Photo Credit: Patch.com

A Senate panel unanimously advanced a bill on Tuesday that would significantly increase the penalties for possession of large quantities of the powerful opioid Fentanyl, a drug that has led to a wave of overdoses in Sacramento recently.

Fentanyl, which is reported to cause a euphoric high 50 to 100 times more powerful than heroin, caused 29 overdoses in the Sacramento area in a seven-day period last month, nine of which were fatal, according to the Sacramento Bee. The drug killed 30 people in Orange County in 2015 and 62 people in Los Angeles County in 2014.

The bill, if approved, would add Fentanyl to a list of dangerous drugs allowing stiffer sentences based on weight in an effort to target kingpins and cartels. The bill’s narrow focus on major suppliers is what drew the support of Democrats, who were skeptical of traditional “tough on crime” policies that target low-level offenders and addicts and flood prisons.

Sen. Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, said the bill would “cut the head off the drug cartels and stop it at it’s source.” Bates, a former Los Angeles County social worker and Sen. Bob Huff of San Dimas are both sponsoring the bill.

Distribution of Fentanyl is already illegal, but this bill would add penalties per weight. For example, an amount in excess of one kilogram would add three years to a sentence, four kilograms or more would add five years and 10 kilograms or more would add 10 years.

Further action

While the bill focuses on top dealers, legislators called for further action. Sen. Loni Hancock, an Oakland Democrat who chairs the Senate Public Safety Committee, said it was necessary to reach out to young people and other potential users about the effects of Fentanyl. Bates agreed that further action was needed, that “allocating resources to the rehabilitation and certainly treatment,” is “extremely important.”

“But we really have to stop the import of these very dangerous drugs,” Bates told CalWatchdog of the pending bill. “It is a public health crisis.”

Sen. Jeff Stone, R-Riverside County, who ran his own pharmacy prior to his time in the Legislature, called the drug “the nuclear bomb of street drugs.” Doing what seemed to be on-the-spot calculations, Stone said one kilogram was enough for 4 million lethal doses.

Thomas Hawk / flickr

California officials are preparing to implement the state’s latest steps toward a transformed parole system for incarcerated youths.

The changes were spearheaded by state Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Oakland, who led two bills through closely fought battles in Sacramento. Senate Bill 261 and Senate Bill 230 were both narrowly passed. The first “will expand those hearings to include inmates who committed their crime before the age of 23,” as the Sacramento Bee reported, while the second “mandates that prisoners be paroled once they are found suitable by the board. According to supporters, some inmates continue to be held for years after they are deemed suitable for parole because of enhancements that the board can add to their base terms, such as for additional criminal charges that did not result in a conviction.”

Hancock has played a key role in criminal justice oversight this year. She took the lead in investigating statewide prison abuse, especially at the remote High Desert State Prison in Susanville. A report on the abuse, drafted by the Office of the Inspector General, “was issued after the Senate Rules Committee asked the OIG to review the practices at the prison after a number of allegations surfaced that raised concern about whether some members of the HDSP staff were engaged in a pattern or practice of using inappropriate and excessive force against inmates and whether there was adequate protection of inmates from harm at the prison,” Hancock’s office said in a statement. Earlier this year, Hancock called for the closure of the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, calling the state prison “decrepit and unsafe.”

Persistent challenges

Californians have been haunted for years by the thorny challenges involved in reforming parole rules without adding uncomfortable risks. This year, changes to residency restrictions on paroled sex offenders began taking significant effect. “As a result of California’s policy change, more than 4,200 of the state’s 5,900 offenders no longer qualify for the residency restrictions,” the Associated Press observed. “However, their whereabouts still are monitored with tracking devices and they must tell local law enforcement agencies where they live.”

Political risk

But Gonzalez, although he displayed the kind of exemplary behavior in prison that made him the first to be affected by the new rules, was not an American citizen. Upon release, he was to be deported. This year, the intersection of unlawful immigration and crime has become a hot-button election season issue — especially in California, where the San Francisco release of a five-time deportee with seven lifetime felony convictions drew withering criticism after the man shot and killed Kathryn Steinle as she strolled along the city’s tourist-heavy waterfront with her father.

