Leaders in the state party are concerned about local elections, particularly in one important Orange County state Senate race.

But President-elect Donald Trump fanned the flames by tweeting California was one of three states with “serious” voter fraud. His Sunday tweet followed another sent hours earlier claiming that he’d “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” 

Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California – so why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias – big problem!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2016

So far, Trump has offered no proof to his claims, which were dismissed in great detail by PolitiFact California. Secretary of State Alex Padilla immediately sent a press release disavowing the claim: “It appears that Mr. Trump is troubled by the fact that a growing majority of Americans did not vote for him. His unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in California and elsewhere are absurd.”

SD29

California Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte told party officials in an internal email obtained by CalWatchdog that the state has a history of “anomalies” that “deserve further scrutiny.” Brulte added that he believed “most of the government officials charged with ensuring voter and ballot integrity are good people who want to do the right thing.”

Brulte cited several incidents throughout the years, but came back to a recent election in Orange County — which ultimately gave Democrats a legislative supermajority — where voter turnout “increased in some cases up to 30 percent over the 2012 election.”

The Orange County Registrar of Voters attributed the spike in turnout percentage to a cleanup of the voter roll. 

Orange County’s history

California Republicans point back to a 1996 congressional race in Orange County, were 624 non-citizens voted after having registered illegally, according to a congressional investigation. In that race, the Democratic challenger, Loretta Sanchez, defeated the Republican incumbent, Bob Dornan, by less than 1,000 votes.

“That was before online registration, late registration, a boom in illegal residency, driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, and other trends,” said Harmeet K. Dhillon, a member of the Republican National Committee from California. “Logically, the numbers are much higher today and the state seems deliberately to make it difficult to verify eligibility to vote and also takes little to no interest in preventing fraudulent voting.”

Ways to improve?

Dhillon said Republicans are concerned that the current online voter registration system doesn’t track the computer’s ISP address, which helps detect fraud, and that users can self-verify citizenship with a driver license number, which are issued to non-citizens.

Dhillon said Republicans believe new voters should verify citizenship, not just check off a box. 

Nothing to see here

But the Secretary of State’s office holds that there’s no problem. A spokesman told CalWatchdog that the SOS “already conducts routine security assessments of our systems,” but declined to give specifics.

Many election law experts say there is no evidence of widespread problem voter fraud. Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, said Trump’s claims did not happen and “lack any evidence or grounding in reality.” 

An investigation into what happened in Orange County may be worthwhile, Levinson said, but added that increased turnout itself isn’t enough to allege voter fraud.

“There are plenty of reasons this election cycle as to why people in Orange County would be motivated to go to the polls.” 

But down the ballot, 10 things stood out.

• Nearly 50,000 people voted for Roger Hernandez, a termed-out Democratic assemblyman from West Covina who had been running for Congress until he suspended his campaign after he was placed under a domestic violence restraining order and was stripped of his committee assignments.

• Congressman Darrell Issa seems to have won re-election. Although it’s still close and the Los Angeles Times had not yet called the race, Issa maintains a nearly 4,000-vote lead over Democrat Doug Applegate. This isn’t noteworthy because Issa was vulnerable and squeaked out a win. It was noteworthy because Issa, the richest member of Congress, wasn’t seen as vulnerable. The Vista Republican, in his 15th year in Congress, has been one of the most high-profile Republicans over the last few years as a constant thorn in the side of the Obama administration. But as national money started flowing to Applegate and an endorsement of Donald Trump appeared to be weighing Issa down, the race tightened.  

• As long as these results hold, Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, will be the only incumbent in California’s 53-person congressional delegation to lose. Fellow Democrat, Ro Khanna of Fremont, finished what he started in 2014, when he first challenged Honda.

• A reminder that California is not as uniformly progressive as it often seems: Voters upheld the death penalty as the maximum sentence for murder. Even more surprising is that a measure to speed up death penalty appeals is clinging to a two-point lead in the returns.

