Seven years after the law took effect, however, such claims are very much open to debate.

Initial results appeared positive. A 2012 University of California study credited the state law with having a dramatic effect. The results were hailed by Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration. This is from the AP report on the study:

California’s nearly four-year-old ban on drivers using handheld cellphones is saving lives, according to a University of California, Berkeley, study released Monday.

 

The study found that overall traffic deaths dropped 22 percent, while deaths blamed on drivers using hand-held cellphones were down 47 percent. Deaths among drivers who use hands-free phones dropped at a similar rate. …

 

The California Office of Traffic Safety, which sought the study, said deaths and injuries are declining in part because of an overall decrease in drivers using cellphones.

But the next year, a report by two Colorado School of Mines economists concluded there was no evidence of any positive effect.

Cellphone law effects seen as irrelevant

A recent Sacramento Bee story didn’t even mention cellphone laws as relevant to the ebb and flow in traffic deaths, instead seeing traffic fatalities as related to the vigor of the economy.

It’s an unfortunate downside to the recession’s end: As more people return to work and more cars hit the road, fatal accidents are on the climb.

 

Nationally, road deaths jumped nearly 10 percent in the first three months of this year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. California officials say they saw a 13 percent uptick over three recent years through 2013 and expect that trend to continue when 2014 numbers are finalized.

 

It’s no surprise, safety officials say.

 

“Realistically, when the economy started getting better, all indications from history told us there would be an upswing in fatalities,” said Chris Cochran of the state Office of Traffic Safety. …

 

The recent increases come after a remarkable five-year stretch in California road history. Traffic deaths dropped a dramatic 36 percent between 2006 and 2010. Slightly more than 4,300 people were killed on roads and highways in the state in 2006, but only 2,739 in 2010.

 

That death toll was noteworthy, the fewest road deaths in California since World War II. The factors are many. The state has largely won the battle to get people to wear seat belts. Surveys show that 97 percent of drivers in the state now buckle up. Improvements in car construction, notably airbags, have helped, as have safer road designs and years of crackdowns on drunken driving.

 

Since 2010, however, the death toll has ticked up annually, hitting 3,104 in 2013.

In both stories the state Office of Traffic Safety is quoted as offering definitive opinions on the reasons for traffic mayhem. But the factor the office cited in 2012 — the limits on driver cellphone use — it chose not to even mention in 2015.

Cellphones much different now than 2006

As William Saletan noted in Slate magazine last year, there’s one more complication in trying to drawn definitive lessons from California’s law:

[Laws] enacted against mobile phone use in 2006 are hopelessly out of date for dealing with mobile phone use in 2012, much less in 2014. A phone today is wildly different from what a phone was back then. It isn’t even a phone, really. It’s a computer.

Logically, limiting driver distractions should keep accidents down. But 87 months after California’s cellphone law went into effect, it’s difficult to make a solid case that it has done what Schwarzenegger and Simitian promised.

So how about we let others join in the fun? What do the mainstream media have to say about my key three points?

Their conventional wisdom is a lot closer to my deep skepticism than to Richard’s rosy scenarios, that’s for sure.

Point 1: There are not nearly adequate funds available to complete the $68 billion project in the way promised to voters in 2008 who approved Proposition 1A, giving the bullet train $9.95 billion in state bonds as seed money.

As Politico reported on Feb. 8, this is already a huge legal obstacle based on Prop. 1A’s language — not a distant headache on the horizon.

Judge Michael Kenny ruled that the state could not sell future bonds to finance the first leg of construction until they redid the business plan to specify sources of funding “that were more than merely theoretically possible.”

As for the $250 million in cap-and-trade funds Gov. Jerry Brown secured for the rail project this fiscal year, as Associated Press noted on Jan. 14 …

It also is just a tiny fraction of the overall price tag for high-speed rail, currently at $68 billion.

And as the L.A. Times reported on Feb. 28, this appropriation is deeply unpopular with environmentalists — and it offers …

… significant legal risks. The state law that set up the limits on greenhouse gases and the cap-and-trade system calls for investments that will reduce emissions by 2020 to the levels that existed in 1990, some experts say. The state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, noting the bullet train would not be in operation until after 2020, has questioned the legality of using the cap-and-trade funding  for rail construction.

As for Dan Richard’s claim that significant private financing is just around the corner, I await Dan naming a single company that would have any interest in partnering with the state of California on a multibillion-dollar project without revenue or ridership guarantees, which are banned by Prop. 1A. Dan won’t be able to because there aren’t any.