The episode captured nationwide attention, fueling the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and sharpening the already fierce divide within the state Republican Party over its approach to immigration and deportation. “Trump called for building a wall between the United States and Mexico after tweeting his ‘heartfelt condolences'” to Steinle’s family, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Meanwhile, revising its party platform, the state GOP “approved wording that Republicans ‘hold diverse views’ on the fate of millions of immigrants in the country without proper papers, and omitted language that said allowing them to stay ‘undermines respect for the law,'” recalled the Los Angeles Times.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, and Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, would set a sliding scale for corporate taxes, cutting them for publicly traded companies whose CEOs earn less than 100 times the median compensation of their workers, and raising them when CEOs make more.

California currently has a corporate flat tax rate of 8.84 percent, except for financial institutions, which pay 2 percentage points more.

California is the first state to consider tying taxes to CEO pay, according to Damon Silvers, policy director of the AFL-CIO labor federation, which tracks the issue for its Executive Paywatch initiative.

The California bill, SB1372, surprised some observers by passing the Senate Appropriations Committee by a 5-2 vote Friday, with Democrats supporting it and Republicans opposing.

The money, of course, would flow to the government, of which the five state senators are leaders. And which the AFL-CIO helps control through its public-employee members; and through financing political campaigns.

If these politicians really wanted to help the middle class and the poor, for starters they would slash the top 9.3 percent income tax rate that starts at about $55,000 of income. (The Prop. 30 tax increase will expire in five years.) That’s right, in California, you’re considered “rich” at $55K of income — even though the state’s so expensive that’s really lower-middle-class!

Next, they would repeal AB 32, which destroys jobs to fight “global warming” that isn’t happening.

Then they would repeal the California Coastal Commission, a Soviet-style agency that severely limits developing land, which drives home and apartment prices sky-high, so only the 1 percent can live here.

None of that will happen, of course.

SB 254 by Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, and Sen. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, would mandate mattress manufacturers to pay the entire cost of mattress recycling — a cost which would undoubtedly be tacked on to the price of a new mattress. It  has already been passed by the Senate and will be heard in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee on Monday.

The bill would require mattress manufacturers to organize, operate and pay for all mattress recycling in the state. “Illegally dumped mattresses are a terrible blight on our communities,” Hancock said in a press release.  “They not only deface a neighborhood but they can become a health hazard and a breeding ground for mold and pests. Cash-strapped cities are forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars collecting and disposing of abandoned mattresses.  That’s money that could be better spent on police and other vital services for the community.”

But it’s already illegal to dump a mattress, isn’t it? Yes it is.

I asked Shelly Sullivan, the spokeswoman for Californians for Mattress Recycling, what this program will cost the state. Sullivan said the newly created organization would reimburse the state for appropriate oversight costs.

Mattress recycling organization would be non-profit

If enacted, SB 254 would create a non-profit mattress recycling organization made up of retailers and manufacturers whose duty would be to plan, implement, and administer a state system to collect discarded used mattresses, dismantle them and recycle their materials for use in new products.

SB 254 would require mattress manufacturers to submit a recovery and recycling plan to CalRecycle by April 1, 2015. Consistent with existing state policy, the plans would have a goal of recycling at least 75 percent of used mattresses in California by Jan. 1, 2020.

By Dave Roberts

If you think taxes are already high in California, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Winding through the Legislature have been a gaggle of constitutional amendments that would make it easier to raise local parcel taxes. The bills would  lower the vote-approval threshold to 55 percent from the current two-thirds requirement.

Four tax-hike-enabling bills were debated in the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee on Tuesday, where they passed easily, 3-0. They were:

* SCA 3 is by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. It would affect “school districts, community college districts, and county offices of education.”

* SCA 7 is by state Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Vallejo. It would affect “cities, counties, or special districts.”

* SCA 9 is by state Sen. Ellen M. Corbett, D-San Leandro. It would affect “local government for the purpose of providing funding for community and economic development projects.” So it would bring back redevelopment, which the Legislature itself killed in 2011 to save the state money. Redevelopment commonly used eminent domain to condemn and seize homes and businesses in supposedly “blighted” areas — meaning middle-class and poor communites — to give the property to wealthy developers.