• Republicans appear to have held their seats in the state Senate, beating back a Democratic supermajority. Everything hinges on a Southern California district that extends from Cypress to West Covina to Chino Hills, where Republican Ling Ling Chang, a sitting assemblywoman, is holding an almost two-point lead over Democrat Josh Newman. 

• But in the Assembly, Republicans lost three seats, dipping below one-third of the chamber. In the Los Angeles South Bay, David Hadley was knocked out by former Democratic Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi. In Orange County, Young Kim trails former Democratic Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva. And in the Inland Empire, Eric Linder is losing to Sabrina Cervantes.

• While no Senate incumbents of either party were defeated, five incumbent Assembly members either lost or trail. That includes the Republicans, Linder, Kim and Quirk-Silva, along with two Democrats who lost intraparty challenges. Cheryl Brown, the Inland Empire incumbent, lost to Eloise Reyes in a proxy war between environmentalists and unions that opposed Brown and Big Oil and charter schools that supported her. In the San Fernando Valley, Patty Lopez was ousted after the Democratic Party endorsed her challenger, former Democratic Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, who also had major support from outside business interests.

• Orange County, the traditional Republican stronghold, voted for Hillary Clinton for president. According to The Orange County Register, the county hadn’t supported a Democrat for president since the Great Depression. That result reflects a consistent slide in Republican registration in the county, which has persisted for decades.

• Speaking of Orange County, Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez lost her home county in the U.S. Senate race by 9.6 points. Sanchez has represented Orange County in Congress since she was first elected in 1996.

• And speaking of the U.S. Senate race, more that 1.1 million people sat it out. The race made headlines after the June primary, when no Republicans advanced to the general election — a byproduct of the state’s relatively new primary system where the top two candidates advance regardless of party. Sanchez lost to Attorney General Kamala Harris, a fellow Democrat.

Californians voted in ways that would be expected for such a strongly Democratic-leaning electorate, except on the issue of the death penalty. That isn’t too surprising, either, given that Californians — despite their left-of-center tilt — have long been supportive of tough-on-crime measures and have consistently supported the death penalty.

Voters rejected, by 54 percent to 46 percent, Proposition 62, which would have repealed the death penalty and replaced it with life in prison without parole for murderers. They approved, with nearly 51 percent of the vote, the alternative Proposition 66. That measure streamlines the appeals process so the state can more quickly execute death row inmates.

Despite such “toughness,” voters overwhelmingly approved Gov. Jerry Brown’s sentencing-reform measure (Proposition 57) that would allow early release for some felons. There have been some increases in crime rates following the passage in 2014 of Proposition 47 (reducing some drug felonies to misdemeanors), but California voters remain committed to reducing some types of prison sentences.

On Election Day, voters also were strongly supportive of tax and spending measures. They approved, 54 percent to 46 percent, Proposition 51, which authorizes $9 billion in general-obligation bonds to modernize K-12 public schools. State bond measures are not direct tax increases, but they do increase the debt secured by the state’s general fund. That means legislators will have to allocate money to pay the service on the debt. They create pressure for tax hikes, or for spending cuts in other areas.

Voters also approved Proposition 55 by a hefty margin (62 percent to 38 percent), which will extend by 12 years the “temporary” personal-income tax increases included in the tax-raising Proposition 30 from 2012. The increases are applied on earnings of more than $250,000 for single filers and more than $500,000 for joint filers. Voters also agreed to boost the cigarette tax by $2 a pack — and other tobacco and nicotine products by equivalent amounts — by approving Proposition 56.

In a fairly close tally (51 percent to 49 percent), voters rejected Proposition 53, which was opposed by the business community and labor unions and would have subjected major infrastructure projects ($2 billion or more) to a statewide vote if they used revenue bonds. Such bonds are funded by revenues from the project (i.e., tolls) rather than general tax revenues. A variety of local tax increases also passed. California voters have moved a long way from the days of the 1970s-era tax revolt.

