The governor’s plan is similar to the idea of pension-obligation bonds. That’s when a government borrows money to pay down escalating pension debts, in the hopes “that the bond proceeds, when invested with pension assets in higher-yielding asset classes, will be able to achieve a rate of return that is greater than the interest rate owed over the term of the bonds,” according to an explanation from the Government Finance Officers Association.

The governor’s plan, by contrast, would borrow money from the Surplus Money Investment Fund, a low-interest (around 1 percent) account where the state holds money to pay for short-term expenses. It would then make a supplemental $6 billion payment to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), which currently predicts a rate of return of 7 percent (even though last fiscal year it received only 0.61 percent). If the CalPERS fund performs as predicted, it will allow the state to save $11 billion in pension liabilities over two decades.

“Absent additional action to address these growing liabilities, paying off retirement liabilities will require an increasing percentage of the state budget. For example, the state’s contributions to CalPERS are on track to nearly double from $5.8 billion ($3.4 billion General Fund) in 2017‑18 to $9.2 billion ($5.3 billion General Fund) in 2023‑24,” according to the May budget revision’s summary. This is purportedly a painless way to pay down growing pension debts.

The idea got a boost from one of California’s best-known pension reformers, Sen. John Moorlach, an Orange County Republican who recently introduced a package of pension reform bills in the Senate. They were all killed by majority Democrats. Nevertheless, Moorlach wrote, in a column for Fox & Hounds that he wishes the governor’s prepayment plan had “a little more sizzle to make it an even more interesting opportunity.”

“Governor Brown should ask the board of CalPERS what type of incentive they will give the state for the prepayment,” he wrote. “CalPERS will benefit from the large influx and should provide at least a 3.75 percent reduction on the actuarially calculated required contribution.” That’s unlikely to happen, of course, but Moorlach wrote that he likes the Brown proposal and thinks the governor should move forward with it.

The idea follows the lead of the Orange County city of Newport Beach, explained Ed Mendel, in his May 29 Calpensions article. The city is paying down its pension debt to CalPERS as quickly as possible, helping it avoid the possible fate of other cities. Mendel quotes Modesto’s acting city manager, who told the Modesto Bee “he is hearing that many cities are facing bankruptcy over rising pension costs.” In the case of looming fiscal trouble, most say slashing at debt is a good idea.

But not everyone is so favorably disposed toward the governor’s plan. David Crane, a Stanford University lecturer and president of Govern for California, argues in a column that the plan is terrible precedent that transfers more pension costs from the beneficiaries of the pension system to the state’s taxpayers. When the state makes pension promises to employees, he wrote, both the state and the employees make contributions into the system, which he refers to as “normal costs.”

By contrast, when agencies increase benefit levels or stock-market earnings go down, the pension funds face those “unfunded liabilities,” which are the unfunded promises they’ve already made to current retirees and employees. CalPERS currently is 74 percent funded, which means that 26 percent of those promises are unfunded. “In contrast to joint sharing of normal cost, employees don’t share in the cost of unfunded liabilities,” he wrote. “One hundred percent of that cost falls on citizens, whose services get crowded out and taxes get raised to pay off the liabilities.”

Borrowing these taxpayer funds to pay off the pension debt, he explains, would just let CalPERS continue to set these shared “normal costs” at an unfairly low rate. Furthermore, Crane notes that this special fund is funded entirely by taxpayers, so he fears the state will borrow from other special funds. The state could claim that these monies are going to pay for public services, when in reality they are being siphoned off for pensions.

As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pension adviser, Crane wrote that he helped the former governor “engineer ‘Deficit Reduction Bonds’ as a way to address the deficit he acquired upon taking office.” But he now regrets the move: “Those borrowings didn’t solve anything. They just covered up the problem, with interest to boost.”

State and local governments are understandably in a bind. They have “few ways to slow the rapidly climbing cost, among them: cut staff and services, lower pensions for new hires, get unionized employees to pay more for their pensions or cut salaries …,” explained Mendel. He noted the key obstacle limiting the ability of governments to cut pension accruals in the future is something called the “California Rule,” which is making its way to the state Supreme Court.

For some, then, shuffling funds around to prepay a little pension debt seems like a cost-free no-brainer to likely limit the growth of the debts. But to others, it’s just a shell game that evades the more politically dangerous course of tackling the size of those benefits head on – and running into powerful resistance from the state’s public-employee unions.

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

“That the Senate hopes for the peaceful transition of power in the United States, that the incoming presidency will be a success, and that the president-elect will take his responsibilities seriously to ensure a strong and unified America,” according the resolution authored by Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa.