* SCA 11 is by state Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Oakland. It would affect “cities, counties, and special districts…. It would apply to nearly all services, from schools, to transportation, to public safety agencies.”

Tuesday’s debate was a preview of the one that will take place when the amendments (or perhaps one comprehensive amendment) are placed on a statewide ballot, where a simple majority of statewide voters would be needed to pass.

Already back in 2000, voters approved Proposition 39, which dropped the threshold for passing local school bonds from two-thirds to 55 percent. Referring to Prop. 39, Leno said, “So there’s already precedent for it. This will just make it the same” for local parcel taxes.

Democrats and representatives of government agencies, government labor unions and social service organizations argued that state government is no longer able to adequately fund schools, libraries, roads, parks, economic development projects and the like. This has forced cities, counties and special districts to try to make up the difference. But it’s difficult for them to do so when just over one-third of voters opposed to a tax hike can thwart the will of the nearly two-thirds who want to raise their taxes to pay for those amenities.

Tax failures despite majority support

Last November several school district parcel tax hike measures gained more than 55 percent of the votes, but fell short of the necessary two-thirds to pass:

* A $39 annual tax per parcel in San Leandro received 65.6 percent;

* A $65 tax hike in Pacific Grove — 65.1 percent;

* A $199 tax in San Bruno — 58.5 percent;

* A $48 tax in Fort Ross — 65.4 percent;

* A $60 tax in Three Rivers — 61.6 percent.

Business groups and taxpayer advocates countered that making it easier to raise taxes would place additional financial burdens on many businesses and homeowners that are still struggling in the wake of the Great Recession. They point out that many tax hikes are approved, despite the two-thirds threshold, showing that voters will support improvement projects when they are convinced of the need for them.

Also, according to Ballotpedia, “Prior to the passage of Proposition 39, about 60 percent of local school bond ballot questions succeeded in getting the previously required two-thirds vote. In the wake of its passage, about 75 percent of local school districts are passing with the 55 percent requirement.”

Moreover, tax opponents argue that the two-thirds requirement is needed to provide badly organized taxpayers protection against the well organized unions of state employees, such as the California Teachers Association and the Services Employees International Union. These unions take dues from the salaries of their rank-and-file members to fund pro-tax campaigns. Because the salaries are funded through taxation, ultimately the unions are using the taxpayers’ own money to raise taxes even higher.

There are millions, probably billions, of tax dollars at stake in California in the coming decades, depending on which side wins the debate.

Pro-tax arguments

Two of the arguments for the pro-tax side may appeal to moderates and even Tea Party conservatives:

* Taxation at the local level allows for more local control than relying on the state or federal government for funding. “This is a way to give local districts the opportunity to be able to reinvest in public education,” said Leno. “We have taken control away from them. Due to crises and other reasons in Sacramento, we have been unable to invest in public education to the degree that we need to. So [this provides] a tool in the tool box to let the majority rule.”

* The founding fathers restricted the two-thirds voting requirement to major issues like presidential impeachment and ratification of international treaties. Leno quoted James Madison in Federalist Paper 58 that requiring more than a simple majority for most votes means “the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer that the majority would rule. The power would be transferred to the minority.” Leno himself added, “In the end it would be a recipe for a dysfunctional government.”

That dysfunction has manifested itself in the fact that, despite many schools needing additional funding, “only 10 percent of school districts currently have school parcel taxes in existence,” said Leno. “So this is an underutilized tool.”

Leno is optimistic that voters will support lowering the tax-hike threshold. He said a recent Public Policy Institute of California poll shows 57 percent of Californians support lowering it to 55 percent for local parcel taxes for public schools.

Majority opposed to lowering tax threshold

But that May PPIC poll actually shows that likely voters oppose by a 53-44 margin lowering the tax-hike threshold. It does have slight support among all adults, 46-44 percent.

David Wolfe, representing the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, cited another finding in that poll: 61 percent of likely voters say that Proposition 13, which in 1978 imposed the two-thirds threshold for both state Legislature tax hikes and local special tax hikes, has been mostly a good thing for California. Even 55 percent of Democrats agree with that, as well as majorities throughout the state and racial, ethnic, age and income categories.

“So it just goes to show that even 35 years later, support for Prop. 13 is very strong, and support for lowering the two-thirds for various special taxes is not popular at all,” said Wolfe.