On social issues, Californians voted Tuesday in a reliably liberal way, as well. They supported, 63 percent to 37 percent, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s measure (Proposition 63) requiring background checks to purchase ammunition. They rejected an effort, by 8 percentage points, to require actors in adult films to wear condoms. They upheld a controversial new law (Proposition 67) banning grocery stores from handing out those single-use plastic bags and turned back an effort by the plastic-bag industry (Proposition 65) to redirect any bag fees from grocery stores to a state environmental fund. The latter was designed as payback to grocers and grocery unions for their role in the legislative deal that led to the plastic bag ban.

In another victory for liberal activists, voters approved — by an overwhelming 72 percent to 28 percent margin — Proposition 58, which overturns the state’s ban on bilingual education in public schools. That’s an educational program in which immigrant kids are taught largely in their native language. It was largely banned in 1998 by Proposition 227, whose supporters were concerned that native Spanish speakers were not learning English quickly enough. Prop. 58 did not get much attention this year, and its ballot designation suggested that a vote for 58 was a vote for preserving English proficiency.

Voters did, however, OK a significant political-reform measure by a wide margin (64 percent to 36 percent). Proposition 54 requires that the final version of any bill in the state Legislature be available in print for 72 hours, thus eliminating those controversial gut-and-amend bills in which new language is inserted at the last minute without public or media scrutiny. The measure also gives the public expanded rights to record the Legislature.

California voters also joined voters in Massachusetts, Nevada and (probably, based on close results) Maine in legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. Several other states approved medical marijuana – something that’s been legal in California since Proposition 215 passed in 1996. Given California’s immense size, this vote (Proposition 64) is viewed as a massive boost to an already-emerging marijuana industry – and to similar votes in other states in coming elections.

Voters approved Proposition 52, which extends a Medi-Cal hospital fee program that allows the state to collect federal reimbursements. It was backed by most of the state’s political establishment. Also passed was Proposition 59, which was an advisory vote asking whether state officials should support a constitutional amendment overturning the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which invalidated certain limits on campaign spending. This was a largely meaningless initiative, but it garnered 52 percent of the vote.

Finally, voters rejected, 54 percent to 46 percent, a measure (Proposition 61) that would have capped the prices state agencies pay for prescription drugs. Opponents ran an aggressive campaign that no doubt contributed to its failure.

None of this was particular surprising, which is a surprise in and of itself. As the rest of the country defied the predictions, California went along with flow.

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

Sanchez hits Harris’ record on mortgage settlement …

Good morning. TGIF. As Election Day gets closer, the race for Senate becomes more interesting — a stark contrast from the summer, when the race was deemed a snoozefest.

Loretta Sanchez on Thursday attacked Kamala Harris’ record on the 2012 mortgage crisis settlement, saying it was not the major accomplishment the state’s attorney general claims.

The two Democrats are running for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat. With the election rapidly approaching, and lagging in both fundraising and polling, the Orange County congresswoman has increasingly been on the attack, even calling for another debate, which the Harris campaign quickly rejected.

Harris has said throughout the campaign that she’d played a key role in the settlement negotiation with the banks that won around $20 billion for California homeowners. But, citing multiple media reports, Sanchez said Harris did not lead in the talks, deferring to New York and Delaware, was not tough enough on banks and failed to protect the settlement from being raided by the state government.

“Despite pledging to get tough on the banks, Kamala Harris did not lead the charge as she claims and never filed charges against a single bank,” Sanchez said in a statement. “That is why consumer groups have criticized Ms. Harris for her failure to follow-up on the mortgage settlement.” 

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• If Harris is taking the high road at all, it’s at least partially because she has POTUS on her side. President Barack Obama stars in a new Harris campaign ad, touting her accomplishments, according to The Sacramento Bee.

• “So what happens if California voters decide to legalize recreational marijuana on Nov. 8? Would a legal marijuana market cut into the profits of the Mexican drug cartels enough to cripple them? Or would it make it easier for traffickers to grow pot in the United States under the shadow of legitimacy? The answers are a game of speculation, experts acknowledge. … One thing the experts do agree on: The battle over drugs at our border will rage on regardless.” The San Diego Union-Tribune has more.