Of course, California’s electors will chose Hillary Clinton, who won the state in a landslide in a winner-take-all contest, but the majority of electors in the country will choose Donald Trump to be the next president.

Since the November election, top California Democrats have pledged to fight the Trump administration, particularly on climate change and immigration. A few weeks ago, the  Legislature passed a resolution calling on Trump to back away from tough stances on immigration taken during the campaign.

Moorlach’s resolution, however, calls on the Senate to work with Trump “to ensure that the United States remains a world leader in economics, trade and freedom.”

“The work of forming a more perfect union is neither easy nor trivial,” Moorlach said in a statement. “In a republican form of government, it requires cooperation between duly elected officials. At a time of unparalleled polarization, California now finds itself in the position of being one of the bluest states in a very red nation.”

Even as a few voices nationally have called for electors to not vote for Trump, the California Legislature’s recent resolutions acknowledge Trump as the president-elect. Moorlach said he is “pleased” by the acknowledgement and, while he expects Trump to be challenged by elected officials in California, he hopes everyone will ultimately wish for Trump’s success “for the sake of our country.”

“This peaceful transition is a hallmark of our democracy,” Moorlach said. “President Barrack Obama has called on Americans to move forward and reminded the country that we are all on the same team and reiterating the sentiments of his forbearers, that we are not enemies, but friends.”

Legislators in Sacramento try to include citizens in lawmaking

Good morning. TGIT. Although legislators won’t really be back until next year, new bills are coming. In fact, two state lawmakers are looking to include constituents in the policy-making process in similar, and yet very different, ways.

While Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, is holding a contest for constituents to pitch their best ideas for a “There Ought to be a Law” contest, Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, aims to do the exact opposite. 

Moorlach, partnering with four other Republican senators, is pushing a “There Ought NOT Be A Law” program. Unlike Garcia’s program, the Republican contest is not to write a new law, but to instead simplify and streamline existing state law. 

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “Tempting fate — and mobilized outrage from consumers and their Silicon Valley allies — municipalities around California have zeroed in on a new source of revenue: Online film and television streaming services, and the people who use them,” writes CalWatchdog. 

• “Led by members of the California delegation, dozens of House Democrats are again pleading with President Obama to pardon hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children to whom he granted temporary deportation deferrals.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

• “A day after the city emerged from its 53-month bankruptcy, city officials marked the ‘watershed moment’ with a detailed statement on what they’ve done since filing for bankruptcy and their plans for the future.” The San Bernardino County Sun has more. 

• “With recreational cannabis legal in California, state leaders are taking another stab at letting law enforcement test the saliva of people suspected of driving under the influence of marijuana,” reports The San Jose Mercury News/The Orange County Register. 

Legislature:

• Gone till January. 

Gov. Brown:

• No public events scheduled.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @CALmatters

While Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, is holding a contest for constituents to pitch their best ideas for a “There Ought to be a Law” contest, Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, aims to do the exact opposite. 

Moorlach, partnering with four other Republican senators, is pushing a “There Ought NOT Be A Law” program. Unlike Garcia’s program, the Republican contest is not to write a new law, but to instead simplify and streamline existing state law. 

“It could be as simple as deleting a problematic word or phrase in a particular code section or as complex as eliminating entire statutes and regulatory structures,” according to the description.

For Garcia, this is the third iteration of the program. Last session, a group of fifth graders at Bell Gardens Elementary School came up with the idea for Assembly Bill 146, which requires the State Board of Education to consider adding to the curriculum the a mass deportation in the 1930s of citizens of Mexican descent.

The year prior, a two Bell Gardens residents pitched AB1596, which required that completed mail-in applications be returned straight to county registrars, instead of parties or middlemen. Both of Garcia’s bills became law.

Submit ideas to Moorlach here.

Submit ideas to Garcia here.

The law has several provisions protecting the state (and employers, which are required to enroll employees into Secure Choice) against liability, including this one: 

“The state shall not have any liability for the payment of the retirement savings benefit earned by program participants pursuant to this title. The state, and any of the funds of the state, shall have no obligation for payment of the benefits arising from this title.”

To protect against losses, the state plans to invest in low-risk securities, like treasury bonds or the federal MyRA program, while another section in the law allows for the state to adopt recommendations that address “risk-sharing and smoothing of market losses and gains.”

“Investment option recommendations may include, but are not limited to, the creation of a reserve fund or the establishment of customized investment products. Implementation of an investment option recommendation pursuant to this subparagraph shall be contingent upon subsequent approval by the Legislature.”

What does that mean?