Leno countered that most Californians are unaware that Prop. 13 includes the two-thirds threshold requirement for tax hikes.

“The way Prop. 13 was sold was that property taxes were rising at the local level to fund school operations, and retirees and those on fixed income were being taxed out of their homes and we had to protect grandma and grandpa,” he said.

Grandma losing her home

Wolfe, however, is concerned that grandma and grandpa are in danger of once again being taxed out of their home if the tax hike threshold is lowered. That could lead to foreclosures, decreased property values and residents moving out, resulting in a loss of property and sales tax revenue for local government and perhaps leading to more bankruptcies.

“Undercut the threshold. Go ahead and do it,” Wolfe dared. “And you know what happens? Stockton happens, Vallejo happens, San Bernardino happens, Mammoth Lakes happens.” Vallejo declared bankruptcy in 2008; the other three cities did so last year. “Because that’s where the majority of the revenue comes from.” So raising property taxes is “incredibly damaging not only to homeowners but to local government.”

It will also be incredibly damaging to small businesses, according to Ken DeVore, legislative director for the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents about 23,000 small businesses in the state.

“Over 90 percent of the business owners from all demographics are opposed to anything that makes it easier to raise taxes,” he said. “Because at the end of the day it’s the small business owner that gets hit. It costs almost three times as much to comply with taxes for a small business owner over a big business. It’s 37 percent more expensive to comply with regulations. It’s over 20 percent more expensive for health care.

“The whole reason why we have a two-thirds majority required is to ensure that local government will make the case for why a project is needed. They have done so almost 60 percent of the time over the last two decades in California. It also guarantees that a significant number of people who actually are going to pay the taxes will be included in the vote as well.”

Potential for business tax targeting

The California Chamber of Commerce, which has added the constitutional amendments to its list of bills dubbed “job killers,” is also concerned about the impact of tax hikes on larger businesses.

“There are few parameters or restrictions under which the tax may be imposed, other than that the revenue be used for the designated purpose,” the Chamber states on its website. “With such broad discretion in the type or scope of the tax to impose on real property, the CalChamber is concerned that the constitutional amendments could lead to targeted taxes at the local level against unpopular taxpayers, industries, products or property.

“For example, a parcel tax could be disproportionately directed at commercial property within the local jurisdiction, thereby potentially undermining Proposition 13 protections and discriminating against commercial property versus residential. Similarly, a special sales tax could be imposed solely on sweetened beverages or high calorie items.”

The constitutional amendments will next be considered by the Senate Rules Committee.

By Katy Grimes

Lawmakers are notorious for responding to tragedies and accidents with often unnecessary legislation. It’s a Kodak moment none seem to be able to resist, especially over environmental issues.

It happened again Wednesday in the Senate Environmental Quality Committee. Several bills were passed by the committee, including SB 691 by state Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, a bill targeting large businesses for air quality accidents.

Despite facing legitimate legal and technical challenges, the committee ignored protocol, and allowed the bills to move on with the proviso that work would continue to be done on the bills.

Penalizing business over accidents

Taking aim at Chevron over the August 2012 refinery fire, SB 691 is put forth as the solution to a big problem. It would dramatically increase fines and penalties for businesses which have pollution accidents and air quality violations. Hancock said the bill would “incentivize” air quality compliance. And she added, “incentives are better than mandates.”

Hancock’s bill would quadruple the civil penalties large polluters must pay for air quality regulation violations. But what Hancock did not explain is that local air quality districts will be able to fine businesses for violations to air quality regulations, then pocket the money. The “incentives” appear to be on the side of the government.

“I am introducing this bill because current penalties are far too low for polluters who cause thousands of people to suffer,” Hancock said in a news release.

Under current law, penalties are assessed per day. Hancock said her concern was that, for a one-day violation like the Richmond fire, Chevron may only face a minimal fine.

“Single-day violations of air quality regulations that affect entire communities lack adequate financial consequences,” she explained. “Current penalties are simply inadequate to ensure compliance with the law from large polluters.”

Sponsored by the Bay Area Quality Management District and Breathe California, SB 691 would only “increase the penalty ceiling, and not necessarily the penalty,” Hancock said.