• “Political donors have spent a record $450 million on 17 statewide November ballot initiatives in California, beating the state’s own record for the most spent on propositions appearing on state ballots in a single year, campaign reports filed Thursday show.” The San Jose Mercury News/AP has more.

• “California voters have a decision to make on the general election ballot: approve $9 billion dollars in bonds for school and community college construction projects and modernization, or reject it to avoid adding to the state debt,” reports Capital Public Radio.

Legislature:

• Gone till December.

Gov. Brown: 

• At a Yale class reunion. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @ReThinkDefense

Attorney General Kamala Harris, left; Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, right.

Loretta Sanchez on Thursday attacked Kamala Harris’ record on the 2012 mortgage crisis settlement, saying it was not the major accomplishment the state’s attorney general claims. 

The two Democrats are running for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat. With the election rapidly approaching, and lagging in both fundraising and polling, the Orange County congresswoman has increasingly been on the attack, even calling for another debate, which the Harris campaign quickly rejected.

Harris has said throughout the campaign that she’d played a key role in the settlement negotiation with the banks that won around $20 billion for California homeowners. But, citing multiple media reports, Sanchez said Harris did not lead in the talks, deferring to New York and Delaware, was not tough enough on banks and failed to protect the settlement from being raided by the state government.

“Despite pledging to get tough on the banks, Kamala Harris did not lead the charge as she claims and never filed charges against a single bank,” Sanchez said in a statement. “That is why consumer groups have criticized Ms. Harris for her failure to follow-up on the mortgage settlement.” 

Settlement negotiations

In 2012, the settlement between the country’s five largest mortgage servicers and 49 states was announced. But talks began in 2010, just before Harris was elected attorney general. 

Months before the settlement was reached, Harris pulled the state out of the negotiations, which the Los Angeles Times recently wrote “delivered a major setback to the negotiations.” Harris argued California’s portion of the settlement was “crumbs on the table” and stepped away from talks.

Whether Harris took a leading role is up for debate. However, her decision to walk away, taking with her the largest state by far in terms of population, no doubt influenced discussions.

In the end, California homeowners got around $20 billion, which was mostly for debt relief. However, as the Times reported, around half of the debt relief funds (about $9 billion) was used to help homeowners sell their way out of underwater mortgages, leaving them forced to move. 

(An earlier version of this story reported that the Harris campaign did not respond to Sanchez’s attacks. However, there was actually a miscommunication between CalWatchdog and a Harris spokesperson. The campaign was not given an adequate opportunity to respond.)

Task force and bill of rights

In response to the mortgage crisis, Harris took two major actions: forming a Mortgage Fraud Strike Force “to investigate and prosecute misconduct at all stages of the mortgage process,” and championing the Homeowner Bill of Rights, which is “designed to guarantee basic fairness and transparency for homeowners in the foreclosure process,” according to the AG website.

Sanchez hit at the lack of criminal cases against the banks, noting that the strike force filed only 18 criminal cases in five years, but none were against a major bank executive. By contrast, district attorneys throughout the state have prosecuted far more cases.

Harris told the Times, however, that crimes clearly occurred, “But we went where the evidence took us.”

However, at least one homeowner advocacy group was critical of Harris’ record of enforcement, writing off her efforts as empty showpieces for her Senate run.  

“Kamala Harris used homeowners to secure her political future, but in the end, she has refused to pursue justice by prosecuting any bankers,” wrote Occupy Fights Foreclosures. “Despite early promises, little has been done to deter the crimes and risky financial practices that created the housing bubble.”  

State raids the piggy bank

According to The Huffington Post in 2015, “Harris had said that California would set aside $360 million for housing counseling, legal aid, consumer financial protection investigations and other initiatives meant to mitigate the damage caused by the foreclosure crisis, which hit the state particularly hard.”