As for the notion that the federal government might foot nearly the entire bill for one state’s extremely expensive project –as some CA bloggers hope  — I can’t cite an MSM piece saying that’s not true, because it’s not even something the MSM considers in the realm of human possibility.

And, no, it’s not just those evil House Republicans who oppose further federal funding than the $3.5 billion the project has gotten so far. Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat who is now chair of the Senate budget committee, came out as an opponent of federal funding for such projects in 2011.

Point 2: The legal challenges the project faces because of Prop. 1A restrictions are likely to be impossible to overcome.

Judge Michael Kenny didn’t just say that before construction began, the state has to have $31 billion in hand to build a “viable” first operating segment of 300 miles that could make money even if the full system was never completed. He said the state had to complete environmental reviews for all 300 miles. It’s not even one-tenth complete, with only 27 miles having clearances.

This is from the Hanford (CA) Sentinel’s reporting on Feb. 4:

Kenny also ruled that the Authority needed to complete environmental analyses for the segment before construction begins.

As for Richard’s confidence in the bullet train’s lawyers, as the Sentinel notes, the legal team instead looks more like the Keystone Kops:

Kings County opponents celebrated the [August 2013 and November 2013] rulings as at least partial vindication, but Authority officials said the project was proceeding on schedule and implied that the rulings were a minor inconvenience.

In the appeal [filed in January], the Authority argued just the opposite.

“The trial court’s approach to these issues cripples government’s ability to function. … Action by this court is urgently required to avoid compromising the Authority’s ability to build the system quickly and economically, as intended by the Legislature and the voters,” the appeal states.

And keep in mind that in Silicon Valley, rich cities have basically vowed to block related construction forever using NIMBY tactics. These tactics have a long history of winning in California — especially when you have very skilled attorneys with very deep-pocket clients.

Point 3: What the state proposes isn’t even high-speed rail.

Because of fears of just the sort of corner-cutting we’re now seeing, Prop. 1A required that the bullet train get from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco in no more than two hours and 40 minutes. But under the governor’s “blended” plan using regular rail from San Francisco to San Jose and from the northern edges of the L.A. exurb to downtown L.A., that means about 100 miles of the trip will be at conventional train speeds and 410 miles at bullet-train speeds.

If you make the generous concession that the conventional trains will go 100 miles at 100 mph, taking 60 minutes, and if you have transfer times of five minutes for each of the train switches, that means the bullet train will have to cover 410 miles in 90 minutes, going 273 mph, to comply with the 160-minute limit in state law.

I repeat, 273 mph. I repeat, 273 mph. I repeat, 273 mph.

That’s average speed, not top speed.

Nevertheless, Richard says that’s not going to be a problem. He says …

“… the independent Legislative Peer Review Group looked at the planning and concluded that at present, our design would allow for that trip to occur in 2 hours and 32 minutes.”

What does the MSM say? Even though I have never seen a piece that breaks down the math of the CHSRA’s claims as I did above, most journos are very skeptical, and so are many experts, as this L.A. Times piece from March 27 notes.

But there’s another wrinkle here. In his response to my original post, Richard seems to take the 160-minute provision of Prop. 1A seriously. But as the L.A. Times reported on June 9 of this year, the rail authority is trying to play semantic games to get out of the obligation — because it’s an obligation it can’t meet:

Dan Richard, chairman of the authority, said the state would deliver a system that meets all legal requirements of the ballot measure.

“We are not trying to parse words and hide behind legal technicalities,” he said.

But critics and opponents, including some key players from the project’s past, say the rail authority is trying to circumvent the basic intent of the protections because the existing plan for the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco line can’t meet them.

The unusual specificity of Proposition 1A has been cited by bullet train promoters and critics to bolster their positions. And both sides have put the language and procedures set out in an 8,000-word piece of legislation underlying the ballot measure under an interpretive microscope. One example: Does a requirement to “design” the train so it can travel from L.A. to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes mean the state has to provide such service?

“This bond issue was extraordinary,” said Quentin Kopp, a former state senator, state court judge and former chairman of the rail authority, when the restrictions were written. “I can’t recall any general obligation bond issue that incorporated legal provisions to the extent this one does.”

In Kopp’s view, the state legislation and subsequent ballot measure were a conscious effort by the Legislature to place binding safeguards on the biggest infrastructure project in California history.

Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), a former state senator who wrote many of the restrictions, said: “We didn’t put them in as guidelines…. It was really clear what we wanted.”

In 2008, 160 minutes meant 160 minutes in California. In 2014? Well, that’s open to debate.

I look forward to Dan Richard’s response to my response to his response to my response to James Fallows. Will he argue again that I’m a “rabid” bullet-train hater? Or will he concede that “rabid” though I may be, I’ve got the MSM generally on my side?

If he says the MSM is with him, Dan should offers specifics, and not just boosterism from the edit page of the Fresno Bee.

We shall see.

In the mean time, I sure hope that Fallows talks to Ralph Vartabedian of the L.A. Times or Mike Rosenberg of the San Jose Mercury-News or to former Democratic state Sens. Quentin Kopp, Alan Lowenthal or Joe Simitian. When that happens, he will see that it’s not just blowhard libertarian bloggers who believe the bullet train is a debacle.

It’s lots of people — including many of the project’s original true believers.

By Wayne Lusvardi

Every year state Senator Joe Simitan, D-Palo Alto, holds a contest for his constituents to submit ideas for new laws.  Simitan boasts that 18 submittals have been enacted as new laws since 2001.  Well, here’s an “oughta be a law” challenge for Sen. Simitan:

A new law is needed to make state budgeting more clear.

The reason stems from AB 1495, which added Section 35.50 to the budget for fiscal year 2012-13, which began on July 1, 2012. This new section of the budget shifts the method of reporting funds from “cash accounting” to “accrual accounting.”

This is important.

Under cash accounting, revenue and expenses are recorded at the same time.

But under accrual accounting, the reporting of revenues and expenses may occur at a different time.

For example, State Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor’s new forecast of state budget revenue surpluses starting in 2014 is based on counting two years’ worth of revenues from the new taxes in Propositions 30 and 39, then applying the revenues to just one fiscal year.  This distorts the actual budget picture and leads to inflated budget estimates.

Budget Section 35.50 means that the Legislature is returning to its old “tax and spend” habit of spending on luxury public pensions and environmental programs.

Unknown revenues

The LAO is concerned because this new rule will result in “no longer [having] a good idea of a fiscal year’s revenues until one or two years after that fiscal year’s conclusion.” The LAO is asking for some help from the Legislature so that it can track the actual status of the budget.

The LAO wrote:

“We are now convinced that the problems that this new accrual method will introduce to the budgetary process outweigh its benefits. We recommend that the Legislature direct the administration to develop a simpler, logical budgetary revenue accrual system by 2015. Alternatively, to help ensure the accuracy of our forecasts and improve transparency, we recommend that the Legislature require the administration to document accruals regularly online.”

The problem with the new accounting rule should not be a partisan issue. It’s just accounting.

Now that Democrats soon will have a supermajority in both houses of the Legislature, they’re completely responsible. Republicans can do no more than stand on the beach and shout at the wind.

If a new law isn’t passed to make the accounting more accurate, allowing the LAO to make more accurate budget estimates, the only result will be disaster. The credit-rating houses, such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, will have to downgrade the state’s credit rating even further to reflect the shaky numbers. In turn, lower credit ratings would mean higher payments from the general fund to pay for state and local bonds.

It’s like this. Suppose your income is $50,000 a year several years in a row and you apply for a car loan. The steady income shows your ability to repay is excellent.

But suppose you make $100,000 one year, then $0 the next. The average still is the same: $50,000 a year. But your income is unpredictable, so the auto credit companies would consider you a bad risk.

The same with the state. Accurate, predictable numbers are honest numbers. And honest numbers make the credit agencies happy.

By John Hrabe

Four years ago Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law California’s controversial Green Chemistry regulations: AB 1879 by Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, and SB 509 by Senator Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto. He proclaimed that the state was adopting “the most comprehensive green chemistry program in the world.”

The laws, which only took full effect this year, granted unelected chemical bureaucrats at the California Department of Toxic Substances Control the authority to regulate virtually every consumer product sold in California. In his typical grandstanding fashion, Arnold promised that all of these new regulations wouldn’t have any negative consequences on California’s job market.

“Right here at Nelson Nameplate, the company’s owners replaced toxic solvents with a more benign process,” Schwarzenegger said at the bill signing ceremony for AB 1879 and SB 509 in late September 2008. “Workers, neighbors and our environment were safer. And guess what? One of the great things is that it also proved that the company’s bottom line has improved because it saved on chemicals and expensive disposal.”