“One-day violations disrupt entire communities,” Tom Addison with the BAQMD said. He concurred that only the penalty ceiling would be increased, not the penalties.

Nuisance or dangerous?

Ed Manning, representing the Western States Petroleum Association, challenged Hancock’s charge of malicious negligence by large companies when an industrial accident occurs.

Specifically, Manning took issue with this wording of Hancock’s bill:

“Prohibits a person, except as specified, from discharging air contaminants or other material that cause injury, detriment, nuisance, or annoyance or endanger the comfort, repose, health or safety to any considerable number of persons, or to the public.”

“Nuisance is not non-compliance,” Manning said. He explained what constitutes a “nuisance” is different in every air quality management district in the state. A “triggered event” can be as small as one household complaining, he said. And air quality districts do not have to prove there was a violation for an official “nuisance” to have occurred.

“The reason nuisance penalties are so low is because the burden of proof is so low,” Manning said. Nuisance claims triggered by a complaint also are a problem for small businesses. “Penalties up to $10,000 are difficult for very small businesses.”

Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Rocklin, asked Hancock, “What about a real accident?” He explained that financially penalizing a business for an actual accident, which is not deliberate or intentional, is not right.

Hancock largely ignored Gaines’ question and Manning’s concerns, and instead just repeated, “It’s a huge public safety problem.” She claimed there appeared to be consensus on the bill. “I look forward to working with the opposition as the bill moves forward,” she said. “I think the bill is really needed, very, very much.”

By Dave Roberts

California state laws from the past occasionally crop up and need to be amended. That happened last week when the Senate Public Safety Committee unanimously approved SB 59, which is designed to close a loophole that allows a man to get away with rape by impersonating a woman’s boyfriend. Current law states that a rape occurs if a woman is married and the rapist impersonates her husband. But there is no rape if she’s not married and the rapist impersonates her boyfriend.

In January, the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles overturned the rape conviction of Julio Morales, who admitted to police that he had sex with a sleeping woman who probably thought he was her boyfriend. The incident occurred at a party in Cerritos in 2009 after the woman, who had had three to five beers, went to bed and her boyfriend left the party. She awoke in the middle of the rape, screamed and pushed Morales away. He was convicted and served a three-year sentence. He will face a retrial, although he probably would not do any more time if convicted.

“Justice should not be conditioned on a victim’s marital status or sexual orientation,” the bill’s author, Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, told the committee. “This bill substitutes and defines the new term ‘sexual partner’ in place of the outdated word ‘spouse’ in the rape statue.”

She was supported by Katie Donahue, with the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, which represents 84 rape crisis programs in the state.

“Women are currently vulnerable to this loophole in the law,” she said. “The criminal justice process can be a difficult, emotionally fraught experience for survivors. For any woman to have her rapist’s conviction overturned, despite the evidence against him, is revictimization. In this modern age, justice should not be tied to the marital status of the survivor.”

SB 59 is similar to AB 56. The main difference is that SB 59 changes the definition of rape from impersonating a “spouse” to impersonating a “sexual partner.” While AB 56 changes impersonating a “spouse” to impersonating “someone other than the accused.” Evans argued that AB 56 is overly broad.

“It basically becomes rape by misrepresentation,” she said. “The example might be somebody who is picking up a date in a bar, misrepresents who he or she is, misrepresents things about themselves that then induces the victim to have sexual relations with the perpetrator. I don’t think that’s where we want to go. The intent of the language in my bill is to address that issue where there already is an existing relationship and that is being used to perpetrate a rape.”

Keeping a lid on sentencing

The meeting began with Committee Chairwoman Loni Hancock, D-Oakland announcing that the committee’s six-year policy of “holding in committee bills that would increase felonies and the sentences connected with them” would continue in order to meet the court order to reduce state prison overcrowding.

“We recognize as legislators and as public advocacy groups, we care about the safety of our population,” she said. “And often times when a problem arises, all we can think of is an increased sentence or an additional felony. But there are other ways to think about solving these problems. States as diverse as Texas and Washington have made a decision that they cannot afford more prisons. They have adopted smart-on-crime policies, and we can do it here.”