However, as the Sanchez campaign pointed out, when Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature decided to divert around $331 million of that money to balance the budget, it wasn’t Harris who fought the state. Instead, it was Latino, Asian and African American groups who won back the money.

Debates

With the election just weeks away, Sanchez called for another debate, this time “to explain why (Harris) is misleading the people of California on her role, the actual relief provided to homeowners, and what as senator each of us should do to protect the people of California from corporate predators.”

To date, there were two debates in the primary and only one in the general, with both sides blaming the other for the inability to schedule more. 

“Our campaign is done debating debates and has been for weeks,” said Harris spokesman Nathan Click. “Congresswoman Sanchez had three chances to make her case on a debate stage against Kamala Harris in this campaign, and she even rejected a Sacramento debate our campaign had agreed to.””

Open-government groups fighting with political ethics watchdog

Good morning. Happy hump day. We start with an interesting read from the Los Angeles Times about good government groups fighting with the FPPC.

“A rare and heated dispute has erupted between California’s campaign finance regulators and open-government groups that have accused the watchdog agency of pressuring them to rescind their support for legislation designed to show who is funding political ads.

“Supporters of the bill criticized the state Fair Political Practices Commission for heavy-handed tactics that they said included pushing groups the commission has the power to investigate and fine to drop their support for the transparency bill.

“‘It’s really inappropriate for a regulator who has enormous power over organizations to call up those organizations over which they have power, and lobby them,’ said Trent Lange, president of California Clean Money Campaign. ‘It’s just inherently intimidating to have your regulator call you and ask you to do something.’

“Michele Sutter, co-founder of the group Money Out Voters In, called it ‘shocking behavior by the FPPC.'”

The Los Angeles Times has more.

In other news:

• “In addition to their six-figure salaries and benefits, California’s 120 lawmakers are compensated for their cost of living and meals when they leave home and travel to Sacramento to write and pass bills. Unlike in many other states, however, California lawmakers have over time crafted loosely worded rules for themselves that allow them to collect those payments regardless of whether they even show up to work,” reports AP/The San Jose Mercury News. 

• “Kamala Harris, in the final weeks of her U.S. Senate campaign against fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez, released a higher education plan Tuesday calling for making public colleges and universities free for students whose families earn less than $140,000 a year. She also wants to allow borrowers to discharge student loans in bankruptcy.” The Sacramento Bee has more. 

• “The retiring forecaster for California’s largest public employee pension fund offered some final advice on Tuesday: State and local governments should be required to pay more into the system as soon as next year.” The Los Angeles Times has more.

• “A prominent group advocating for LGBT rights has withdrawn its endorsement of six state Assembly members because they abstained or voted against a bill aimed at protecting gay and transgender students from discrimination at private colleges,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

   

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December. 

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @claireconlon

Transparency ballot measure nearly unopposed

Good Thursday morning! While the governor pumps out signed bills and vetoes to wind down the year, political campaigns are heading into the final stretch. 

Although one ballot measure campaign is hardly heating up. In fact, for all the fighting and million-dollar spending over November’s 17 ballot measures, one proposal stands nearly unopposed.

Though not entirely unopposed, the committee against a measure aimed at making legislative proceedings in Sacramento more transparent is unfunded and run entirely by the pro bono work of Democratic political strategist Steve Maviglio.

Maviglio has the political savvy to run the campaign — he’s working on two measures in support of the ban on plastic bags and against another measure to require voter approval for revenue bonds of $2 billion or more — but the money just isn’t there. 

“It’s an uphill battle to be sure because many donors have bigger fish to fry,” Maviglio said. 