Did you catch that last part? These new regulations actually help “the company’s bottom line.” And Arnold isn’t the only person living in the magical land where regulations help businesses make money.

“We see this as a two-for-one initiative,” said Debbie Raphael, director of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, in a July 2012 press release announcing the new regulations. “Public health and the environment benefit by lessening our use of toxic chemicals, and California companies get a significant boost into markets that are rapidly expanding.”

You read that correctly. According to state regulators, new government mandates help a company’s bottom line. Of course, the argument is absurd. If businesses could save money, they’d be changing their policies or manufacturing processes without the government stepping in with new mandates.

People can disagree about the benefit of new regulations—whether the greater public good outweighs the financial costs—but it’s completely disingenuous for the regulatory movement to argue regulations help companies make more money. No one wants companies dumping chemicals into a river, regardless of how much money it saves them. But, you can’t rewrite the facts. All regulations cost money, and sometimes the public health benefits are worth the cost.

The American Chemistry Council, the big bad business association that represents the nation’s largest chemical companies, has called state regulators’ bluff. The association isn’t calling for an end to the new Green Chemistry law; it’s simply asking the state to conduct an economic analysis in order to inform policymakers of the regulations true economic impact. If nothing else, it would expose regulators lies that new chemical mandates help businesses. Among the topics to be covered in such a report:

* Total statewide compliance costs  of the regulation;

* Total number of businesses impacted;

* Impact on small businesses;

* Number of businesses created and eliminated;

* Jobs created and destroyed.

Economic shortfalls

“The American Chemistry Council has been engaged in an extensive multi-year effort to help California construct a regulatory approach to green chemistry that fosters innovation and enhances public and environmental health,” the association said in a press statement. “It is imperative that regulators take into account the state’s ongoing economic shortfalls, and the obligation to ensure the new regulations do not impact job retention and growth.”

An economic analysis of the Green Chemistry regulations isn’t just common sense. It would also comply with state law. Consider this the part of the story that really drives home the point of California’s over-regulation. In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law SB 617, which required state agencies to conduct a rigorous economic analysis before adopting any new regulations. Yes, a regulation to restrict more regulations.

Almost exactly one year ago, Brown heralded SB 617 as legislation that would “boost California’s economic competitiveness, bring greater fiscal stability to the state and reform the regulatory process to promote business growth.”

While Brown has failed to follow through on the economic impact study, more than a dozen state legislators are pushing for an in-depth look at California’s Green Chemistry law. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, State Sen. Michael Rubio of Bakersfield and 16 fellow Democrats sent a letter to Brown asking for an investigation of the economic impact of the regulations.

“It is without contention that the range and scope of these regulations is wide and can impact every manufacturer, business and consumer in California and beyond,” Rubio and his colleagues wrote.

The Democratic legislative effort was matched by Assemblyman Jeff Miller, R-Riverside, who serves as vice chair of the Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials. He believes that California’s Green Chemistry rules “could become California’s next regulatory train wreck and yet another business-unfriendly move by a state with shockingly high unemployment.”

“Some troubling details about how this happened: The initial statement of reason from DTSC justifying ‘green chemistry’ ran 200 pages.  The final regulations total 78 pages.  The economic analysis: four pages,” Miller wrote at Fox and Hounds Daily.  “This is fairly simple math and an indication of how far out of balance our regulatory system has gone.”

The public has until October 11, 2012 to register their public comments with the Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Check out an earlier CalWatchDog series on how California’s chemical regulations hurt the global economy:

Part I: California exports regulations worldwide

Part II: California’s Global Regulatory Regime

By Joseph Perkins

A pair of Northern California lawmakers unveiled a proposal this week to avert the scheduled July 1 closure of 70 state’s 278 parks, casualties of last year’s budget-cutting by the Legislature.

“The notion of closing 70 parks is ill-conceived,” said state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto. “The state has never closed a state park, not even during the Great Depression,” said state Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa.

The lawmakers say their so-called “Sustainable Parks Proposal” would keep the gates open at up to 50 of the parks this year — those that have not already been spared by takeover by the U.S. Forest Service, transfer to a non-profit organization or funding by a wealthy donor.

To pay for their proposal, which was heard Wednesday by a Senate budget subcommittee, Simitian and Evans propose to tap the state’s Clean Water Revolving Loan Fund, Motor Vehicle Account and Local Assistance Fund, none of which are supposed to be used for parks.