If enacted, a reserve fund could protect investments during years of low returns, according to a Secure Choice official. In years the market performs well, the board could pay out less than the actual realized return. The remainder would be used to fill a reserve fund, which in turn could increase payouts in years the market performs poorly.

“Any reserve fund would have to be funded by participants themselves and not by the state,” according to Grant Boyken, deputy treasurer for retirement security and health care with the state Treasurer’s office. “The state can have no liability.”

Boyken reiterated that the Secure Choice Board has not made any decisions yet and is still considering many options. But it’s the ambiguity that leaves some observers concerned. 

Devil in the details

“Enabling more people to engage in retirement planning benefits them, society and government budgets,” said Carson Bruno, a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “The devil, however, is in the details and how it is implemented.”

Bruno referenced the state’s pension crisis, where taxpayers are on the hook for $5.4 billion this year alone. Over the years, one big tweak, SB400, plus many minor tweaks, exacerbated the funding gap, despite claims that taxpayers would be protected.

“Secure Choice today isn’t a financial threat to taxpayers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that future (lawmakers) won’t make it one tomorrow,” Bruno said. “Sacramento should work to ensure Secure Choice has strong protections built in – that can’t be tampered with by future lawmakers – to prevent it from becoming the next CalPERS or CalSTRS.”  

Heard this before

Those concerns have been most consistently echoed by Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, who notably predicted Orange County’s 1994 bankruptcy, which was largely prompted by risky investments made by the then-treasurer-tax collector.

Moorlach, a trained certified public account and certified financial planner, has repeatedly argued that it’s not a core mission of government to encourage savings by requiring employers to automatically enroll employees and set aside their wages.

Moorlach told CalWatchdog in a recent interview that whenever future economic downturns hit, producing low returns or worse, lawmakers may not be able to resist the temptation to try to fix the problem.

“They have this funny sense of guilt that if they don’t make up losses they’re somehow responsible for this,” Moorlach said.

Through a legislative measure, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday, most workers in the state who don’t have access to an employer-provided retirement plan will automatically join the Secure Choice Retirement Savings Trust through their work, although employees can opt out.

Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de León, who championed the bill, argued that while anyone already has the option of enrolling in a private account, many are not. 

“With today’s action, California is providing workers a new chance to achieve better retirement security,” the Los Angeles Democrat said in a statement. “Secure Choice will empower younger generations, working families, and the women who lead them, and help provide the financial security they have earned for the later years of their life.”

Workers will be able to contribute to their account as much of their salaries as they choose, although the default will be 3 percent initially. The accounts will be held in mostly low-risk investments, like treasury bills, with a focus on long-term financial growth. 

The legislation also has provisions to block the state and employers from incurring any liabilities associated with the new program. However, critics are unconvinced that enough safeguards are in place.

“You can anticipate that this ‘secure’ investment has the potential to morph into a massive boondoggle and may become more expensive in meeting investor expectations during the inevitable next economic downturn,” said Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, a certified public accountant and certified financial planner. “SB1234 has no provision from using taxpayer funds to go towards a bail out.” 

The program would be administered by a nine-member California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Investment Board, which is chaired by the state treasurer.

According to a treasurer spokesman, the program will begin being phased in in three years, depending on the number of employees a business has, starting sometime in 2018.

Henry T. Perea’s decision to leave office early cost Fresno County at least a half million dollars.

Henry T. Perea’s decision to vacate his Assembly seat early cost Fresno County a half-million dollars — enough to pay for four sheriff deputies — and has reignited a discussion on the cost of special elections.

The Fresno Democrat announced last year that he’d be leaving the Assembly to pursue a position with the pharmaceutical industry.

In fact, counties are saddled with the cost of special elections regularly. And while they have become less frequent, at least temporarily, a CalWatchdog review of expenses shows that since 2013 counties (and one city) have spent $21.7 million on special elections to replace state lawmakers.

Few would decry a legislator stepping down if the officeholder or his or her family member fell ill. And of course sometimes scandals create a vacancy. But most of the time these seats are vacated by politicians looking to cash in with a high-paying lobbying position, trade up for higher office (perhaps to avoid being forced from office by term limits), which then creates a mad dash to fill the gaps behind them.

For example: In 2013, Curren Price created a vacancy in the state Senate when he won a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, which are elected in odd-numbered years. Holly Mitchell then won Price’s seat in a special election, leaving a vacancy in the Assembly. That vacancy was filled by the current occupant, Asm. Sebastian Ridley-Thomas.

That game of musical chairs cost Los Angeles County $2.4 million. And had Ridley-Thomas and Mitchell not one outright in their respective primaries, forcing a run-off, the cost for the overall costs for the special election would have approximately doubled.