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:

• “Frustrated transportation groups urge the Legislature to come back in a lame-duck session,” reports the Los Angeles Times. 
• “The California Democrats running for U.S. Senate delved Wednesday into their records on for-profit colleges, with Loretta Sanchez continuing to tie Attorney General Kamala Harris to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and the businessman’s defunct Trump University,” writes The Sacramento Bee. 
• “California tenants have a new arrow in their quiver: a law to protect them from being unfairly placed on rental blacklists that jeopardize their credit ratings and shut them out of the housing market,” reports The San Jose Mercury News.
• “Gov. Jerry Brown, laboring to build support for California’s controversial cap-and-trade program, signed legislation Wednesday authorizing $900 million in spending on climate-related programs, including clean car rebates, parks and public transportation.” The Sacramento Bee has more. 

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December.

Gov. Brown:

• Another medal of valor ceremony, this time at 10 a.m. in Elk Grove for officers and staff of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @minnieclass

With just a few months remaining in the race to replace outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer, the struggle has sharpened between leading Northern Californian candidate Kamala Harris and the Southland’s Loretta Sanchez. Seeking an edge against her opponent, who’s leading, Sanchez has gone on the attack, drawing Harris into controversies around everything from Donald Trump to their debate schedule. But questions remained as to whether Sanchez would be able to close the gap, at a time when California voters have not been captivated by the race or, according to polls, the candidates. 

The Trump card

When it comes to Trump, a figure immensely unpopular with many California Democrats, it transpired that Harris once received $6,000 in donations from the mogul, but did not follow the lead of other attorneys general in bringing suit against him around allegedly fraudulent practices at Trump University. 

“Trump donated to several state attorneys general in recent years, including New York’s Eric Schneiderman, who filed a lawsuit against the school for ripping off students,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. “Harris’ office has also investigated the school, but so far has not filed charges. Several Trump University students filed a still-pending civil suit six years ago, which Sanchez insisted should have been enough for Harris to have immediately rejected Trump’s donations in 2011 and 2013.”

Debating the debates

Meanwhile, as befits a underdog, Sanchez has zeroed in on the prospect of a robust debate schedule as a way to boost name recognition on the cheap and land some high-profile blows against Harris. As the Los Angeles Times noted, Sanchez “wants to have four debates — seeking to double the two proposed by her rival in the November election, Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris. The two campaigns traded barbs in early August after the Harris campaign announced she would participate in two forums, including one in Sacramento that Sanchez later rejected. At the time, Sanchez political consultant Bill Carrick criticized the Harris campaign in early August for ‘arrogantly announcing’ her terms.”

With Sanchez looking to Republicans to put her over the top, her need to make a positive impact among a broad and disillusioned audience in a short amount of time has grown acute. Although Sanchez “regularly receives 100 percent ratings from NARAL and Planned Parenthood, and has a lifetime 95 percent rating from the AFC-CIO,” New York Magazine observed, “she doesn’t have much choice” in courting whatever slice of the Golden State GOP electorate she can get. “A recent USC/L.A. Times poll showed Sanchez trailing Harris 30 percent to 16 percent,” the magazine added, “with three-fourths of self-identified Republicans declaring themselves either undecided or unwilling to vote for either of the surviving Democrats.”

Wavering voters

Driven by Republican discontent, California voters as a whole have again shown little enthusiasm for turnout on election day. The USC poll indicated that “16 percent of registered voters, mostly self-described Republicans and independents, have decided to skip the first open U.S. Senate race that California has seen in 24 years — the same percentage of voters who favor Sanchez,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

In today’s volatile campaign climate, however, analysts have cautioned against writing off Sanchez: “More than a third of California voters indicated they still ‘don’t know’ which Senate candidate they’ll pick on Nov. 8, according to the poll,” the Times concluded — a figure that, if it breaks Sanchez’s way in the home stretch, could help produce another upset victory in an election year defined by them. As Thomas Elias recalled at the Los Angeles Daily News, about 40 percent of the electorate was undecided until the final days before the primary” election that landed Sanchez a second-place finish, “just as about 35 percent are similarly perplexed, undecided, uninterested or turned off today. One poll showed 28 percent of voters don’t plan to cast any ballot in this race.” The key difference between the primary and the general election? Unlike this time around, Republicans were able to cast votes for Republicans. 

