and the future cardinal and archbishop of Los Angeles. He had been involved in farm workers’ issues for many years.

* Joe Ortega, an attorney for farm workers.

* Leroy Chatfield, a former high-level UFW staffer who helped write the ALRA.

* Richard Johnson Jr., executive vice president of the California Agriculture Council.

* Joseph Grodin, a labor law professor and future California Supreme Court Justice.

According to the new 2013 book, “Trailblazer: A Biography of Jerry Brown,” by Chuck McFadden:

“The growers felt betrayed. They believed the appointments of Chatfield, Ortega and Mahony meant the board weighed 3-2 in favor of the unions. Brown himself said that he had envisioned the board as balanced, with Ortega and Chatfield representing the unions, Johnson and Grodin representing the growers, and Mahony serving as the swing vote.”

The 2008 book, “César Chávez, the Catholic Bishops, and the Farmworkers’ Struggle for Social Justice,” by Marco C. Prouty, sheds further light:

“Instead, Mahony became a lightning rod. Brown later remarked that he ‘didn’t know [Mahony] that well,’ and didn’t anticipate the bishop to be ‘as much a polarizing force as he’ was. Mahony’s ‘image in the farming community was more pro-UFW’ than Brown realized, but regardless, the governor ‘felt it was important to have a board that all sides would have some confidence in, but particularly the farm workers’….

“Mahony may have harbored a personal preference for the farmworkers, but CALRB’s records indicate that the bishop maintained his professionalism.”

An ALRB study, “Setting the Record Straight,” found that the five board members produced dissenting opinions in just 7 percent of cases.

In 1976, Mahony faced a major funding crisis for the ALRB and had to lay off workers and faced numerous other problems, as described in Prouty’s book.

Union decline

The subsequent decades have seen a reduction in the ALRB’s reason for existence, as farm unionization has declined. According to a 2000 study by Phillip Martin of University of California, Davis, “Labor Relations in California Agriculture: 1975-2000,” the ALRA  was passed “to ensure peace in the agricultural fields by guaranteeing justice for all agricultural workers and stability in labor relations.” Instead, “what has happened over the past 25 years [1975-2000]: Union activities, measured by elections or unfair labor practice charges filed, peaked in 1975-76, and have since fallen over 90 percent.”

Despite passage of the ALRA in 1975, membership in unions was met with mixed results. Membership in the UFW had fallen from a high of 70,000 in 1972 to a low of 6,000 in 1974. After the ALRA’s passage, membership then rose in 1977 to only 18,000.

And at the time, Brown ally Rose Bird was his secretary of agriculture and a major author of the ALRA. She now is remembered as the first and only chief justice of the California Supreme Court to be removed from office by voters, along with associate justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin. The latter, of course, had been one of Brown’s first appointments to the ALRB.

Current ALRB

According to the board’s website, “The agency’s authority is divided between a Board composed of five members and a General Counsel, all of whom are appointed by the Governor and subject to confirmation by the Senate.”

With two vacancies, the board currently has three members:

* Chairwoman Genevieve A. Shiroma, who has served on the board since 1999, was appointed by Gov. Gray Davis. She was reappointed by Brown in 2011.

* Cathryn Rivera-Hernandez was appointed by Davis in 2002 and re-appointed by Brown in 2013.

* Bert Mason was appointed by Davis in 1999, and served until 2002. He was appointed again by Brown in 2012.

The general counsel, Sylvia Torres-Guillén, was appointed by Brown in 2011.

Executive Secretary J. Antonio Barbosa, who runs day-to-day operations, is appointed by the board and has held his position since 1992.

This series will report on the backgrounds of the board members and officials. Part 2 of the series will be on ALRB Chairwoman Genevieve A. Shiroma.