But there’s a better way for lawmakers to save the parks without robbing Peter to pay Paul: Privatize them.

Just last month, the state Legislative Analyst’s Office issued a report in which it recommended that private for-profit companies be allowed to operate at least some state parks.

The LAO estimated that privatization would yield the state government annual savings in the low tens of millions of dollars. Another dividend, the report noted, is that private companies would procure new equipment and implement new projects more quickly than the state.

That matters not to Sens. Simitian and Evans. They continue to press ahead with their “Sustainable Parks” plan, which would have the budget-constrained state government continue to spend money it doesn’t have to maintain operations at all 278 state parks.

“Once you privatize a park,” said Evans, in remarks published in the Huffington Post, “you change the essential mission of the park. It becomes about making a profit.”

But the state Department of Parks and Recreation, itself, sees things differently.

“There are private companies in the Parks and Rec business that do it well,” DPR Deputy Director Roy Stearns told the Post. “People shouldn’t see private enterprise as a dirty word.”

In fact, DPR currently has about 200 concession contracts with private corporations, partnerships, associations and individuals that generate $12.5 million a year in state revenue.

The contractors provide a range of park amenities, including food service, recreational gear rentals, retail shopping, golf courses, marinas and lodging.

The state park system’s 70 million annual visitors are quite pleased with the quality and price of services and amenities provided by private concessionaires. There’s little reason to think they would be any less pleased if they visited state parks fully operated by private sector.

State Sen. Joe Simitian is attempting to pass SB 514, a bill that would prohibit the sale of dextromethorphan (DXM), a cough suppressant, to minors.  Proponents of the bill warn that DXM is a harmful drug to minors and the instances of abuse have been increasing.  Opponents say it’s difficult to know which products contain DXM since there is no authoritative list, making it difficult for clerks and businesses to regulate these transactions.

DXM’s side effects  include “dissociative out of body sensations, nausea, vomiting, rapid heart rate, dilated pupils, paranoia, lethargy, numbness of fingers and toes, seizures, brain damage, heart attacks and deaths,” said Sen. Simitian.

“Since 2003, Dextromethophan has been the most commonly abused substance by teenagers as reported to the poison center accounting for about 20 percentof all teenage abuse calls and about 80 percent of them involve a teenager being reared in a hospital for significant adverse effects,” said Dr. Eileen Anderson, the senior toxicologist at California’s Poison Control Center.  “The poison center has seen a 15-fold rise in teenage DXM abuse in the last decade.  This is a serious problem in CA with significant associated healthcare costs.”

Even the manufacturers of DXM are backing SB 514.  “There still continues to be a big problem with kids abusing this particular product and so we now feel it is the time to agree to this effort,” said Terry Thomas of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association. “The analysis has correctly pointed out that there will be some minor loss of revenue from sales tax but we think that is definitely offset by the savings in healthcare costs.”

Slippery Slope

Opponents think this bill leads to a slippery slope.  “Now our 17 year old college kids who have a terrible cold and have to study all night before the final can’t go to the drugstore and buy something that will relieve them of their cold because of this abuse,” said state Sen. Chris Norby. “I don’t doubt that there is abuse but there’s abuse for virtually every kind of thing you can buy in a drugstore.  And if we continue to ratchet up the requirements for clerks and they are constantly carding people, I think thats an issue.  I can see a day where there will be an entire list of substances that a retail clerk will have to ask ID for, or have keys too.  There’s no end to it.”

Instead of relying on government regulation, Norby focused on individual responsibility.  “If you look at the biggest substance kids are abusing, it’s food.  My kids are addicted to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.  They buy them all the time.they’ve got lots of salt. They’ve got lots of fat. They stain their fingers and the school is thinking about banning them because these kids love the Cheetos and it stains all the papers at school.  If the schools want to ban it, fine, we may have a law ultimately doing that.  That’s my responsibility as a parent.  Yes, it will give them hypertension.  Yes, it will make them fat.  Most things in the supermarket will do that.  But I’m concerned about a slippery slope and will definitely not go down that path.”

The retailers have room to be concerned.  “A major issue is the absence of a state-generated, authoritative list of products containing DXM,” said the California Grocers Association. “Grocers would be forced to make an independent determination regarding which products are covered.  The employing business would be subject to potential legal action and opportunistic litigation despite earnest efforts to train employees and require them to follow the law.”

SB 514 will next go to the Assembly floor for roll call.