What happened to CA oil exploration?

Good morning. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the return of NFL football this weekend and is excited about the Rams/49ers game tonight.

But that’s tonight. This morning we’re talking about oil. 

It took some time, but a 2011 report by the Federal Energy Information Administration that estimated that California’s Monterey shale underground land mass formation had 15.4 billion barrels of accessible oil and a follow-up study that put the figure at 13.7 billion barrels of oil — about twice as much as the rest of the nation combined — got plenty of folks’ attention.

Advances in hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, made extracting the oil cost-effective. … But it’s been all downhill ever since for those enthusiastic about oil exploration in the Golden State.

It’s not just that low oil prices have left energy companies facing a “world of hurt,” in the words of the Houston Chronicle, and without the resources to pursue large new drilling programs in California or elsewhere. It’s specific, daunting developments.

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:

• “When key bills aimed at reforming the California Public Utilities Commission died last month, much of the blame was placed publicly at the feet of a Republican floor leader — someone not typically seen as a make-or-break figure in a Democrat-dominated Legislature. It turns out, the CPUC itself had some last-minute concerns about the overhaul that contributed to its demise.” The San Diego Union-Tribune has more.

• “In a sign that California’s pot initiative is getting national attention, a Pennsylvania millionaire has contributed $1.3 million to a nonprofit group that is raising money to oppose Proposition 64 on the November ballot,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Meanwhile, “California supporters of the statewide measure to legalize marijuana filed a complaint late Friday with the state’s political ethics watchdog alleging that an outside committee opposing Proposition 64 filed campaign finance reports months after the deadline,” reports The Sacramento Bee.

• The Orange County Register looks at the curious alliance between Republican Rep. Darrell Issa and Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez. The two Southern Californians are gambling on bipartisanship helping them through tough races.

• “Dr. Robert Sears is one of the leading voices in the anti-vaccination world, a hero to parents suspicious of childhood immunizations that public health officials say are crucial to preventing disease outbreaks. So when the Medical Board of California announced last week that it was moving to pull the Orange County pediatrician’s medical license, it immediately set the stage for a new battle in the long-running fight over whether schoolchildren should be vaccinated.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December.

Gov. Brown: 

• Presenting Medal of Valor to eight public safety officers in his Capitol office at 11 a.m. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @Sachealth

Law curbing labor abuses abroad not working well

Good morning. TGIF. On the day after Gov. Jerry Brown signed ambitious climate change legislation, we’re reminded that laws don’t always work as planned.  

A statute passed by California lawmakers in 2010 to stem labor abuses abroad has been of meager help in policing tech giant Apple, a group that studies labor abuses in China claims.

The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, heralded by political leaders as a measure to police poor working conditions in companies doing business in California “has little influence on the labor conditions of these suppliers” in China, Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch, said in a statement to CalWatchdog. “As such, labor rights violations are still prevalent in these factories.”

A study released in late August from China Labor Watch reported that at the Shanghai, China, facility of Apple supplier Pegatron, “working conditions are terrible, and workers are subject to terrible treatment. Currently, Apple’s profits are declining … to mitigate the impact, Pegatron has taken some covert measures to exploit workers.”

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:

• More about what that climate change legislation calls for and how it’ll work, from the Los Angeles Times. 
• And even more on climate change legislation: How California defines disadvantaged communities when deciding where to send funding for local environmental programs. The Sacramento Bee has more. 
• “Orange County Rep. Loretta Sanchez on Thursday condemned the burial of millions of pounds of nuclear waste on a San Onofre beach bluff and faulted her opponent in the race for the U.S. Senate for not fighting the controversial project,” writes The Orange County Register.
• “Rep. Duncan Hunter says he doesn’t want a new federal policy to stop companies from donating tobacco products — specifically cigars — to members of the military,” reports The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Bonus:

• Looking for a long weekend read? Molly Ball in The Atlantic on how the world of political consultants works… or doesn’t work. 

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @RobbySumner