Nonpartisan

Price, Ridley-Thomas and Mitchell are all Democrats, but Republicans do it too. In 2014, Mimi Walters won a seat in Congress in an open Orange County district after former Rep. John Campbell retired.

After winning, she vacated her state Senate seat, which was filled by now-Sen. John Moorlach, costing the county $1.24 million.

One approach

On Wednesday, an Assembly panel will consider a proposal from Asm. Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, which would require that legislators use leftover campaign funds to pay down the cost of the special election they’ve caused, leaving exceptions for health and family reasons.

Perea still has more than $800,000 according to the campaign finance filings from the end of 2015. Instead of giving money to Fresno County, which is allowable under state law, Perea made some political contributions and paid for a few holiday parties.

Other ideas

A measure by Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, was approved by one panel earlier this month. The bill would require the state to reimburse for the entire cost of the special election for vacancies of state lawmakers. The state used to contribute to the cost of special elections, but has since ceased the practice.

“Fresno County was forced to hold a special election today to fill a vacant Assembly seat, which is costing the county more than a half- million dollars,” Vidak said in a statement last week following the election to replace Perea. “That’s money that could have been used for police, fire, health, education and other vital services.”

Others have suggested the governor appoint a replacement to serve until the next scheduled election. But critics claim that gives the unfair advantage of incumbency to a replacement if he or she decides to run for another term, and gives the governor too much political power.

“Sure, it’s a tradeoff,” said Raphael Sonenshein, the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University Los Angeles, noting that if the seat is held only until the next scheduled election then no one would hold the seat for more than two years. “Special elections have very low turnout. It’s at least arguably a budget savings and one less election.”

Turnout

Voter turnout is a persistent issue in California. Some argue that the abundance of special elections contributes to the problem. Most of the special elections have even lower turnout.

In 2013 in Los Angeles, 23 percent of voters turned out for the regularly-scheduled city elections when Price was elected. Later that year, only 5.55 percent of voters turned out to elect Mitchell to the state Senate and then 8.47 percent turned out to elect Ridley-Thomas to the Assembly.

In 2014, the regularly-scheduled gubernatorial election that sent Mimi Walters to Congress drew about 43 percent of voters, while John Moorlach was elected to the state Senate only a few months later with only a 15.42 percent turnout.

Kathay Feng, the executive director of the left-leaning good government group California Common Cause, suggests moving all local elections to the normal presidential and midterm/gubernatorial voting schedule — and during the vacancy, until a successor is elected, the seat could either stay unoccupied or a “caretaker” could be appointed.

“Will a group of people be unrepresented for a short period of time? Potentially.” Feng told CalWatchdog. “But this is insane to elect people by five or six percent of the population and still call it a democracy.”

Cost

The money that is spent on special elections goes to things like: printing ballots, hiring poll workers, securing locations, paying for postage and producing vote by mail ballots. 

Many special elections are unbudgeted and all are unplanned and sometimes they overlap. According to Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk, it can be particularly taxing on the county registrar and confusing for voters who could be receiving election packets from the city they live in and then the county a few weeks later, like Los Angeles residents in 2013.

Logan did not advocate a particular path forward, as it’s not his role as registrar. However, he has at least raised questions over the current process and the drain on resources since at least 2010.

“And we already have a crisis of participation even in our regular election cycles, but the turnout in these special vacancy elections is extremely low,” Logan told CalWatchdog.

Term-limits

Some argue that the 2012 modification of term limits, which allowed legislators to spend more time in each chamber, may reduce the number of special elections. While the change hasn’t been around long enough to say for sure, there has been a reduction in special elections since it was passed.

There were 12 special elections (including primary and general/run-off) in 2013, two in 2014, four in 2015 and only one so far this year.

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.

Denise Cross / flickr

An assemblyman will soon introduce legislation aimed at curbing the cost to taxpayers when a legislator retires from their position early, forcing a special election — but it may stop short of recouping costs in other instances.

The bill would require legislators — like former Asm. Henry T. Perea, D-Fresno, who resigned last month to take a position lobbying for the pharmaceutical industry — to use some or all of their leftover campaign cash to mitigate the cost of a special election. The bill would also block using leftover funds to make donations to other legislators.

“If you trigger a special election, then you’ve got to save some campaign funds to pay down the cost of the special election,” Asm. Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, told CalWatchdog, adding that he may be “inclined” to expand language to include certain instances where ambitious politicians ditch their current positions for higher office or to escape term limits.