Responded Sen. Joel Anderson, R-San Diego, “On behalf of Republicans on the committee we are committed to working for public safety. Public safety is paramount to California. If you can’t walk our streets and feel safe, then you’re not living in a free society. I would ask that the committee be very thoughtful in its approach and not allow this to become a partisan policy where Republicans always [have their bills held in committee] and Democrat bills don’t.”

By John Seiler

Add infringement of the Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms” to a severe anti-business climate as a reason to get out of Dodge, Calif.

The Democratic Supermajority in the state Legislature is advancing 10 bills that almost certainly will pass and be signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown. Hypocritically, the Legislators and the governor are protected in the state Capitol by armed state troopers. In your home, your are not. They want to leave you naked before robbers, rapists and killers.

Here’s Times summary, with my comments:

“Among the bills, Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) called for outlawing possession of large-capacity ammunition magazines over 10 rounds. The sale of such magazines had been banned, but Hancock said some possessors of the clips have been able to escape prosecution by claiming they were purchased before the law was changed.”

Think the Crips ‘n’ Bloods will follow that one and turn in their large magazines? Of course not.

But the bill will criminalize tens of thousands of honest, decent, otherwise law-abiding citizens who won’t turn in their magazines.

“Senate President Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) proposed a ban on the future sale, purchase and manufacture in California of semi-automatic rifles that can accept detachable magazines. ‘The truth of the matter is that we can save many lives by curbing the proliferation of rapid-fire weapons,’ Steinberg told reporters at the Capitol. “We can save lives by getting guns out of the hands of people who should not have them.”

Again, criminals wouldn’t follow the law. It just would disarm decent citizens. Already, millions of such weapons are owned, legally, in California. If you ban their sale here, people will just buy them in other states with less repression.

“Other measures would boost funding for efforts to confiscate guns from people convicted of felonies and require anyone buying ammunition to get a permit and undergo a background check.”

Felons already can’t own guns. Putting more money into grabbing felons’ buns would add to the state’s fiscal problems.

And ammo can be bought on the Internet from other states. So the law would just kill ammo businesses in California, destroying even more jobs.

By Katy Grimes

Jumping on the anti-gun movement in the country, two of California anti-gun lawmakers will lead a hearing today about guns and violence. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, Chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, and Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, Chairwoman of the Senate Public Safety Committee, will be taking a look at gun violence and firearm law in California.

However, putting Ammiano and Hancock in charge of the gun and violence hearing is like having Lindsay Lohan lead an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and Tiger Woods in charge of sex addicts anonymous.

Ammiano was instrumental in getting rid of San Francisco’s High School competitive .22 cal rifle teams, and worked to put an end to the junior ROTC program in San Francisco’s High Schools. Ammiano supported the ban on allowing gun owners to carry an unloaded gun in public. “Whether a gun is loaded or not, it’s still an act of intimidation and bullying,” Ammiano said.

It was reported yesterday that Ammiano is about to introduce a bill to tighten gun-safety laws already in place by adding a safe-storage requirement when a person prohibited from gun possession is living in the home. Ammiano’s bill also would let the state Justice Department extend the state’s 10-day waiting period when necessary for background checks.

The East Bay Patch recently reported State Sen. Loni Hancock “said she hopes to follow the president’s lead at the state Capitol. ‘The president is setting the tone for the national conversation that has to take place.  I strongly agree with him that we need to take action in order to protect our children,’ said Hancock. ‘As someone who represents Oakland, I’ve seen the tragic consequences of gun violence – too many children are dying.'”

I’ll report later about this hearing.

By Bill Evers and Ze’ev Wurman

Gov. Jerry Brown recently sent California several decades back into the 20th century by signing Senate Bill 1200, by state Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Oakland. This law now mandates a shocking rollback of how much math we expect children in California’s public schools to learn and  — furthermore — this law constitutes a setback for good government.

Back in the late 1990s, faced with evidence that the state ranked near the bottom of the nation and industrialized countries in math achievement, California policymakers set the goal of teaching Algebra 1 by grade eight to all students who were ready for it — in line with most high-achieving countries.

From the beginning, policymakers knew it was an ambitious goal. Educators stepped up to the challenge. Policymakers at the state level, working together with teachers and principals in local school districts, put a system in place to enhance learning of key building blocks of mathematics in the elementary grades, strengthened teachers’ math competency, increased training on math teaching techniques, and provided textbooks aligned to the more challenging standards.