The Cost of Ambition

Rep. Mimi Walters, R-Irvine, left Orange County taxpayers with a nearly $2 million price tag when she vacated her state Senate seat immediately after being elected to Congress in the 2014 cycle. Had John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, not received more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary to win the seat outright, the cost would have doubled.

Patterson was not asked about the Walters example, but agreed with the principle of mitigating the cost to taxpayers in these instances as well. However, he said the specific cause of the vacancy should be considered and warned that a realistic approach to the bill was needed.

“I have to have some kind of caution in this if I hope to even get this much passed,” Patterson said. “If I reach to ambitious politicians and touch their freedom of decision making, even though I might think it’s the appropriate thing to do, I don’t want to build enemies for the bill.”

It’s worth noting that Patterson will run for a soon-to-be vacant state Senate seat in 2018, but will not run for re-election to his Assembly seat while doing so, according to the Fresno Bee.

Who Says Politicans Don’t Listen to Constituents? 

The idea for the legislation, which was first reported by the Fresno Bee on Friday, came from a caller a few weeks ago while Patterson was a guest on a local radio program. The caller, who was reportedly one of around a half dozen on the special election to replace Perea, was upset that the county would be forced to pick up the check, which the Fresno Bee reported could be as much as $675,000.

“Voters are very tired of politicians who act in ways that just simply seem to be tone-deaf to common sense, and I think they’re tired of politicians costing them fundamental services,” Patterson said. “You’re going to take that right out of fundamental services for roads and safety and public works, public parks, and that should not be the case if you’re sitting on lots of cash from contributors.”

Perea left the Assembly with $863,000 in his campaign account, as of the most recent filing. Patterson argues that at least some of that money should be used for the special election and not to donate to other legislators.

Patterson referred to former state Sen. Michael Rubio, a Bakersfield Democrat, who stepped down from office in 2013 for a government affairs position with Chevron Corp. On his way out the door, Rubio made several contributions to other lawmakers, including $5,000 to Perea.

Sweeping changes

As CalWatchdog.com previously reported, state Sens. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, had to rewrite key passages of the bill’s language in order to head off potential constitutional challenges to its treatment of kids without the specified vaccinations.

The bulk of the original bill remained intact, however, sweeping away California’s longstanding and generous rules permitting parents to keep their children vaccine-free. “Several Republican senators tried to stall the bill by introducing a series of amendments that would have reinserted the religious exemption and required labeling of vaccine ingredients,” according to the Sacramento Bee. But Democrats moved swiftly to shut them down.

For some critics, barring unvaccinated children from public school remained a bone of contention. “It’s clear that a large portion of concerned parents will likely withhold their children from public schools because of their concerns or lack of comfort from the vaccination process,” said GOP state Sen. John Moorlach, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

But some carveouts were set to remain. “The legislation only addresses families that will soon enroll their children in school,” as Newsweek observed. “Under the proposed law, children who aren’t currently immunized are not required to get vaccinated until seventh grade. The law still allows families to opt out due to medical reasons, such as a history of allergies to vaccines and inherited or acquired immune disorders or deficiencies.”

The so-called grandfather clause represented a major concession to parents’ groups, which had succeeded in stalling Pan and Allen’s legislation once before. Now, as the San Jose Mercury News reported, “more than 13,000 children who have had no vaccinations by first grade won’t have to get their shots until they enter seventh grade. And nearly 10,000 seventh-graders who today aren’t fully vaccinated may be able to avoid future shots because the state does not always require them after that grade.”

Regulatory momentum

Despite the lenience built into the advancing legislation, the pro-vaccine logic that propelled it has already increased momentum for an even more assertive approach to enforcing inoculation.

As KQED News has noted, “two other vaccine-related bills are making their way through the Legislature a bit more quietly. One would require preschool and child care workers to have certain vaccinations; another seeks to improve vaccination rates for 2-year-olds.”

“If SB792 becomes law, California will be the first state in the country to require that all preschool and child care workers be immunized against measles, pertussis and the flu.”

Supporters of the ratcheted-up regulation sought to head off more controversy by downplaying the invasiveness and inconvenience of their approach. “We certainly aren’t out to arrest people who aren’t vaccinated,” said Kat DeBurgh, executive director of the Health Officers Association of California, a group that sponsored SB792. “We wanted to make this just like any other violation of code that an inspector would look for. If you don’t remediate, then there is a fine to the day care center.”

At the same time, pro-vaccination analysts have speculated that the Golden State will save money the more it ensures vaccination. Referring to a recent study showing that Iowa’s health care spending would double if it added a personal belief exemption, Tara Haelle suggested that California’s “health care cost savings would be far more substantial” once its exemption was eliminated, although, she conceded, “no thorough analyses are currently available.”