And students stepped up, too. The results are a rarely-told story of stunning success in public education. In 1998, only 17 percent, just 70,000 of our students, took Algebra by grade eight. But this year, 68 percent, or more than 324,000 did.

This translates to almost quarter of a million more students taking Algebra by grade eight. Not only had we successfully quadrupled the fraction of Algebra-taking by grade eight — which is a major accomplishment for those students and their teachers — but an ever larger percentage of students have over time scored “proficient” and above.

The success of minorities and students in poverty increasing their Algebra 1 proficiency was the most significant achievement. In 2003, fewer than 1,700 African-Americans successfully took Algebra by grade 8. By 2012, more than 6,900 did; that was more than a four-fold increase

In 2003, slightly more than 10,000 Latino students successfully took Algebra by grade 8. By 2011, more than 63,000 did; that was more than six-fold increase. In fact, more Latino students scored proficient and advanced on Algebra in 2012 than the total number of Latino students who took Algebra in 2003.

Dooming the children

SB 1200 will doom all children, whether in poverty or affluent, to a one-size-fits-all, lowered-expectations elementary curriculum that will only prepare them for pre-algebra in middle school. Rather than strengthening preparation for all students in earlier grades for Algebra in grade eight, in line with international benchmarks, we will return to an era when only privileged families can afford the extra tutoring to prepare their children for high expectations and international competition.

Poorly drafted

Furthermore, SB1200 is so poorly drafted that it doesn’t just roll back the expectation of Algebra 1 in grade eight. It does more than that by requiring “one set” of standards “at each grade level,” and precluding typical mathematics course options for students in high school.

California high schools have always offered different math classes to students in the same grade who have different levels of preparation. Accordingly, California historically has adopted course-level math standards for high school — preserving local control at the district and school level to decide when it would be best to offer rigorous courses to each student based on the student’s ability. But SB 1200 would outlaw that practice by mandating only one set of mathematics curriculum- content standards, textbooks and training and teacher materials for all students in each K-12 grade.

Officials of Brown’s administration have offered rhetoric about how they will not have to implement the plain language of the law. But they do not have the statutory authority or capacity to violate the law’s provisions. Efforts to get around the wording of the law will lead to confusion about policy on curriculum, textbooks and testing — and hence invite lawsuits and re-ignite the math wars.

Standards development

Finally, SB 1200 radically changes the balance of power in government over the development of curriculum-content standards. Historically, standards have been drafted by a panel appointed by different branches of California’s state government, with a majority of appointees made by the governor. This bill permanently transfers authority over standards development to the state superintendent of public instruction, currently Tom Torlakson, a former Democratic state legislator.

Such a move is unwise. The state superintendent and bureaucrats at the state Department of Education often are likely to represent the narrow interests of education providers. Whereas the governor (of whatever party) is more likely to represent the larger interests of all the people of California who primarily want to see students succeeding academically — especially students’ parents and employers who hire graduates of public schools.

When California agreed to consider adopting the Common Core national curriculum-content standards, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, concerned about maintaining California’s rigorous standards, conditioned their adoption “until we have determined that they meet or exceed our own” standards.

In that spirit, the California State Academic Content Standards Commission determined in 2010 that retaining Algebra I in eighth grade was essential. It suggested dual options — both authentic Algebra I and the Common Core’s pre-algebra. The state Board of Education approved the suggestions in August 2010. In signing SB 1200 Governor Brown has just thrown overboard the rigor that three past governors — of both parties — had fought hard to establish and maintain.

Undoing California’s high academic expectations is a disastrous step backward for all children. SB 1200 will leave the children and  future workers of California woefully unprepared for the challenges and demands they will face in today’s ever more fiercely competitive economy at home and in an increasingly global marketplace.

Bill Evers is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a member of the institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. He was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education for Program, Evaluation and Policy Development from 2007 to 2009.

Ze’ev Wurman is an executive at a Silicon Valley semiconductor company and a former senior adviser to the U.S. Department of Education. Both Evers and Wurman served on the California State Academic Content Standards Commission in 2010.